Formulating Bioavailable Liquid Marine Collagen Ft. Fat Mermaid

0:00Hey guys, welcome back to Skin Anarchy. Today's episode is going to be so special because I'm hosting a brand that I have absolutely fallen in love with. I think when it comes to the supplement world, I am extremely picky with what I choose for myself as a consumer. And so I've really fallen in love with this brand. And I think a lot of you, if you have tried it, relate. But without further ado, I want to introduce you guys to the founder of Fat Mermaid, Teresa Palvukas. Welcome, Teresa. I'm so excited to host you. Hi, Ekta. Nice to meet you. Glad to be with you. I'm excited to host you, Teresa, because I've literally been using Fat Mermaid now for, I think, more than a month.

0:36and I've absolutely fallen in love with what you've created. And I can't wait to learn more about you, if you don't mind walking us down memory lane. And you have such a phenomenal background and it's so impressive the work you've done in the beauty industry with over 25 years of experience. So walk us down memory lane. How did you get involved with wanting to create your own thing? So nice, thank you. All right, I won't spend too much time in my history because I could just go back quite a bit, but I started in advertising working on the L 'Oreal account, which got me really into beauty and just the whole beauty space.

1:09And other than about one year in my career, I never left beauty. So beauty is my thing. I love it. I think it's so fun in developing products that make people feel better. So I started in advertising, but the big chunks of my career were really a big strategic companies like L 'Oreal and Estee Lauder. And that's where I learned how to do beauty. I still say, what would L 'Oreal do in certain situations? because they really created the playbook as did Lauder. So at L 'Oreal, I was working on Maybelline and I ran the global eye business. So that was Great Lash, Pink and Green Mascara, liners, shadows, brow.

1:46That was for a few years. So that was literally working with the lab, coming up with all the new products and then flying around to all the markets in the world and saying, this is what we're launching. Here's how it works. So working hand in hand with our own chemist was what really lit me up. So then the same for Lauder. I actually, I went over there and I was working in the beauty bank division, which was, I don't know if you remember, we were building out the Kohl's beauty department. And I started with internet, but then I ended up working on brands. I worked on a brand called Flirt and a brand called American Beauty, which was very traditional color lines.

2:20And they were beautiful. And the formulas were amazing. Again, working hand in hand with the Lauder chemists. Then I went into fragrance for almost 10 years. So it was luxury fragrance. So marketing and distribution and then developing. And I developed the Judith Lieber fragrance and Lily Pulitzer collection really was one of my favorites. And then I worked with the Anique Goutal brand, a luxury small line out of Paris with a really core specialty distribution. And that was amazing. Again, working with the fragrance developer who was Camille Goutal, Anique's daughter. So I love working with the core.

2:56And then after that, I went into indie beauty and that's been really almost 10 years. And this has been sort of a love affair, working with very small brands and trying to make their dreams happen. So I help very small brands scale. And when I say small, a founder will come to me and say, I have an idea and I have a trademark and that's it. So they have no product, no nothing, but this is the space they want to occupy. So I love doing that and just building out what does this look like? What is this positioning, the brand strategy down to hiring the contract manufacturer, coming up with the new products, the ingredients, writing the brief, doing pricing, then getting distribution.

3:39So all the way, I really love doing that. So the way I started with Fat Mermaid is I did that basically for myself. I was working on an organic skincare line, which was just absolutely beautiful formulas. We had a nice little business and we wanted to get into pinctures, which as you may know, they look like little serum bottles, little dropper bottles. And they're an intense, potent supplement that you put under your tongue and let it sort of absorb into your body. And it was a liquid form. And I'm like, this is a very efficient way to get your supplements versus popping all the pills and the capsules and pouring all the powders.

4:20And at the time I've been taking a brand, which I still very much like called Vital Proteins. They're absolutely huge in the market. Anyone who knows collagen will know them. And I've been taking that for years and I, hair was getting nails thicker and stronger and skin was glowy. And I'm like, why can't this be easier? Why can't I solve my own pain point here? So I put my expertise with product development and my own personal pain point up. I like supplements and the benefits, but I want the experience to be easier, better, more fun and the whole thing. So I put those two together and I just started researching the heck out of it.

