The Melbourne skincare brand that changed Bec Judd’s decade-long routine

When a Melbourne influencer first launched her skincare brand, she hoped it would inspire Australians to elevate their everyday skin health, thanks in part to the ever-growing popularity of K-beauty.

Little did she know its influence would pique the interest of media personality Bec Judd, who was inspired to fold the brand into her own routine, which had previously remained unchanged for 12 years.

As ST. SAJ gets ready to celebrate its second birthday, the brand has just announced the media personality as its first ambassador.

The brand’s founder and influencer Emmylou MacCarthy told NewsWire she was inspired to launch her own skincare company after becoming fed up with using skincare products that either were ineffective or priced out of reach for the everyday Aussies.

“I spent my 20s working as a beauty therapist, so I had years of treating people in the salon,” she said.

She explained that many of her clients were often feeling confused after trying to recreate the treatments at home, as products available outside the salon failed to deliver on their promises.

“In my 20s, you could only get amazing formulas in salon at such a high price point,” she said.

“So I wanted to give them a level of efficacy at a price that an everyday person could actually afford and continue to buy, sustain it as well.”

The sleek white boxes of ST. SAJ, with its large black and white print, may seem somewhat ordinary at first glance.

But as the lid lifts, customers are flooded with bright colours, happy faces and rows of bottles of Australian-made skincare.

Ms MacCarthy said the brand’s packaging acted as a metaphor for the skincare’s ingredients, which although was made locally, had taken a leaf from the K-beauty playbook.

It’s no secret that skincare has become one of the most profitable industries in Australia, but the recent explosion of Korean ingredients and its skincare philosophy has increased the industry’s competition tenfold.

According to Future Markets Insights research , Australians are currently the biggest spenders of K-beauty outside of South Korea, per capita, thanks in part to its industry-leading and sometime unusual ingredients, such as snail mucin, rice bran and PDRN (polydeoxyribonucleotide) – commonly known as salmon sperm.

The hype has been making the rounds online, too, with viral trends such as “glass skin” and racking up millions of views among Gen Z and Millennials, who are the industry’s largest consumers.