Melanoma Was The Keys Beginnings
I have never told my story. Most of everything we have written is about Wendy’s fight with Cancer and stupidity in the skincare market intermixed with how I created our products. So, since it is 15 years in business this year, I just felt like writing down my perspective of who we are.
In 1994, I met the woman of my dreams. In 1997, I nearly lost her to Melanoma cancer. Dr. Hugh Greenway at Scripps in LaJolla, CA saved her life. The prescriptions so severely hurt her that the experience became the basis for the invention of our products. The experience changed my life and my purpose. Read our book, “Defining Moments” and will get a tiny glimpse….tiny… of our lives together.
Keys was born was out of strife and conflict. It was a confusing time where any action was better than no action. Everything on the market was full of junk and even the “natural” brands had parabens and sulfates. It was 2004 when the first four products debuted at the Natural Products Expo and the years since have been full of change, innovation, and staying true to our purpose. It shocked the industry when our newly minted sunscreen, Solar Rx, was featured as the most effective by Consumer Reports Magazine, and the EWG ranked it the safest out there.
Another Defining Moment for us is when Maria Shriver as the first lady of California invited us to exhibit at her California Women’s Conference. Not only did she give us this great opportunity, she asked us to place products in the speaker’s gift bags. She also helped me to launch my book, “Chemical-Free Skin Health®” next to Dr. Oz. It was amazing with over 30,000 women mixed with 126 celebrity speakers including Jane Fonda, Oprah, and Caroline Kennedy. She refers to our products as, “So Pure.”
What has not changed is our dedication to the basic principles that I defined to design and build our authentic niche products. While big brands flex to the market trends to be more natural, they tended to be of a marketing effort than a reformulation. At Keys then and now, our principles and dedication to functional products have not wavered. It is simple yet hard.
I am often asked the question of why I chose airless pumps for our products over traditional tubes. Well, there is no simple answer, but a series of reasons that we chose this very advanced technology developed in the Netherlands along with our design team. The most important reasons are health, safety and cleanliness of the product. True, tubes are less expensive, easier to fill and more common. The problem with tubes is that they were never designed for natural products. 
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