5:01For about a year and a half, I read PubMed, I read clinical trials, I read very basic. What is collagen? What does it do for you? And then I got into what is a better kind of Is bovine the best kind? Is plant-based? Is marine? And then I just were putting the pieces together of what has become Fat Mermaid. No, this is so fascinating. I love that. I love how much experience you're coming into that with, because I kid you not, when it comes to, when I started the interview, I said this, I'm very picky with supplements because oftentimes my experience as a consumer has been that I could never get behind a lot of the supplements that went viral because I never felt like the people behind them did the homework, if that makes sense.

5:48And so that was for me as a consumer, that was the differentiating factor. So when you're telling me you've seen this world inside out, you've done that homework, I'm just like, it makes sense because I used your product. And then I'm seeing how much I love it. I'm seeing how well it fits into my routine. And it's like, it all cohesively makes sense. And I feel like it's so beautiful to see that entrepreneurship come to life. I love seeing that as a consumer. So huge fan of that. That's so nice. Thank you so much. You know, I want to talk about the name. I love the name Fat Mermaid. Where did you come up with the name?

6:21I'm so glad you like it because it's supposed to be fun and that's where it came from. So just looking at the category, beauty is so vast and skincare has traditionally been so serious. And the more clinical you were, you know, more seriously you were taking and then you were perceived better benefits, right? But then in recent years, there've been some fun brands that have introduced Drunk Elephant. They took clinical skincare and they added poppy color, but they had very serious ingredients, but a fun name. And there's just a lot of fun and beauty. So I wanted to apply that because I think the best combination is fun, enticing, interesting, colorful.

7:06You've got my attention with your packaging and your name. And then you hit them with the clinicals and you hit them with a really serious, highly efficacious formula. So because the name was so fun, this has to be very serious ingredients. But as it relates to how I came up with the name specifically, with my deep dive research in collagen and comparing bovine, which is from a cow plant-based botanical, and then marine collagen, as it turns out, marine collagen is the most efficacious because it's more bioavailable and I can get into that in a second. So I had decided on a marine collagen. This is going to be a marine collagen based formula and it's going to be liquid, which is also more bioavailable.

7:47So with that, I thought I want to come up with a fun name. What lives in the sea? What's marine based? What's beautiful? And then it's like, is it fish? Is it sardine? What are these things? Is it related to shells? Is it plant life? and then I'm like well mermaids live in the ocean and the image of a mermaid came up and she had all the look and feel that the benefits of product would provide long gorgeous flowy hair long lashes and thick nails and she would be robust and big and healthy this is not like skinny tiny little mermaid this is a mermaid that lives in the ocean that has a lifetime supply of collagen because there are fish skins all around her.

8:29So I was thinking that that would be really fun and funny if she looked big and robust and she was a fat mermaid. I love that. Fat hair, fat lashes, thick nails, glowy skin and luxuous and just beaming with health. That was the idea behind the fat mermaid. And so that's really neat. I like that a lot. I can definitely see that. And that's so cool because the ocean, it's such a rich source of nutrients and it just makes so much sense when you explain it. I love it. I love the messaging of it so much. Thank you. Let's talk about, you said you wanted to dive into this. Let's talk about the bioavailability aspect because that is a big point that you guys make, right?

9:10In your messaging to consumers that it's a more bioavailable form of collagen. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Absolutely. It's such an important word that I put it in the name. It's Fat Mermaid Bioavailable Liquid Marine Collagen. And at first, I'm like, gosh, that's a really long name. And then no, it is really important. It's a very important word because it's the differentiator between liquid and powder and marine and bovine and plant. And so I'm like, this descriptor is critical and needs to be talked about. So I'm doing all of my research. So liquid and marine are more bioavailable than powder and bovine.

9:50and here's why. And again, this is all of the research that I've conducted over a couple years and clarifying point here. I am not a doctor. I'm not a scientist, but I am a long time beauty developer and I love my research and I will not launch something unless it is very well research. And I have the facts to communicate so that I just want that to be said right now. And by the way, compliance and regulatory is critical in every product that I develop. And I've been working with some of the best regulatory people in the business for years and I trust them implicitly. So they validate everything I do.

