Jenny Berich Just months after selling their shares in Skinstitut, Fiona Tuck and David Stanesby are back in the salon and spa market with a range of wholefood powders to support “healthy ageing”.
Fiona Tuck, who was appointed managing director of Skinstitut in 2008 one year after its launch, and Stanesby, who later joined the company as CFO and operations manager, sold their shares to other investors earlier this year to “step into the nutrition and wellness space focussing on inner health”.
They officially launched Vita-Sol this week.
The company’s launch range features three products:
Infinity Wholefood Powder – cell support for healthy ageing:
Ingredients include Rosemary, NZ grape seed, green tea, organic beetroot, vitamin C and Sacha Inchi.
Flexibility Wholefood Powder – support for healthy joints, bones, hair, skin and nails: Ingredients include organic sprout blend, magnesium, calcium, vitamin C, organic turmeric, organic masala chai blend and vitamin D2.
Purity Wholefood Powder – healthy liver & gut support:
Ingredients include organic greens blend, dandelion and milk thistle, organic Jerusalem artichoke and vitamin C.
Tuck, a nutritional medicine practitioner and a qualified skin therapist with more than 25 years of experience, first began intensively researching nutritional supplements after her mother was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago and given just months to live.
Tuck immediately began looking for “the best possible products” to help her mother “have the best quality of life possible” – today her mother still has cancer but is alive.
“There were very few products on the market that I trusted 100 percent and because my mother was ill I wanted to provide the best quality product that I could be 100 percent confident in,” she says.
“Working in manufacturing you get to know what happens behind the scenes – eg, cheap ingredients and poor quality extraction methods etc. which can result in an inactive product that costs a fortune but does not do very much.
“I also wanted to know that I can be 100 percent confident in the products that I am taking.”
Vita-Sol has been launched online and the wholefood powders are available via several health stores as well but Tuck is determined to see it on salon and spa shelves too.
“I am passionate about the fact the good skin starts from within and that many skin conditions can be traced back to nutritional deficiencies,” she says.
“Treating skin just from the outside makes no sense to me. Skincare needs to be a holistic integrated approach to be able to truly see long lasting visible results.”
She stresses that the Vita-Sol powders are “concentrated wholefoods” and are therefore “safe to recommend to all clients.
“They are classified as foods so there is no issue with therapists prescribing therapeutic supplements if they are not qualified in nutrition,” she says.
“Supplements such as zinc, iron and even fish oil can interact and be contra-indicated to some people, so we wanted to develop safe formulas that are effective without the risk for the client and the therapist.”
The couple plan to launch “more unique and exciting products” into the Vita-Sol range next year but are adamant that they have no plans to launch and distribute another skincare range.
“Skinstitut is so highly effective there is no need,” says Tuck.
For more information visit www.vita-sol.com
