Tuttofare co-founders on the emerging beef-tallow skincare market

Beef tallow is the latest beauty trend to take over TikTok’s influential ‘for you page’ and Tuttofare’s ‘Tallow Balm’ has quickly emerged as the holy grail. 

But there’s more to Tuttofare’s success than ‘right place, right time’. Founded in 2022, the Australian-made and owned business is the country’s first professionally formulated tallow-based skincare brand.

Its best marketing tool to date is word-of-mouth as customers share the brand’s range of tallow-based products – which are the first of their kind to be professionally formulated in a GMP-certified skincare manufacturing facility.

Inside Retail spoke to Tuttofare’s co-founders, Laura Daquino and Clive Wright, to understand what it means to pioneer an emerging beauty category and how they approach educating consumers on a new product line.

Inside Retail: How did you first discover tallow-based skincare and what led you to launch your brand Tuttofare?

Laura Daquino: We struggled to find non-toxic products that actually worked. Clive battled eczema for many years and I’m a former skincare junkie who tried everything to support my sensitive, yet acne-prone, skin.

Skin that is sensitive yet acne-prone can be really difficult to treat with regular skincare, which often contains synthetic fragrance, hormone disruptors and harsh, active ingredients. It will often set you on a vicious cycle where treating one inflames the other and vice versa.

I tried conventional skin treatments and all the cult products, and even if I found short-term relief, my skin was always left worse and more sensitised over time as I kept destroying my skin barrier.

As a time-poor twenty-something working in the corporate world, I was searching for products that both supported my skin and simplified my routine so I could be out the door in 10 minutes or less.

As you mature, you start taking stock of your life and your everyday routines. I’m a former journalist and I’ve always been someone who loves digging deeper. We started looking more and more into what we were consuming as a household and that included what exactly we were using on our skin. 

It was frustrating that we couldn’t find well-priced, non-toxic products that actually worked. This led us to think, what hadn’t we tried? As is often the way, the solution was right under our nose. We were already using beef tallow for cooking. We then discovered its potential for skincare including its history as a forgotten ingredient. 

IR: What have been some of the biggest challenges in developing your range of tallow-based products?

Clive Wright: It’s extremely difficult to get tallow-based skincare right.

It’s so important to create balanced formulas that tick all the boxes for what customers need but also want in clean skincare. This includes skin feel, scent and effectiveness of the product. 

Dating back to Roman times, tallow is the original non-toxic skincare ingredient and it has been used for centuries. Before the introduction of petrochemicals, our ancestors took a sustainable approach to natural resources. 

Tallow was also a foundation ingredient in cosmetics and personal care products, especially soaps, for many decades, but this wasn’t widely known. In skincare, it declined in popularity towards the end of the 20th century, along with other natural ingredients, as manufacturers started using lower-cost, synthetic ingredients. 

But when it comes to tallow-based skincare, it is essentially a new subcategory in natural skincare. Tallow skincare hadn’t really been done here in Australia at any scale previously.

Customer preferences for this type of product were unknown, so there were two key challenges to solve. This included managing a sustainable supply chain using the highest quality ingredients and delivering a natural, multi-purpose product that is designed to be used on the face and body.

Naturally, customers also want a product that smells and feels great on the skin. From our standpoint, non-toxic was a non-negotiable. And as many of us choosing natural skincare are on the more sensitive side, it was important to be as minimal as possible with the ingredients we used.

IR: Why is it important for Tuttofare to produce its products in a GMP-certified skincare facility?

LD: Our products are the first of their kind to be professionally formulated in a GMP-certified skincare manufacturing facility here in Australia. Good manufacturing practice certification covers all aspects of the production process to ensure best practice for quality, safety and efficacy. We are passionate about upholding the highest standards for sourcing ingredients and manufacturing our products.