10:26So bioavailable. So liquid versus powder, it's pretty straightforward. Liquid is already in blood form there. It's liquid to liquid. So it does not have to be broken down the way a powder does. When you, let's start with powder. when you put two, three scoops of a powdered collagen in your coffee, in your water, you have to stir it up. It has to dissolve. It does not dissolve all of the way. And sometimes you're drinking sort of a sediment tasting powdery thing and get it in there because beauty can be pain, although it doesn't have to. It hits your stomach and you're like, okay, I'm going to look better, but my stomach's upset.

11:06This doesn't feel right. That is because powder is not as bioavailable. The enzymes in your stomach cannot break all of it down. And so you're not using all of it. You're using actually less than half of it. Whereas liquid, it's like drinking water. Liquid is already in liquid form. So again, you ingest it and it goes through the digestive tract and out into your bloodstream. And it's like sliding through on a water slide because it's water going into liquid. So it absorbs, it's almost completely bioavailable. So liquid is more bioavailable than powder. Then as it relates to marine versus bovine, it is almost twice as bioavailable because marine collagen peptides have a lower molecular weight than bovine collagen peptides.

11:58They simply can be broken down into tinier particles and pieces and peptides and more easily absorbed into the digestive tract and into the bloodstream and out to the places where you need it the most. And so further to that, I speak to a little bit about types of collagen. Absolutely. Please do. So now that we know that liquid and marine are more bioavailable than powder and bovine, there's the matter of what type of collagen, there's many types of collagen. What's the best type of collagen for what I'm looking for? So because Fat Mermaid is, in essence, it's a beauty product. This is for hair, skin, and nails, lashes, eyebrows.

12:41It's very much for that, not so much joint support, although it does also help joint support, but secondarily. So if you want thicker hair, thicker lashes and brows, glow your skin with fewer lines and wrinkles and nice, strong nails. The primary collagen that is found in all of those things is type one. So you need to take type one collagen to replace lost type one collagen. And marine collagen is primarily type one. So when you ingest marine, it again gets into your system bloodstream and it goes out to where you are deficient in type one. So it's type one to type one. And that's a real critical factor when you're deciding which kind to take.

13:27Right. So that's why this position as a beauty product, because lashes, bras, hair, skin, nails, all type one. Yeah, that's actually I'm so glad you brought that up because no one talks about type one and type three and all these different. And there's such a fundamental role that they play in the human body. And that's something that you never hear about. And it's really interesting to me because of what you said, because when you said liquid to liquid, it's very cohesive. And I think there's a lot of misunderstanding in the supplement world about this. And it's a point that I'm so glad you brought up where people think that it doesn't matter how your supplement comes.

14:05As long as it's like now people have those vegan capsules and stuff, that kind of thing. And it's like the less point is that you've already made it. But just to reiterate, the less steps you give your body in the digestion process, the more likely your body is going to say, I'm going to take this in and use it. They're not flooding it with noise that way. You keep putting things in that powder form and you put it in a capsule. It's like your body eventually is going to be like, I did my breaking down stuff. Now I'm done. You know what I mean? And it's just going to get rid of it. So it's almost like your body has like threshold limit of how much it's willing to put up with before it says, I've decided this is waste.

14:42You know what I mean? And then it gets rid of it. And so I think that is such a critical point in your explanation because it would supplements. We as consumers don't think about that. We're not sitting there scrutinizing, oh, we need to make sure that the human body is going to want this. And it's going to want to actually process it instead of putting all its energy into breaking down whatever it's coming in, the packaging form. So that's absolutely huge. And I love what you said. I think bioavailability is the number one component we should be thinking about, honestly, when it comes to anything ingestible.

15:13Because if it's not bioavailable, people talk a lot right now about peptides. And there's a lot of buzz, I think, in the industry in general about peptides right now. But the big thing about peptides is what you said. If you can get them into your system and absorbed, then they will go to where they need to go and do their job. But until then, it's not going to work. It's not going to actually do anything. So I'm a huge believer in that. I think that for me, the proof has been in the pudding, though, with Fat Mermaid. And I want you to speak to this a little bit. Because for me, the biggest pain point with supplements was always, especially collagen, was I could never easily incorporate it into my life.

15:47It was always like, for example, with Fat Mermaid, I can put it into my smoothie and I don't taste it. It doesn't have a flavor. So I don't feel like making a bunch of extra stuff. And I think psychologically that really matters, right, from the consumer perspective. Why did you decide to make it an unflavored product? What was that whole decision process for you? I'm so glad you asked that because it was another pain point for me. I have been supplement stacking. You probably know that term for years, right? I take the creatine, I take the collagen, I take magnesium, and then I take some more magnesium at night and all of that.

