Luna Bronze: Co-founders Maddy and Rhi on their celeb-loved self-tanning skincare business
A year out from her wedding, Maddy had the “scare” of a lifetime that led to a booming business with hundreds of glowing reviews – including from Hilary Duff.
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Growing up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Maddy Balderson was an avid sun baker as she loved the bronzy, sun-kissed look.
“I was doing all the wrong things and using tanning oil,” she tells news.com.au checkout.
Despite her family having a history of skin cancer and her parents always warning her to “wear hats and sunscreen”, she said she ignored them.
“The sun safety aspect did not factor into my brain as a young person,” she recalls.
“I didn’t know what these things [skin cancer] were.”
But in 2014, a year out from her wedding, Maddy has a scare that forced her to rethink her approach to tanning.
“I remember waking up in the morning with blood on my pillow,” she says.
It turned out to be skin cancer and she was diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma (BCC).
“I had actually about two or three of them [BCC] on my face, but the one on my jaw was an infiltrating BCC, which meant I had to have surgery to remove it which left quite a big scar,” she says.
It was the wake up call that Maddy says she needed.
“It really gave me the shock that I needed to be like, I’ve got to change the way that I’m tanning because I can’t keep running the risk of having more of these.”
That’s when Maddy, now 36, along with her high school best friend, Rhiannon Hall, started looking at sunless tanning options and launched Luna Bronze, a ‘self tanning meets skincare’ brand, in 2015.
‘I WASN’T GOING TO RISK MY HEALTH ANYMORE’: FROM IDEA TO LAUNCH
After the terrifying scare, the Luna Bronze co-founders took matters into their own hands to find a tanning product that ticked all their boxes.
“I just want to get a product that I can apply with ease that is really hydrating and just gives me a top up of a really nice, subtle bronze glow because I really love that feeling of looking tan,” Maddy says.
“But I just wasn’t going to risk my health anymore.”
After trialling and testing different tanning products readily available in the market, Maddy found that they weren’t on par to what she was really after.
“They either left me orange, or really dried my skin and I’ve got quite dry skin so I was really scaly and having awful looks, and I really just absolutely hated the smell of them,” she explains.
With no luck in finding a product that served both Maddy and Rhi, they decided to create the product of their dreams.
And with that, their first-ever product – the Glow Gradual Tanning Moisturiser was born and “there’s nothing like it out there”.
Made from 98 per cent certified organic, natural and naturally derived ingredients, the Glow Gradual Tanning Moisturiser promises a beautiful, natural-looking sunless tan while keeping your skin hydrated and nourished. Plus, it doesn’t have the fake tan smell and it’s so gentle on the skin that you can use it everyday – say what?!
True to its claims, the product alone boasts a 4.7-star rating and over 400 five-star reviews raving about the product’s greatness including American celebrity, Hilary Duff.
“We’ve never paid her for any of her posts and she just pops up like a really simple story about a product and now sales just go absolutely crazy,” Maddy explains.
“So we absolutely appreciate everything she’s done for us.”
The Glow Gradual Tanning Moisturiser is also a personal favourite of Maddy’s as it is “literally the easiest tanning product you can ever apply.”
“You can apply it straight out of the shower or straight after shaving. It doesn’t irritate my skin but it’s super, super nourishing and the glow is like literally day in day out. I’m using it and always looking nice and tan.”
The success of their first product came as a surprise.
“We thought it was just going to be one product but it’s sort of blown out now along with eight years to a nice full range of self tanning products that really keep that natural colour profile.”
Following their “skincare first, tanning second” ethos, the Luna Bronze range doesn’t have synthetic fragrances. Rather, they use a natural essential oil blend of mandarin, lemon, myrtle and ylang ylang which smells fresh, vibrant and citrusy. Unlike the usual coconut and chocolate scented tanners.
Manufactured in Australia, Luna Bronze has since added to their collection after seeing the success of their tanning moisturiser – offering tanning skincare products for face and body: the Illume Tanning Water ($39.95) which has been another favourite of Hilary Duff’s and influencer @daniellemonteleone.
