The Quality Makers: Jenefer Palmer of OSEA

In the DTC world, it often feels like speed, novelty, and gimmicks are prerequisites for success. We’re pushed the latest and greatest brand that’s raised X million in VC funds, or a new bio-mechanically engineered material we’re expected to eagerly incorporate into our ten-step facial ritual.

But true quality takes time and patience. If you’ve used any product from Malibu-based skincare brand OSEA, you’ve experienced that quality. For three decades now, OSEA has been formulating skincare from seaweed, clay, and mud, and doing so sustainably, in the same glass jars that were once considered cost-prohibitive and unfashionable (but are now both beloved and widely imitated). OSEA was doing green beauty before it was rebranded as clean beauty. I had the privilege of sitting down with OSEA’s founder Jenefer Palmer, who shared some deep wisdom on life, business, and beauty: from activating your vagus nerve in LA traffic to running a skincare empire with your daughter as CEO.

Note: in our conversation, Jenefer shared with me that she’s turning 70 this year. She doesn’t look a day older than 35. That’s the only testimonial I need.

Walk me through the origin story of the brand. I love that there’s such a feminine through-line of women carrying OSEA’s legacy onward. I was also reading about your personal past as an archeologist, which I’m so curious about. How did you get from digging to face masks?

I think I became an archeologist — and studied archeology and cultural anthropology — because I’ve always been a seeker. I loved studying the continuous vein of people asking the same existential questions across different cultures.

I loved archeology, except for one important detail: the best sites are in the most remote areas. It’s not really what you want to do when you’re a young woman. So after I realized I wasn’t going to be able to sustain that on a social and cultural level, I came back to the states and I asked my grandmother what she thought I should do. She was really the matriarch of the family. When she was sixteen in Germany, her parents couldn’t afford to feed her anymore, so they essentially bought her a plane ticket to New York and sent her on her way. After a chiropractor helped to heal her husband, she decided she needed to go to chiropractic school; she packed up her whole family and moved to Davenport, Iowa, based on that conviction. During the depression, she treated people in her home; she would put them on juice fasts, do irradiology, all sorts of cutting edge modalities.

When my grandparents were living in Long Island, my grandmother injured herself, and was on the verge of having to amputate her leg. She was bedridden, and trying everything. One night she had a dream that the ocean would heal her, and she told my grandfather —her husband — and asked that he carry her down to the beach every day. It was February, but she was a bossy little thing. He had no choice. In a few months she was healed, and they just kept going every day. My grandparents swam every day of the year in the Long Island Sound. My grandmother’s definition of a “bad day” was: “The ice was too thick to cut.” We have these old, grainy photos on our website: they’re not standing on sand by the water. That’s snow they’re standing on! So, in my family mythology — and I grew up between Toledo and Geneva — I just knew the ocean was a source of healing, even though I didn’t live near the beach. 

I think the most dynamic, exciting thing about a life well-lived — if you’re awake and conscious — is you see these circles closing, these patterns. It’s really profound, but you have to be looking. You have to open your eyes to see it.

So my grandmother just looked at me and said: “Study the healing arts.” And I thought: What is that? So I studied everything, I studied Ayurveda, Shiatsu, acupressure, Rolfing, Feldenkrais, polarity therapy, cranial work. That led me to becoming a spa director at Murietta Hot Springs, and I had never worked in a spa before. But I had all this knowledge I didn’t realize I had. The thing I really didn’t know about was skincare. 

I was your “Happy Hippie.” I washed my face with water and put on almond oil. But working there was an interesting way to learn about skincare, because it was a total parade of sales reps. I did the only thing I knew how to do, which was read the ingredients. I knew about transdermal penetration because of my science education growing up in Europe, which was not a part of the skincare vernacular in the 80s. And I remember thinking: all this stuff they’re selling to put on my skin is going into my body. I didn’t recognize any ingredients, and I started to special order books by the FDA from my local library. I was looking at the most typical ingredients — like sodium lauryl sulfate — and all of them were known skin irritants. I started to question why we were using these on our skin. I knew there had to be a better way.

What was it like entering skincare from that place of experimentation? How did you start to ideate this new type of skincare?

I started to experiment at Murietta Hot Springs, just learning the basic principles of green chemistry. I wanted essential oils and I wanted seaweed, a merging of earth and ocean essences. And it really helped that I knew nothing about the industry. If I knew anything about the industry, I would have determined that what I wanted to do was impossible. I followed my vision, and just believed that we could do it, and pushed people we worked with to think beyond the bounds of what was possible. My ignorance was a strength. 

What made you bold enough to take the plunge (pun not intended) and commit to launching OSEA? 

There were really three major inspirations for OSEA: nature, science, and intuition. Intuition as a driving force is rare, but I think it’s what allowed us to predict trends well ahead of their curve, to design clean beauty before it was even a term.

I always say: OSEA chose me. I would be in top five list of least likely to start a skincare brand. I’m not a beauty person! I think that’s what makes OSEA unique, it was a totally different perspective on beauty. Ultimately, beauty is wellness and kindness. It took me three years to come up with the name OSEA, but I wanted a name that was truly representative of our mission. Ocean, Sun, Earth, Atmosphere: it’s the elements of life, wellness, and beauty.

OSEA, in my mind, was one of the first brands truly pioneering the clean beauty movement. I imagine that required a good deal of consumer education on your part.

It was challenging, because it was so obvious to me. People would ask: Why do you put it in glass, plastic would be so much nicer? But when you’re halfway through a plastic container, the polycarbons of the plastic start to infuse your cream. There’s a reason why the bottom 10% of your moisturizer smells like plastic. There was a big pushback on the aesthetic, on the skincare not being pretty or pink. On the consumer end, there was a conception that natural products weren’t effective. But naturally-derived ingredients can be highly active, highly potent.