Grown Alchemist Jeremy Muijs Reveals Why He’s Partnering With REVIV

Beauty and urban lifestyle brand, Grown Alchemist, have launched into the UK and USA partnering with REVIV, the global leader in IV drip therapy, to design a bespoke infusion. Designed by expert doctors and scientists The Grown Alchemist Exclusive IV focuses on aiding the hydration and detoxification of the body – nourishing skin, hair and nails, in addition to supporting the body’s processes for energy and collagen production and digestion. REVIV’s highly skilled medical practitioners will be administering Grown Alchemist’s exclusive IV for a quality experience.

Grown Alchemist’s treatments have been crafted to embody the brand’s values, viewing beauty in the context of overall health and wellness. Grown Alchemist are at the forefront of innovation in skincare, and alongside the typical facials and massages, they will be delivering IV drip therapy to perfectly complement the benefits of their treatments. A truly great fit for those that want a holistic approach to skincare and wellness.

REVIV sat down with co-founder and CEO Jeremy Muijs to find out the true essence of Grown Alchemist and the innovation behind bringing skincare and IV drip therapy together…

Hi Jeremy, Grown Alchemist started after you were doing some research for a client, what got you so excited?

It was the late 90s and the word wellness emerged, our client (my brother Keston and I owned a product development agency) asked us what it was and tasked us with investigating what it meant. Keston and I began a project to understand wellness. It then turned into something quite different as we ended up gaining a profound respect for nature, the body and the way the body functions. Also, how the body works better off healthy ingredients.

That was a time we were all quite ignorant about how much sugar was in a fizzy drink and the number of additives present in processed foods!

120%. I remember someone saying to us a big part of wellness comes down to food and making sure the food is natural as possible at the time it was a real lightbulb moment.

How do you then translate that across to skincare?

We are biological creatures, and you can’t ignore the greater influence of other elements on our bodies. We certainly became cognisant of the fact that skincare in its pure form needs to be as natural as possible and for there to be no ingredients that steal function from the body. We needed to try and manage the function equation. There are two parts about what drives function – firstly, it’s the removal of toxicity and, secondly, how to encourage the body to build the building blocks for the skin. The dilemma is the skincare industry propagate everything you need can come out of a jar or a tube the reality is that’s just not the case.

Yes, because if you’re consuming food with no nutritional value…

It’s going to interfere with function. Then comes the question how do we ensure optimization of the skin? As what comes out of a tube or container in terms of lotions and potions is possibly only 10%. Maybe 20% would be things like stress/emotional behaviours and how we create our own chemicals we are releasing into the body from our thinking patterns and our stress levels. You go through a process of the various aspects of the body and environment that you would change, improve, add to or take away from function equation.

How did the name Grown Alchemist come about?

It was really a call out to the importance of nature that great products for human biology shouldn’t be manufactured they should be grown and the challenge in our industry is not engineer something but to unveil – so that’s where Grown came from. Alchemist was about understanding the chemistry to deliver a stable potent product that resources and supports the healing processes of the body.

Has it been a tough journey?

We were a little bit early. When I went back to the company that asked us to look into wellness to tell them there’s this fabulous opportunity that we believe in, they said: “You’re at the bleeding edge not the leading edge. You are going to spend all your money educating the market, so we are out, we’re not interested.” At the time we thought he was silly but in fact they were very smart.

What made you push on?

The problem is when you learn something you can’t unlearn it. How do you go back to doing things the traditional way when you feel extremely confident that’s not the best way to do it? That was our dilemma, we lost the passion for other things and really wanted to do this. We felt it was the requirement for us to give people a little bit more knowledge and convince them.

So, it really was hard…

100%. If we had known what was ahead of us, I’m not sure we would have started.  What we had in our favour was we had passed the point of no return, we had to find a way. That’s life, sometimes it’s good to have no way out and to basically say we have to band together to figure this out. There must be a way, it might not be the way you dreamed or thought it would be but there must be a way.

You recently added IV drip therapy to compliment your treatments, how did you discover nutritional therapy?

A long time ago it wasn’t commercial, and I had one in a treatment clinic. It was a hydration IV, and I was talking to the doctor about the saline drip and what it does. He explained the importance of hydration in the body and how hydration creates function and a whole bunch of things that were important. I started to think, ‘I wonder what hydration would do for skincare? And I wonder how it could amplify the opportunity of topical treatment in the body…’

Another lightbulb moment then…

I was very keen to push that further forward but at the time regulatory wise it was a nightmare; it was less commercial than it was today, so a drip opportunity was done in a doctor’s clinic. The idea that you might be able to do that in the back of a department store was just ridiculous.

You’ve partnered with REVIV, how did you find us?

We started to look at our retail store and the concept was to add IV drip therapy. I then travelled to Hong Kong and where I was staying, had a REVIV pop-up. I had a treatment and went through the process with you guys, and I came back and said: “If we could do a partnership with these guys, it would be amazing” and that was in 2019.

What did you do next?

We had to make sure IV drip therapy worked for Grown Alchemist and to test the consumers desire for it. We knew the theoretical effects, I knew the personal effects, but would the consumers see that? Do the customers value that? I went through that by delivering IV drip therapy in our own store and believed 100% in it as another important lever to pull on to achieve optimal function of the body and skin. That was our journey into drip therapy it started a long time ago.

Bringing topical and nutritional therapy together is innovative!

Part of being a skincare company is to find the opportunity, whatever the mechanism, to create function and health. Restoring health is anti-aging. Health restoring and anti-aging are identical. For us, if we can do those two things – restore health and create function in the body, it doesn’t matter the mechanism we employ to do it and if science moves in a better way to deliver that, we need to be there. Partnering with REVIV allows us to remain right at the forefront of innovation in beauty and wellness.

Grown Alchemist powered by REVIV treatments are currently available in the UK at Nobu Hotel London Portman Sqaure, click here for more information.