Tanya Kazeminy Mackey, co-founder of Mama Mio Skincare, has built up a highly successful company specialising in fantastic, highly effective body care products.
Mama Mio started out as a pregnancy skincare company, but has since applied the knowledge they gained into daily body care.
They have built up a dedicated fan following, with celebrities such as Jessica Alba, Christina Aguilera and Christina Turnlington endorsing their products.
We talked to Tanya about maintaining your skin, her favourite beauty products, and juggling a career with family life.
Sarah McIntyre: How did Mama Mio start?
Tanya Kazeminy Mackey: There are four of us that founded Mama Mio and we all have really long pedigrees in the beauty industry. We’ve worked together for ages, but each of us has been in the industry for seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years. When we started Mama Mio what we wanted to do was to take all of our experience from all the years past and put it together into something big.
SMI: What is your company’s philosophy?
TKM: I think one of my favourite elements of Mama Mio is, it’s not worried to much about what you look like, what’s much more important to being gorgeous is how you feel about how you look like. If I was going to set our personal highest goals, it would be to make women feel more confident and better in their skin. I don’t think it’s about what you look like. When you go out with your friends, the person who gets the most attention is not necessarily the most conventionally beautiful, it’s the person who has a lot of confidence in themselves. That’s a big part of what we’re doing at Mama Mio.
We’re all women, we’re creating products for women, how do we want to talk to her? It’s really about saying things in a straightforward way, knowing that we’re all in the same boat, and knowing that we really want to make you feel a little bit better about yourself, give you permission to feel good about yourself.
SMI: What are the key ingredients that are used in your products?
TKM: The line is based on Omegas 3, 6 and 9. As you know, we have a heritage in pregnancy skincare. Quickly after we launched Mama Mio as a pregnancy skincare line we started to apply the knowledge we gained in helping your skin cope with that big stretch, into daily skincare, body care and basically making you feel great in a bikini for as long as you possibly can!
The whole thing with maternity skincare is you need to improve the strength and elasticity of your skin. And the way that we do that is through the use of Omega 3, 6 and 9. Actually, that’s kind of the end game for everybody – what I want my skin to be is strong, elastic, tight, toned at any point in my life. If you have strong, elastic skin, we call it ‘fit’ skin, skin that fits you like a glove and it holds you in and holds you up and that’s what you want!
SMI: Is this what makes you different to other products on the market?
TKM: I think what makes us different from other products on the market is our formulations are amazing. We use the highest number of active ingredients, and you know active ingredients are the ones that make the difference, and we use them at the maximum potency. So I know our formulas are incredibly effective.
There’s a reason we can do that and it’s – our formulations are really, really, really expensive and most big brands wouldn’t be able to do that because they have enormous advertising budgets and we don’t spend any money on advertising, we’re all about word of mouth. We know women talk – if they like a product they’re going to talk about it. So for us, if we make the most amazing formulations and the products do what they say they’re going to do I know if you use ‘Shrink to Fit’ you’re going to love it, and I know you’re going to tell five people!
SMI: You have a lot of celebrity fans who endorse your range too?
TKM: We do! That’s so cool for me because everybody who we have on our celebrity list has given us permission to use their names which is a big deal. So people like Jessica Alba has been really great about talking about ‘Boob Tube’ and how much she loves it and that’s part of her daily skincare regime. Then there’s the whole ream of supermodels who’ve used it. Like Christina Turnlington, I think she’s really smart and knows a lot about skincare, she’s a really big advocate of Mama Mio.
SMI: What are your top tips for maintaining your skin while pregnant?
TKM: I think the thing with pregnancy is you have to put up a fight; you have to really give your skin every opportunity to come back to its pre-pregnancy state. For us, that’s all about Omega 3, 6 and 9. It’s all about giving your skin the right ingredients to maintain its tone and texture so that it snaps back after pregnancy.
SMI: What are your favourite beauty products?
TKM: Well gosh if you saw my bathtub, it’s so Mama Mio’d out of it I can’t tell you! I really like Dr Hauscka products I think they’re amazing. Oh and there’s a Clinique mascara which is awesome, I think it’s called Powerlash, it’s this amazing formula. When you put it on it doesn’t move. The only way it comes off your lashes is it melts off, it comes off in tubes. It’s brilliant! And I really like Shu Uemura lipglosses, I think they’re really nice.
SMI: I’ve read you’re a big fan of fashion. Who are your favourite high street stores and designers?
TKM: I think right now, fancy schmancy I really like Marni, Prada. Topshop is a big one for me and I really like H&M and there’s a brand called Uniqlo which is a Japanese chainstore. It’s so cheap, it has really nice stuff and they have Jil Sanders designing for them!
SMI: You have to juggle your family life with your career, how do you do it?
TKM: I think you have to love what you do, and you have to not think about what’s work and what’s home you just have to love what you do. There’s brief moments which usually last around thirty seconds where everything is in perfect harmony, then you drop the plate or the bowl. But you have to enjoy those brief moments of perfection!
SMI: What are your future plans for the company?
TKM: Our goal is to become the most recommended skincare brand in the world! When I meet people, more and more what I’m hearing is ‘Mama Mio, that’s the brand that really works.’ And that is music to my ears! That’s what we wanted to do; we want to be a brand that’s highly recommended.
Mama Mio is available in Arnotts and the Fota Island Spa. For more stockists call: 01 4610645.
