OLAMIC Thinks Body Care Deserves Better

The next frontier of skincare? Your body.

If you look at your shelf of facial skincare, it's probably filled with products powered by clinically backed actives. Retinol. Vitamin C. Peptides. Growth factors. Acids…Delivery systems designed to get those ingredients deeper into your skin.

But what about your body cream? 

For most on the market, it stops at hydration and maybe contains one of the actives I listed above. But the majority read something like this: "cashmere vanilla," "24-hour hydration,” you get my point. 

And don't get me wrong, body care has definitely come a long way over the last few years. More brands ARE bringing facial-grade technology below the neck. But compared to skincare? It still feels like there's a lot more room to push the category forward.

That thought kept popping into my head while talking with the founder of OLAMIC, Caitlin, who created the Retin-Algae Body Butter after spending more than a decade in private equity and wanting to pursue something she was more inspired by. 

“I felt my creativity becoming completely smothered. During COVID, I spent a lot of time reflecting on what truly made me happy and realized I needed to challenge myself in a completely different way," Caitlin shared with me. 

And creating a brand wasn’t where she started at all. As she approached 40, Caitlin found herself paying closer attention to longevity and looking at her beauty routine through a different lens. And she noticed that somewhere between our necks and our ankles, expectations in formulations tend to drop.

"I wanted a body moisturizer that delivered the same level of performance as the products I used on my face. A truly age-defying body treatment formulated with active ingredients at levels rarely seen in body care. When I couldn't find it, I decided to create it myself,” Caitlin shared with me. 

After nearly a year of searching for the right lab and receiving samples that either didn't meet her ingredient standards or weren't realistic for an emerging founder, she connected with product developer Alyssa Ceto. Together, they went through roughly 50 iterations (!!!!) of the formula, refining everything from texture and dry-down time to performance across climates and the overall sensorial experience.

Then came another decision that, in my opinion, says a lot about the brand.

When Caitlin insisted on including her patented actives at their clinically tested levels, her lab immediately questioned the cost.

"I kept saying I didn't really have one. My focus wasn't pricing strategy; it was performance. I didn't want to create something that fit neatly into a market category—I wanted to create something that worked."

As someone who’s spent years working in beauty, I find her answer rare and very refreshing. 

And after spending some time testing OLAMIC's Body Butter, I’m also super impressed. The texture is rich and incredibly luxurious without feeling heavy, the jar looks beautiful sitting on a bathroom counter, and I've started looking forward to applying it after a shower while my skin is still slightly damp. It feels like a full-body skin treat. 

Instead of asking consumers to lower their expectations the second they reach for a body cream, brands like OLAMIC are raising the bar for what body care can look like in the first place.

"If you're not aging, you're not living.” Caitlin reminds us. 

“The term 'anti-aging' has always felt outdated. Beauty is not defined by age. I'm drawn to rich, intentional formulations that ask you to slow down and be present while honoring both efficacy and ritual," she shares. 

That philosophy is woven into the brand's name, too. OLAMIC comes from an ancient language root meaning an age, a lifetime, or an extended period of time, a reminder that beauty isn't something we're racing to preserve, but something we build over time.

For a brand that's only been around for a year and currently has a single hero product, it's an ambitious point of view. But honestly? I think that's part of what makes it so intriguing.