16:22And these supplements, and if you've ever walked into a retailer that sells lots of vitamins and supplements, there's a smell, there's this sort of functional ingredient smell, sort of an herbal kind of thing. And you're like, it's not completely palatable. So it was another issue I wanted to address, which is like, this should be, beauty should be fun. It shouldn't be a pain. I should be able to take this and feel good about it and actually look forward to it rather than, oh my gosh, I have to take my five supplements today and I have to wash them down with water because there are these big chunky horse pills.

16:57This should be an easy experience and it should taste good. So we had spent about a year and a half working with a chemist on the flavor. And the objective was to create something that was unflavored for two reasons. One, so you can combine it with anything. You can add it to water. You can add it to your coffee, your smoothie. You can pour it into your yogurt. You can put it into a cocktail, a mocktail, anything, and it wouldn't disrupt the enjoyment that you get from drinking that thing. So that's one way to use it. And the other way to use it is drink it like a shot. And why can't I do a little shot of something that has maybe a light sweet taste, but doesn't have that very fake, heavy mango, raspberry, blueberry, whatever heavy sort of fake fruit flavor on there.

17:48And it doesn't have to have that to make it taste good. And then also those flavors will disrupt your coffee. People love their coffee and you don't want to have raspberry in your coffee. So I wanted it to be highly versatile. So the customer can decide how she wants to take it. She can drink it like a shot. That's how I do it. I pour it into the dosing cup that we put right on the bottle, one ounce. It's cold. I drink it like a shot, put it down, rinse back on the bottle, or I pour it right into my yogurt. I peel the top off, pour it in, stir it up and eat the whole thing. And all I taste is the yogurt.

18:26So the unflavored piece was important for versatility and to make it just easier and more pleasant to take. And that really combines with the usability of the dosing cup that is provided. And there are very few collagens that have a dosing cup. And we really had to work with regulatory to make sure that we could include that on the top, because I just wanted the customer experience to be super easy, super fun, and not a pain. I think you really nailed it though you really nailed because I love the dosing cup I was gonna say yeah I really love it no I think what's interesting for me is that I think for people who are very health conscious and you brought up supplement stacking and that's why I say this when you're really health conscious you start thinking about what can I pair with my supplements and I think for me I've been very critical about for example co-factors that should go with collagen right because collagen needs certain cofactors to reform and just to support it and so with me I love putting it in my smoothie because I can add my vitamin c in there which is a major factor as in the formation of collagen you can put zinc in there you can put whatever you need in there with it so when you're taking it feels like you've made your own cocktail that is actually a blend of what you will need to make sure that you get the most out of this and I think that flexibility allows for you know a better obviously user experience, but then also more so on the science side, it allows for you to actually get the full benefits of the supplement.

19:54At the end of the day, I think that also falls on the brands, right? To have that option there for consumers, because a lot of us, we want that flexibility. I don't want to only take a pill and then I can't pair it with my favorite vitamin C or my whatever I'm adding in that I need on top of antioxidants or whatever it might be. So I think that that really is a deal breaker maker or deal breaker, right. For, for supplements for me personally. No, I, I totally agree. And it, it really was created this way for consumers to just take it how they want to just that versatility was so important to me as a customer.

20:31And I'm like, this should be easy and fun and not a pain. And just like a quick little anecdote when I used to take my powdered collagen, which I really took religiously, because as I mentioned, I saw the benefits, but first it was recommended one scoop in your coffee. Then it went up to recommended two scoops. Then it was up to three scoops. And now they're recommending four on some of the canisters. And that's, first of all, 20 grams of collagen, which according to clinical studies that I've read, your body cannot absorb more than 10 in a day. You're wasting. You're wasting a lot of things. You're wasting collagen in your coffee.

21:07You're disrupting the enjoyment of your coffee. You're wasting money because you're using twice as much as your body can even absorb. So it should just be quicker and easier, which is again, why the liquid and the dosing cup, but I would put it into my coffee and I was sort of stuck with this cup of coffee and I must drink this entire thing, or I will not get all of this collagen that I just paid for. So I'm sitting there waiting to finish, but you can't drink half of it because I've invested money in this cup of coffee with my collagen. So I want it to be quick and easy, fun, and let's go. I love it.