One of the key reasons that tallow works so well is that it’s rich in vitamins and packed with fatty acids, especially compared to many other natural ingredients. The specific combination of naturally occurring fatty acids, along with their anti-inflammatory properties, is ideal for dry skin. So many of our customers have discovered our Tallow Balm as a last resort to help manage eczema, rosacea, psoriasis and extreme dryness. Tallow itself has incredible skin-softening properties and essentially cocoons the skin to help speed up regeneration.

While most of our customers use Tallow Balm daily as part of their facial skincare routine, others will use it as a salve in areas all over their body that need extra special attention.

That makes it all the more important to take a highly specific approach to formulating tallow skincare to retain its nutrient density. Not all tallow skincare is created equal. 

While tallow is the hero of our Tallow Balm, we also take care in formulating with other powerful, natural ingredients that offer a different set of benefits to deliver a balanced, non-comedogenic skincare product. 

IR: Because tallow-based skincare is such a new product category, how has Tuttofare approached educating and marketing to consumers?

CW: Some people have incorrect assumptions about what is sustainable to no fault of their own. Other times, there can be a view that if a product contains an animal-based ingredient then it isn’t sustainable, which isn’t true in our case. 

Tallow, when sourced responsibly, is a sustainable by-product of the agricultural industry. It is often unfairly treated as a waste product, or at best, shipped overseas from Australia.

We believe that such a powerful, natural resource needn’t be shipped offshore and it definitely shouldn’t be discarded. 

We take what would otherwise be a by-product and keep it here in Australia, upcycling into natural, Australian-made skincare that works wonders. Not only does it work wonders, the feedback from many of our customers has been that it is the best product they have ever used on their skin and they won’t go back to using regular moisturiser again. 

As tallow skincare was a new subcategory, we knew from the beginning that it required a significant investment in education and marketing. 

There’s a large portion of customers who thought they had tried it all and weren’t getting the results they wanted until they tried Tuttofare. So many of our customers, just like us, had tried everything under the sun to help manage their skin conditions and needs. 

We have focused heavily on digital marketing, especially through Meta, to raise awareness and educate customers. With backgrounds in finance, media and marketing, we’re passionate about delivering targeted content that helps inform our customers. Our hero product, our Tallow Balm, is multi-purpose by nature and caters to all ages – this has its marketing challenges, as the messaging needs to be different to cater to different needs. As we know our customer intimately, we handle our marketing, customer service and operations in-house.

The most important piece of marketing for us is word of mouth. We let our product do the talking. We have the best customers who love sharing their stories about their skin journey with Tuttofare online on social media and in their reviews. 

IR: Beef tallow is trending right now. How do you feel about the online discourse and if you think audiences can differentiate between homemade and professionally formulated products?

LD: We love to see the growth of tallow skincare as a whole. The best way to deliver the best results for customers is with best-practice manufacturing, that is, GMP standard. 

Some businesses will show their products being made in a kitchen. It can be interesting content for people watching online. However, our focus is on delivering the most effective non-toxic products and educating customers about the benefits.

When using our products, customers can tell the difference. Skincare that is consistent, balanced and non-comedogenic will always deliver a better result. 

IR: Could you share how the new awareness of tallow-based skincare has (positively) affected Tuttofare? Have you seen an increase in website traffic and sales?

LD: We’ve invested heavily in growing awareness and we’re continuing to go from strength to strength. The word of mouth has been very positive and this is probably the most important factor. None of this would be possible without our amazing community who regularly shares their stories with us.

We’ve received more than 1000 5-star reviews since launching in November 2022. We often hear from customers who were initially ‘sceptical’ and soon after ‘shocked’ at how well our Tallow Balm works as a replacement for their regular moisturiser. Others love using Tallow Balm to manage skin conditions. We’ve had countless customers describe our Tallow Balm as a ‘gamechanger’ and even ‘life-changing’ – these kinds of messages will always be the highlight of our days. 

IR: What’s next for Tuttofare? Are you expanding your product range or looking at partnering with retailers?

CW: We will continue to expand our product range and explore partnership opportunities. We’re focused on growing our online presence, but we always keep an open mind.

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