Let’s be real here: our society has done a great disservice to women and marginalized people here on planet earth. But we see a future where we can change this! Botnia isn’t just about making great quality skincare, that’s only part of it. We want to create safe, holistic spaces for our community to heal. 

Supporting a Botnia spa partner means many things. It’s creating a space for us to be vulnerable. It’s allowing us a place to heal. It’s supporting the livelihood of a person who deeply loves to help heal others. It’s knowing that the products you’re using in your daily life are sustainable, ethically sourced, and have real people making them. 

What we’re trying to do here at Botnia is create the future we want to see. And our workshop is where we can start. 

A values-driven company//

For Botnia, one of the driving values of our company is innovation, to continue our education as the world keeps moving forward. Remember when we thought burning our skin off with alcohol and witch hazel actually helped our skin? There are always new discoveries in our modern times and we love looking at trends, dissecting them, and seeing if they truly work, backed up with scientific research. We don’t make new products just to make new products and when we change a formulation, it’s because we’ve tested it out on real humans in our treatment room and saw amazing results.

This belief is also shared with our spa partners because we believe in their growth! Before Botnia, there wasn’t a company in the esthetics community that believed in holistic healing and continuing education. The courses taught in esthetics school were basic and we’ve found that most estheticians in the industry still don’t know what the microbiome does for the skin! After years of doing her own research and developing Botnia as the solution to products she was missing for her clients, Justine, our founder, decided she would build her own community and create the company she wished she had in her beginning years as an esthetician. 

What we provide for our community, beyond skincare//

Nearly six years later, Botnia is a community of over 300 holistic estheticians in the greater United States. We provide monthly community calls where our estheticians can mind meld the ideas and processes that are working for their businesses. In these calls, our estheticians are able to bring their questions about using our products to better educate themselves on how best to treat their guests.

We host masterclasses throughout the year, with topics that are most relevant to the needs of our spa partners. We take their feedback and create classes to teach them new skills they want to learn to better their services. 

And every year, we throw our annual Esthetician Workshop with classes that’ll set Botnia estheticians up for another year of success. This year our theme is Honoring the Practice of Healing. Offering tools and shared knowledge to our estheticians that will set them up in all aspects of their businesses, from setting sales goals to healing acne to protecting our hands with proper ergonomics. We’ve packed our two-day workshop with so much continuing education because that’s what our partners deserve. To be seen and to be met. Mostly it’s our way of showing them our gratitude for helping Botnia grow. If you’re interested in seeing what our spa partners learned in this year’s workshop, check out our last blog post here. You can also check out a behind the scenes look at our two-day online workshop here.

“What an epic weekend… Each summit I leave feeling an intense sense of gratitude, pride, and sense of worth to your Botnia family as a vendor of which you invest in with all your heart and soul. 
It’s mind boggling and heart blasting to feel the love you generate in this community that I am so thankful to be a part of.”
–Ronit Shapow, Sanctuary Spa 90041 

“14 hours of support, education, and business building over the last 2 days!
Being an esthetician has more than lived up to its promises. I began this career because I loved the science of skin.
Over the last decade, I’ve learned that the foundation of my work is built on staying inspired and surrounding myself with people and a community who believe in me, support me, and connect with me. Building this community of guests who have similar values makes my heart so full, and completely validates my calling as an esthetician and business owner.”
–Mia Colette, Colette Sugar Spa

Fostering relationships//

Our estheticians are some of the most amazing people you’ll ever meet. They are mothers, caretakers, solo entrepreneurs, people paving a new way of life outside of the norm: healers, empaths, intuitives, listeners_, and more. If you’ve been to a Botnia spa partner, you already know that it’s so much more than just a facial. It’s a place where you can let all the worries in your life go and be healed by the caring hands of our estheticians. 

We love developing a relationship with the people who support us the most. We are so grateful that our community of estheticians trust us as their tools for healing their community. When you buy a Botnia product from one of our spa partners, you can trust they know exactly why the ingredients in the product they recommend will help your skin. They’re not just selling products to make a commission. (We don’t believe in that!) They truly believe that the skincare you use will help support the health of your body, and help keep your skin functioning the way it already knows how to.

We take the time to get to know each and every one of our partners deeply and keep connected with them as they grow. It’s why our onboarding process is slower than most other companies. We want our partners to be successful carrying Botnia, and we’re happy to hold their hand the whole time along the way. 

When you buy a Botnia product, know this: you’re supporting the dreams and futures of the people who are looking to change the world we currently live in. A community that cares about education. Supporting small businesses in your own community and fostering their growth. Bringing more healing into the world and supporting our ecosystem sustainably. If you’re looking to find a Botnia holistic esthetician to work with, you can find a spa partner near you here. And if there isn’t one near you yet, you can always email us or DM us to speak with one of our Master Estheticians who can help recommend products that’ll work best for your unique skin.

If there’s only one thing that we learned from our workshop (though there are many learnings!), it’s that the people in our community care so much about the work they do. When we believe in our values and let them be our guiding north star for the decisions we make in our businesses, it brings us closer to heart centered businesses and creates more meaning and purpose in our lives. 

Xo,
Botnia

P.S. Before you go, we’d love to share a beautiful meditation we’ve learned from our spa partner, Leia Hohenfeld of Flower Power Skin Studio, to help bring us to a grounded state of mind. If you have an essential oil you like to use, put a couple of drops in your hands and rub them together and hold your hands over your nose and take a deep breath in.

Close your eyes.
Take a deep breath.
Experience the aroma of the plant in the oil you’ve chosen.
And with each deep breath, we invite you to acknowledge the constituents in this oil, 
The leaf, the root, and the flower.
With each breath, we invite you to experience this aroma more deeply.
We invite you to find the soil and the water that nourished those roots as you breathe. 
Imagine the roots filling the earth below the forest.
Holding the plant steadfast and grounded, connected to the earth regardless of high winds and storms.
With each deep breath, we invite you to sprout your own roots connecting with the earth. Helping you to feel grounded, connected, and steadfast. 
Breathe deeply and feel your connection with the earth.