Our Story

Verv Skin was born from necessity and grew up on love and passion.

While living and working in South Korea and China, I was frustrated about the lack of natural skincare products. Many products on the market contained skin bleaching agents, powerful synthetic fragrances and a whole host of other unnecessary and harmful ingredients. On visits home to Canada, I would stock up on natural soaps from local soapmakers, about 10 pounds worth, hoping it would last the duration of our next stint overseas. Eventually I realized I could try my hand at soap-making and quickly fell in love with the process. After sharing several batches of soap with friends and colleagues, I began taking small orders for staff working at my school and eventually we found ourselves selling at local artisan markets in Beijing as well as a zero-waste store and a charity boutique. 

My partner Nate was my "employee of the month" every month; helping me set up and sell at markets, biking downtown Beijing at sunset with a hiking backpack full of soap for a retail delivery (after working all day), sitting on the cold tile floor late into the evening folding and filling boxes for Christmas orders. But the work never felt like work because I loved the creative process, I believed in the value and importance of natural skincare products and felt grateful to be able to connect with so many new people who also found value in my creations. What made it all incredibly special was the community of people who loved and supported me; friends sitting around our coffee table wrapping soaps, Mr. Shi letting me set up a small soap display at his cafe, students from our school helping us manage a crowd around the market booth, new relationships, returning customers. 

Dreams of launching my business after permanently returning to Canada quickly rooted in my mind. Those dreams finally took shape in a physical way when we returned to Canada in June of 2019 and set out to make Verv Skin a reality. 

 As a picky consumer of natural skincare products, soap-making evolved into a broader skincare range when I realized I had the capacity to formulate products to achieve all the elements that I felt a product needed; balancing the right texture, scent, performance and preservation system is a challenging but rewarding process. Often I have to adjust a formula over a dozen times before I'm 100% satisfied with the result. Having extremely high expectations of the performance, aesthetic appeal and clean ingredient list of all of my products, I am confident you will be satisfied too!