After Pressing The Reset Button, Kendra Kolb Butler Is Living Her Wildest Dreams

TashaT

"I Am Living Proof That if You Follow Your Heart The Rest Will Follow”

Before Kendra Kolb Butler, founded Alpyn Beauty, a clean beauty brand, she changed her life and her perspective“Life is crazy, it takes you down a crazy path, and if you let it guide you, there is no telling what will come of it.” Kolb Butler says. That last time I chatted with her, she was a PR executive, living in New York City and I was a beauty editor. This was not only, pre-covid, it was also pre-kids and pre-life as we know it today.

We connected to discuss her move to Jackson Hole Wyoming, the art of wildcrafting, and the making of Alpyn Beauty. “Necessity is the mother of Invention. And what I realized is that I am not my expensive shoes or my expensive car or my expensive house, I want (and choose) quality of life, I want to live,” she explains. “There are things that are more important to me than simply work, I think we just all have to figure out what that is for ourselves.

You had an illustrious career in New York City What bought you to Jackson Hole, Wyoming?

KKB: So I started in New York City where I worked in the beauty industry for 20 years, and around 2015, I felt this really bad case of burnout, I just did not feel that mentally, I was in a good place. I had all these things on the outside that appeared to be wonderful but in my soul, I was feeling very depleted, I felt unnourished, unsatisfied, and I knew that I needed a life change, so, I decided to leave my corporate job and travel with my husband. I pressed the reset button on life, and we decided to take a break for about a month and go to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We're gonna get some fresh air here, we're gonna breathe in the mountains, we see some wild animals, and then we're gonna come back to Manhattan and get back on the hamster wheel of corporate America. And it was very scary to do. I took my little savings, like all that I had and I decided I'm gonna be very, very cost-efficient, but I'm just gonna give myself a chance, I'm gonna take 30 days and reset my life. That was six years ago. I'm still in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I never went back to corporate America.

You opened a beauty apothecary once you arrived, was this in the overall plan?

KKB: This was not the plan. I was just looking for a life change, I wanted to get out of this whole beauty thing I wanted to do yoga, make babies, cook some good food, that’s what I wanted to do. But if something is in you, it just finds you. It kind of all just happened, very organically. It was my gut instinct, but it wasn't like my master plan, where I said, “ Let me start a skincare line,”

If you told me 10 years ago that I was gonna do this I would have told you you were crazy. It started when I noticed there were no beauty apothecaries in town. There were no places for women to shop for mascara, lipstick, or skincare. I thought, “Well, this is an opportunity, let me see if I can open a little shop and just bring in some products, and I can solve a problem while also doing what I'm passionate about, which is beauty.”

At What Point Did You Get Into Skincare?

KKB: I started to see very quickly that the women coming into the shop were all suffering from very dry and dehydrated skin. And at the same time, everything that I brought with me (skincare products) from Manhattan wasn't working in this climate because we are very close to the sun. At 6200 feet, the air is thinner, there’s no humidity, the temperature swings are severe, the wind is whipping. Everybody's skin was in bad shape. I was selling all the skincare lines I knew about, but the women were coming back two days later returning the creams and moisturizers they purchased and saying, “My skin feels parched, what else do you have?”

What was your aha moment?

KKB: I started looking at the forest behind my house, and I just honed in on the wild plants and the flowers and everything that was growing behind me. It was so juicy, hydrated, and vibrant. It was full of life, and I thought “There's no watering system on these wild plants. How are the plants maintained? How do they hold that hydration?” There's no rain in this town in the summer, so it piqued my curiosity about how the plants maintained their hydration levels. I had this crazy idea. What if I started harvesting these wild plants and I mix them into a cream, do they have the saturation power or this hydration ability? I had an understanding of skincare because I worked for a dermatologist. I knew about vitamin C. hyaluronic acid, retinol, squalene, ceramides, and peptides. I knew all the ingredients, but nothing was working. So, what if I took those ingredients and layered the wild plants in? What if this will give the people in my new town and in my store that satisfaction they're seeking so badly? That would be the icing on the cake.

When did you know this was going to work?

KKB: I hired a naturalist, a botanist to answer the question of ‘what exactly is growing out here?’And we started hiking. We saw calendula, arnica, chamomile, ingredients that are used in skincare-.The more he talked, all I saw was the side of a skincare box, so instead of it in powder form, these ingredients, that were already being used in skincare were growing wild and fresh all over this town. The same town filled with women, who were grabbing their skin, saying it hurts, and it's dry. The irony was they are stepping on these plants every day as they walk their dogs and take hikes. So I started mixing these plants just to see what happens, so I wrote my first formula for Melt moisturizer, which is our best-selling product right now.

I drove my wild plants to this facility, they mixed up in a big drum, of the plants with all the other ingredients that I wanted, vitamin C, Bakuchiol, and hyaluronic acid. When they were done, they gave me these little pots and I brought those samples back to the beauty stores in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and I started adding them to the bag when anybody purchased something. I’d say, “try this moisturizer. Or “Let me know what you think, just as a test. I knew I had proof of concept because a few days later, I couldn't even walk through the grocery store without a woman grabbing me, telling me “My skin feels so soft.” Or, “I feel comfortable in my skin.” And then I thought, “If it's working in this mountain town where people have the worst skin, what's gonna happen if I send this moisturizer to New York, LA, Miami, Chicago, places with more forgiving climate?”

Can you explain the wildcrafting concept?

KKB: Our ancestors did it when they solely lived on the land. It's essentially anybody who's gone out and picked a berry or anything in nature. that is essentially wildcrafting and foraging, it's been done for a very, very long time. However, I don't think that anyone's really utilized it in skincare, it's usually done for medicines, supplements, and food. but nobody has really done it in skincare. I'm happy to be the first, I don't think I'm the last.

Are you a mission-based brand or an ingredient brand?

That's a really good question. I would say both, but I do think that any brand that starts today needs to have a mission, it's like if you're not giving something back. What are you doing here? So what we've really been passionate about is National Park Restoration, and with every product purchase, 1% of the sale goes to our local park to restore some of the damage from people trampling on the lands. In Jackson Hole, we have this beautiful plot of 4500 acres that has been ruined by humans who came to live on it, and they ripped out all the plants. We have helped restore over a thousand acres of that park to date with our sales. For us, it is all about the ecosystem staying in balance and we need plants as a society, if we don't have plants, we can't do what we're doing with wildcrafting

Can you share advice with anyone looking to make a change?

KKB: I lived in New York City for 20 years, and I loved every minute of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm so thankful for my time there, but when I got out to Wyoming, I just started breathing different air and being in a different environment. I think you just have to find your happiness. If you feel like something doesn't feel right inside, it's probably not right, so listen to that voice and make the changes that need to be made.

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