Beauty brand founder spotlight: Zita Gyurokovics
Mar Galliti skincare founder on her childhood, her definition of success, why launching new products continuously is not sustainable & the most beautiful Hungarian areas and landscapes.
Earlier this month I introduced you to a Hungarian artisan skincare brand Mar Galliti, founded by Formula Botanica alumni Zita Gyurokovics. If you missed reading that post, you can find it here Seeing a brand through the eyes of its founder allows us to better understand the story, the narrative of the brand and then decided whether we want to try the products. With beauty marketplace oversaturated and new brands and products being launched all the time, it’s becoming increasingly complicated to distinguish between brands and find products that work for your individual needs. With this in mind, I interview brand founders and hope that their stories resonate with you, allowing you to have a personal glimpse into the back kitchen and help form more meaningful connections through taking care of your skin and body. Welcome to Galina’s Curiosity Gap spotlight Zita!
Tell me about your childhood and what led you to start your own skincare/lifestyle brand ?
ZG: Well, I grew up with my brother in the southern part of the Hungarian countryside in a tiny village, next to the Croatian border. My parents loved the outdoors. My mother was a keen gardener with greenfingers, while my father's hobby was beekeeping (hobby means often around 100 bee hives, he did not do things small). So I spent lots of time with my mother in the garden, but also our favourite family memories are related to beekeeping. Each year when the acacia blooming season came my father followed the flowers and moved the bees from home to another part of the country where the booming started a few days later, so he could spin acacia honey twice. We always accompanied him (even as an infant I was sleeping in a cradle in our camping shed, while my parents worked with the bees, collecting the honey). Camping with the bees next to the woods and meadows, drinking fresh spring water & picking wild flowers. These are some of my favourite childhood memories.
Your mother is clearly someone who has and continues to inspire you, why did you choose to pay homage to her in such a personal way via your brand’s name ?
ZG: I started Mar Galliti in December 2017, after my mother's death in the same year, in February. Parents play important roles in our lives and losing them is difficult, but inspiring to grow from the foundations they gave us, becoming truly ourselves without them, but loving them forever. So my mother did not see the brand becoming what it is or knew my final choice of the name, but I wanted a personal name for my brand, so I did some research on her first name, Margit, and found that its origin is in the Persian word 'mar galliti', meaning daughter of the sea, and I loved it. But by now the meaning of Mar Galliti changed for me and she feels more like a child, a little daughter. For me Mar Galliti is soft & kind, playful, free.
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