In episode forty one of the Glow Journal podcast, host Gemma Watts sits down with the founder and CEO of Lano, Kirsten Carriol.

Kirsten Carriol didn’t grow up around beauty in the traditional sense, however her upbringing was instrumental in the creation of her brand. Her father, a molecular scientist and her grandparents, sheep farmers, taught Kirsten the benefits of lanolin as a child. Lanolin was their cure for just about everything. 

Passionate about beauty, Kirsten grew to travel across the globe, trying just about every beauty product she passed along the way, before returning to Australia and launching her own beauty PR company. Despite having access to the world’s best products and trialling them all, Kirsten still wasn’t satisfied with the level of hydration her existing lip balms and skincare products were delivering. 

It was on her way to the airport after her wedding that Kirsten realised the answer had, quite literally, been in front of her all along- lanolin. While the concept and name came to her almost instantly, the first incarnation of Lanolips took six years to bring to life. Given that Kirsten herself had spent much of her teens and adult life distancing herself from lanolin, she was well aware that she was going to have to work hard to change public perception of what had been viewed as a bit of an old and unfashionable ingredient. The key? Education, something Kirsten dedicated another five years to. Five years, sitting down, one-on-one with just about every beauty editor in the world. 

Kirsten succeeded, thanks to persistence, passion, and a line of products that genuinely do what they say they will do. Lano, now composed of a line of face and body products beyond the original Lanolips, is useful, no-nonsense, and stocked in all of the world’s biggest beauty retailers.

I visited Kirsten at her home in Sydney to discuss why some of the world’s best-selling lip products aren’t actually helping your lips at all, her favourite unconventional uses for Lano’s cult 101 Ointment, and how the world of digital means that public opinion in the beauty space has a voice independent of traditional press. 

You can read this interview now at: glowjournal.com/interview-lanolips-founder-kirsten-carriol

Follow Lano on Instagram at @lanolips

Find out more about Lano at https://lanolips.com/

Stay up to date with Gemma on Instagram at @gemkwatts and @glow.journal, or get in touch at [email protected]

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