We were lucky to catch up with Karen Behnke recently and have shared our conversation below.
Karen, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
As a serial wellness entrepreneur, having built one of the first corporate wellness companies in the country my sense of purpose was ignited multiple times throughout my life and everything melded perfectly with the inception of my third company, Juice Beauty. My lifelong passions of environmentalism, wellness and skincare were the three passions that formed the foundation of my high-tech innovative beauty organic ingredients skincare brand. To provide a bit of background on my sense of purpose, as a teenager, I became intensely interested in environmentalism, when I witnessed the devastation from the historically largest PBB spill that happened in my small Michigan hometown–this PBB spill lives on to this day with this toxic chemical in the soil and being detected in the Michigan grandchildren’s bodies. My lifelong commitment to wellness stemmed from overcoming my childhood struggle with a rare, nearly fatal blood disorder which cemented my lifelong commitment to wellness, and my skincare obsession was enhanced with my pregnancies in my 40’s. During my pregnancies, experiencing hormonal changes and the beginning of lines in my skin motivated me to find healthy skincare solutions that delivered visible results
Creating luxurious organic formulations that perform better than conventional beauty products was my goal. Although skin can absorb what is placed on it, there were very few available healthy personal care products that worked well so in 2005, I bought the name “Juice Beauty” and launched the company from scratch wanting to create meaningful change in the beauty industry and thus bringing all my passions together.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Juice Beauty’s Certified Organic Farm and our “Farm to Beauty” approach has been my passion and brainchild. Juice Beauty has been the leader in high-performance, organic ingredients skincare and makeup, having pioneered and radically transformed the chemistry of beauty over the past twenty years – and our latest discovery once again proves the efficacy of organic and plant-based technology in skincare. Under my direction with her physician husband Howard Luria, M.D., and a leading Grape PhD expert (from UC Davis), we have developed the powerful Sagrantino SuperGrape, grown on the Juice Beauty certified organic farm in Healdsburg, California. Many new techniques were used in harvesting as well as the fermentation mechanism to extract and deliver the highest antioxidant level possible in a skincare product. This powerful technology and ingredient was first utilized in Juice Beauty’s patent pending SuperGrape Youth Renew Serum with Hyaluronic Acid. To celebrate our 19th Earth Day at Juice Beauty, we are now infusing this high intensity active ingredient across the bestselling Anti-Wrinkle Stem Cellular skincare line. This is an exciting patent-pending ingredient discovery.
The Sagrantino grapevine was originally brought to the Juice Beauty Farm from the Umbria region of central Italy. This rare high antioxidant SuperGrape is only grown on a few farms in North America and mostly for wine — however starting in 2018, Juice Beauty began experimenting with ways to boost the already packed antioxidant grape to even higher levels, including updating the farming techniques to maximize the yield for higher phenol antioxidant measurements. Specific methods of planting nitrogen rich red clover between the vines, removing sugar and ethanol through a clean reverse osmosis membrane process, exposing the vines to sun differently and more. The patent pending discovery with an incredibly high ORAC and phenol levels, makes the grape a powerful and strong inhibitor of free radical mediated reactions and can be advantageously used to prevent or slow the appearance of skin aging.
Juice Beauty enlisted a leading University of California trained PhD Phenol expert, to work with Founder Karen Behnke, her husband Howard Luria, M.D., and Juice Beauty’s chemists examining and testing the crop. Third party, independent lab testing showed the following results when blind tested against 2 leading serums:
–> 144% higher Orac (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) antioxidant levels than a leading serum
–> 78% higher Phenol antioxidant level than a leading serum.
Juice Beauty was founded with revolutionary formulations starting with a basic premise: Karen believed and proved that formulating with an antioxidant-rich organic botanical juice base (instead of water or petroleum), would yield better results than conventional products, Juice Beauty’s promise to our customers is to deliver glowing, healthier – looking skin and our Sagrantino SuperGrape raises the bar again delivering on this promise as these incredibly high antioxidant levels fight free radical attacks on the skin.
Juice Beauty’s Farm brings our California wellness brand to life and allows us to be closely connected with our antioxidant-rich organic ingredients. The farm serves as inspiration for innovation and provides organic grape and olive technology for our products. It’s so exciting to have a brand experience for our retailers, social media influencers, our media friends, employees, our non-profit partners, and Juice Beauty’s scientific team — to really experience Juice Beauty’s brand. The farm is USDA Certified Organic, Sustainable, solar powered and microbiome balanced.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Passion: Find your area of passion as that will get you through all the ups and downs of business.
Resilience, Being a leader or an entrepreneur takes incredible resilience on a daily short term basis and the ability to withstand pressure and overcome obstacles on a long term basis. Building a business, one has to have the ability to jump over the logs that fall in your path every day.
Mission Driven, it’s always easier if you have a sense of values and mission as you’ll gain more support from customers, family and from within.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
When I’m feeing overwhelmed I turn to my passion: Wellness! This involves running, biking, swimming laps or doing yoga for an hour every morning followed by healthful eating. Then I can start my daily Juice Beauty organic ingredients wellness skincare routine:
Morning:
stem Cellular Exfoliating Peel Spray 2x/week
Green Apple Brightening Cleanser
Stem Cellular Booster or SuperGrape Serum
Stem Cellular Moisturizer or Green Apple Lightweight Emulsion Moisturizer
Stem Cellular SPF 30 CC Cream
Stem Cellular Eye Treatment or Green Apple Brightening Eye cream
Throughout the Day: Stem Cellular SuperGrape Serum with Hyaluronic Acid.
Evening:
2x/week Green Apple Peel Full Strength mask for 5-15 min in the evenings
Stem Cellular Cleansing Oil (removes makeup)
Stem Cellular Retinol Overnight Serum or Signal Peptides Firming Serum
Stem Cellular Retinol SleepWrinkle Overnight Eye Cream
Stem Cellular Ceramide Overnight Moisturizer or Signal Peptides Face Balm
That’s my wellness routine!
Contact Info:
- Website: juicebeauty.com
- Instagram: @juicebeauty
- Facebook: @juicebeauty
- Linkedin: Juice Beauty
- Twitter: @juicebeauty
- Youtube: @juicebeauty
- Other: TikTok: @juicebeauty
Image Credits
All photos are taken internally at Juice Beauty
