Tell us your company story.

bathintentions is an artisan bath and body company that handcrafts self-care products from earth-sourced ingredients with a little bling to stimulate your senses. Our story is rooted in love, resiliency and the power of community.

bathintentions is a family-owned company that came to life during the most challenging of times and thanks to the love and support of our family, friends, staff, and community. Our girl, Alaya, was known for her determination, resiliency, boundless energy, and a wicked set of eyebrows. She was a creative genius and co-founder and brought together her love of life and fierce determination to not only help build a business she loved but also battle and be treated for cancer over six times. Alaya left this earth and her spirit went home in September 2018. Dinah, mom, and co-founder, rebelled against the difficult circumstances with bold, ingenious ideas to ensure the fruition of the family’s vision. We believe that business and life, is about caring and strong relationships through good and bad times. With that, we carry on our programs, product innovation and life, by honouring Alaya’s spirit at the core of everything.

bathintentions thrives to bring innovation to self-care bath products. We aim to mainstream handcrafted products making it easier for customers to access quality.

Tell us about why you came to the Centre for Natural Products and Medical Cannabis.

Customer experience is at the centre of all we do. bathintentions wants to offer the best relaxation experience to its customers so we approached the CNPMC to support us in reformulating our flagship shower steamers to prolong the length of each disk. Innovating this market will enable our small company to compete not only Nationally, but also on the International market.

Tell us about your experience.

bathintentions has benefitted from invaluable expertise from the CNPMC. The team has introduced ingredients that can truly impact the quality of the product and has offered their knowledge and expertise to support us. But more importantly, they have also given us confidence to initiate contributing to the research and development process.

Communication has been fluid and has shaped the project as we have progressed towards the perfect product. We have learned so much about bringing a product to market; we have discussed the many challenges faced for a small company scaling up with limited resources and felt that the team is truly available for us.

Tell us about the results.

Our first project completed with the CNPMC increased the duration of the shower steamers to expand to more than one use, including the manufacture of a new modified release and new formulation with disintegration/dissolution characteristics to last for multiple shower applications.

The current project involves further development of the multi-use shower steamer to optimize size, friability and cost of ingredients. The target is to achieve the same aromatic quality in a formulation that is not breakable after drying and packaging.

To learn more about bathintentions’ products, visit their website.

Tell us your company story.

My name is Shamsa and together with my sister Kaltum, we are the co-founders of Afiya Beauty. At Afiya, we are committed to using new technology and conscious manufacturing practices to develop plant extracts from recovered waste. Our goal is to be a leader in this field, developing high-performance inclusive skincare products sustainably produced with low environmental impact.

Tell us about why you came to the Centre for Natural Products and Medical Cannabis.

Upcycling is the process of transforming by-products, waste materials or discarded objects into new materials or products. Food and beverage waste represent the main source of materials that can be upcycled into beauty products since these materials contain food grade ingredients with rich properties for the skin. Currently, the upcycled cosmetics market is mainly represented by scrubs, oils and soaps however; our company is researching how to use upcycled ingredients to make sophisticated serums, rich in vitamins and antioxidants that solve our customers most pressing skincare concerns.

We were referred by GreenCentre Canada to the Centre for Natural Products and Medical Cannabis to help us incorporate using organic waste materials into our formulations. Research performed at Loyalist validated that fresh produce has vast amounts of enzymes, vitamins and active ingredients that can be extracted and converted into high- performance extracts that can be used in cosmetics.

Our goal is to use these high-performance natural extracts from food waste to create a unique and effective product that addresses a common skin concern in a safe, non-toxic and environmentally friendly way. We want to rely less on foreign ingredients and to be able to sustainably create an ecosystem that is closer to home.

Tell us about your experience.

Working with the team at Loyalist has been such a great experience for our start -up. We found it really easy to communicate our vision and the team was instrumental at helping bring our innovative product to market. We would highly recommend the CNPMC to any start-up/SME looking to develop, scale up and commercialize their ideas with the added bonus of transforming the results of research into high-quality products. We are super happy with the results of our formulations and look forward to working on more product lines in the future.

Tell us about the results.

The project helped Afiya to research and develop a new technology that can be integrated within our products and supports our mission of creating environmentally and socially sustainable skincare products. This helps the growth of the organization by providing value that differentiates our business and maintains our competitiveness within the clean beauty space.

To learn more about Afiya Beauty’s products, visit their website.