Haeckels
About /
Haeckels is a natural fragrance and skin care brand.
Our skin, hair and body products are a work of love; a love of natural ingredients, a love of design and quality but ultimately a love of the heritage of coastal living. All our hand crafted products are formulated in our cliff top Lab in Margate where we only use and distill locally growing botanicals that offer the very best anti-oxidant properties. We hold one of only two licenses in England to harvest seaweed from the English coast, we take great pride in our license and see it as a responsibility to care for the coastline, to clean it and to monitor it just like any farmer in the world. Margate’s coast is genuinely unique: built on a giant 14 mile long Jurassic chalk reef which makes up 20% of the UK chalk reefs which means its able to nourish families of seaweed not found anywhere else in the world. Hand harvested Seaweed forms the base ingredient of all our skin care range based on the tradition of Thalassotherapy derived from the Greek word meaning ‘sea’ or ‘ocean’. Thalassotherapy treatments use ocean water, seaweed, ocean mud and marine minerals to treat ailments and enable the body to replenish, remineralise and revitalise to enhance good health for body and mind. All our products are tested on ourselves, no animals, so every product we create we love and know works brilliantly, we use them everyday as each product is designed to make a complete daily skin care routine. Margate and its surrounding areas are places of genuine raw natural beauty, we encourage you to explore, get out there, take a walk, go for a swim and if you don’t live here take the coastlines natural goodness away with you in a Haeckels bottle!
History /
Haeckels was founded in 2012 by film maker, volunteer beach warden and coastal enthusiast Dom bridges. Disillusioned by the production ethos of many larger skin care companies Dom wanted to create simple hand crafted products that showcased the surrounding coasts natural ingredients in the hope that the products themselves would then promote Margates heritage of healthy coastal living. When Haeckels was just starting out Dom would collect seaweed and local botanicals along the Margate coast and bring them bring back to his family kitchen to experiment. Dom’s wife Jo soon said it was time to get a proper Lab and turn a passion into a business as every saucepan in the kitchen was starting to smell like a skin care product. Taking his wifes advice he acquired the Lab on Cliff Terrace in 2013 where more product formulas were developed to complete the range. The company has now grown; taking on members of staff whilst still playing an active part in the local community by organising beach cleans and taking part in marine conseravtion surveys. As Haeckels develops over the coming years the heart of the company will always remain the same as it concentrates on craft first in the hope that the products themselves will remind and educate customers of the natural wealth of Margates coastline.