21:43I think the concept really resonates. It's really, it hits so many pain points, honestly, in the supplement world. Now I want to talk a little bit about this in terms of what were some of the, I guess, more of the scientific details that went into the, you know, creating this product in terms of validating it, clinical data or the feedback that you utilize. Tell us a little bit more about that. I will. Yes. So we had to look, I'm going to say far and wide for the right manufacturer and the right chemist. You have to have chemistry with your chemist and you have to be aligned in terms of how efficacious you want the product to be.

22:19And we had worked with one lab before the one we ended up with, and they were a very legit lab and they were just dipping their toe into wellness. and the supplement space. And so we were a little bit of a test for them. And we thought, oh gosh, is this going to work? And we tried it and it wasn't quite there. And they also didn't have a third party testing that was really important to me in terms of heavy metals, toxicity, and all of the very basic regulatory testing that you have to go to even for a skincare product, like RIPT, I'm sure you're very familiar with. There are just certain tests that have to be conducted.

22:57And when you're dealing with an ingestible, heavy metals and toxicity is critical because people are, they're eating this. I went from topical to ingestible, and that was a whole new set of regulatory. And I really dove deep and made sure that we worked with a GMP certified facility. I wanted certified non-GMO ingredients and an FDA inspected facility, which most, as I've learned are not yet. So you can say we, for MoCRA for, for topicals, you have to submit through MoCRA and a lot of brands are claiming FDA certified or whatever, but to have an FDA inspected facility where they come in and they check everything that's going on, your whole production line, your tooling, your kettles and every, the entire process, the cleanliness, and then to give it that stamp of approval from the FDA is a really big deal.

23:57So we only wanted to work with facilities like that. And that's who we're working with. And then all of the third party testing was key, as I mentioned. So we evaluated many submissions over about a year and a half. And then there, there were base formulas that exist, although we have a custom formula because we are the only unflavored formula right now out there. And they put it through the rigors. So again, FDA, toxicity, heavy metal, trace anything in there. So they tested it a few times because we have a new formula and we passed on everything. And I have my own regulatory consultant who reviewed all of the ingredient list and everything to make sure that it was compliant for the US market, but it is globally as well.

24:42And that's how we launched. There is vitamin C as well in the formula and hyaluronic acid. And as you mentioned, vitamin C, that is the collagen synthesizer so when you see a collagen without vitamin c you are not getting the most out of your collagen i'm glad you said that you know that's huge actually the vitamin c that's really cool though that you went to great lengths from the very beginning though that means a lot i think for consumers you don't i think the big thing that happens and i've seen this a lot supplement companies that you don't get transparency so half the time you're just like blind buying i I can't tell you how many times I've been in an aisle and I've just been like, you figure out I need a supplement and whatever that might be.

25:22And then you're standing in the aisle and you're trying to figure all this stuff out. Where was this made? How did you make this? That's why I am asking you all this so that our listeners can learn because that happens. The real process we go through where we're like, I don't know any of this stuff. If you're used to reading skincare, color cosmetics, hair care labels, your supplement label is going to look really different. It's going to have all sorts of new things on it, like an amino acid profile. And that's another item that I just insisted we put in our artwork is the amino acid profile, because other collagens don't include it, which makes me wonder, why are you not listing all of the amino acids in your collagen?

26:05Those are all, they provide added benefits as you. So let's list it. Let's get serious. That's what I was saying. We want to be really clinical. We want to be taken very seriously, even though we have a fun name, because we want to have every box checked in that way. And in terms of transparency, we do say where the fish that we're using is a question we get a lot. It's like, what kind of fish are you using? And some of the misperceptions, which is completely understandable, is you think that marine collagen, that the peptides are coming from the fish flesh. You're killing fish and you're chopping up the fish flesh and that's what becomes the collagen peptides.

26:45That is not the case. And this is why marine collagen is actually more sustainable because we're using the parts of the fish that would otherwise be discarded. We're actually using the fish skin or the fish scales, which are dense in collagen. So we're using sort of what's left, which is why it's sustainable. And then we do source our fish from certified fisheries, open water farms in European waters. So we're not taking from the wildlife and the ocean floor. We're taking from fish that have been created to, you know, for this reason. And we take the fish skins and they're, they're hydrolyzed.