Other products in their collection include the Good Night Face Bronzing Serum (from $15.95) which sold-out four times and had a waitlist of 10,000 people, the Solar Eclipse Clear Tanning Mousse ($42.95), Eclipse Tanning Mousse ($44.95) and the Total Eclipse Tanning Mousse ($44.95) – all of which “hold the hydration” thanks to the glycerin and oils, and are up to 98 per cent natural and organic, vegan and cruelty free, and promote very natural looking tans.
“We’re not here to make people ten shades darker, we’re focused on making you look like you’ve been on a holiday,” Maddy says.
“We are all about a natural look which is why our products really appeal to a really wide range of people – we appeal to men, we appeal to older, more mature customers and people who are just sort of like after a bit more refined, natural look.”
It doesn’t just stop there though, you can shop self-tanning accessories like the Exfoliating Mitt ($14.25), Self Tan Back Applicator ($17.55) and Contour Blending Brush ($26.95).
Customers are also able to save 10 per cent on the RRP by purchasing a bundle or kit – which are perfect for beginners and gifting friends or family.
Bundles include: the Self Tan Starter Kit ($96), Self Tan Contour Kit ($64), Glowing Skin Gradual Self Tan Bundle ($96.21), Skincare Must Haves ($86), Best Face Forward ($79), Clear Glow Bundle ($125) and more.
Plus, they have merch if you want to represent the ‘Lunaverse’ – Oversized Sunless Tanning Club T-shirt ($37.95), Protect Your Money Maker Dad Cap ($29.95) and the Skincare ‘GRWM’ Bubble Headband ($19.95).
’WE’RE NOT JUST MAKING PRODUCTS FOR THE FUN OF IT’
Thinking they would be an “overnight success, Australian-only business in 2015”, the sunless tanning brand was surprised after seeing their boom and massive organic growth in the US and Canada.
“There are a lot of social media businesses that were all sort of starting and just driving huge growth from social media and that just didn’t end up happening for us in Australia, as much as what it did in the US and Canada,” Maddy notes.
And while it is a tough market for Aussie-based brands to crack, Luna Bronze were successful and are now focused on building up their Australian customer base.
“We’re not just making products for the fun of it. We really wanted to make a product that is a really natural and compelling reason for you to stop tanning in the sun and come tan sunlessly,” Maddy declares.
Boasting a whopping 77.7k followers on Instagram, many users are posting before and after results to attest to the products’ effectiveness.
Maddy also notes that they’ve grown their following “really organically” over the years since 2015.
“We’re just very authentic with our followers, like the Voice of the brand is literally the Voice of Rhi, my co-founder and I, it’s like the sort of persona where we’re casual and we’re chatty,” Maddy explained.
To further solidify the brand’s identity and persona, Maddy reveals that the brand has “migrated to this new fun, bold [image] that’s more in line with the playfulness of the Luna Bronze brand” as well as repackage their products into “more fun and exciting colours” like purple, pink, green, blue and more.
“When we started out in 2016, it was all about sleek and minimal. That kind of vibe. But what we have found over the years is that we were getting lost on the shelf,” she admits.
“We’d walk into MECCA and would look up at the shelf, and we just felt that we were getting lost. We’re a fantastic female operated brand – we’re fun, we’re playful, we’re very authentic and genuine with our customers, and we just wanted that shelf presence to sort of convey that.”
Currently available for purchase at Luna Bronze and MECCA, the brand has recently become the first self-tanning brand to launch into Saks Fifth Avenue online.
Being a sole self-tanning business since 2015, Maddy says they’re “starting to dip [their] toes into some different branches all within the bronzing world.”
“We’ve got a lot of new products in the pipeline,” she reveals.
“There’s a TikTok dupe product that’s coming out and it’s going to be better than the [actual] product … We’ve improved it massively, and that’s gonna be coming out in the next three to four months.”
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