The Interview: Josefin Landgård on co-founding CBD skincare and wellness brand MANTLE

MANTLE is a Swedish CBD-based skin, body and sexual wellness brand. The brand, which made its UK debut last year, was founded by Josefin Landgård and Stina Lönnkvist. Landgard’s background is in the start-up space – she has started and worked at several companies including Glossybox. After working on a tech start-up, she was experiencing burnout and sleep issues and when she came across the cannabis extract CBD and the rest was history. Landgard met her Lönnkvist soon after and their journey began. 

Although Landgård’s background is in beauty, she’s always had an interest in holistic health approaches and supplements. MANTLE is elevated by cannabis so the founders put a lot of effort into finding the best CBD and securing quality all around in terms of packaging, production and design. The brand was born out of Landgård’s desire to meet her own need of finding high-quality CBD. Skincare came into play when she noticed the effects of CBD on the skin when used alongside powerful botanicals and actives. “We were blown away with how the skin responded during the testing process,” she says.

When MANTLE first launched, it was targeting active, stressed women with little time who wanted natural and effective skincare. “Customers loved our carefree approach, our rebellious attitude and the fact that our products delivered,” Landgård says. The brand’s bestsellers are The Dream Mask and The Glow Serum.

The Glow Serum

The Dream Mask is a gel-textured overnight hydration bomb designed to enhance the skin’s recovery and regeneration process. In addition to CBD, it also contains bakuchiol (a gentler form of retinol), vitamin E, hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and buckthorn extract which boosts collagen production, promotes hydration and increases the skin’s radiance as you sleep. The Glow Serum is an oil-based serum that nourishes the complexion. It helps skin retain moisture while delivering a gorgeous glow in the process. The serum contains a blend of actives and botanicals such as liquorice extract, bisabolol and bakuchiol.

The brand’s latest launch is The Shroom Essence, which contains fermented mushrooms, PHAs and hyaluronic acid alongside CBD. “We love mushrooms and fermented ingredients – they make the perfect base for our latest product. Surface dryness be gone!” Landgård says. The Shroom Essence provides multi-depth hydration, helping the skin retain moisture leaving it plump, hydrated and smooth.

To make beauty effective and accessible for all, every MANTLE product is packed with powerful ingredients that deliver results. “Our products work for minimalists or beauty junkies who want to layer their skincare. CBD has an array of skincare benefits – it fights free radicals, nourishes, hydrates, calms and soothes the skin and boosts collagen production. It’s a game changing ingredient!” Landgård says.

The brand is revolutionising beauty, one product at a time, so it’s no wonder it is challenging attitudes towards personal expression and ageing too. “We see ageing as a positive thing, which is why we refrain from using the term ‘anti-ageing’. We also don’t retouch our models and we refer to older skin as ‘skin with experience’. This has been well received by our community and is something that’s important for all of us at MANTLE,” Landgård says.

MANTLE pride themselves on providing customers with the best CBD. The brand believes the quality of CBD is derived from how it’s grown and harvested to how it’s extracted. Its CBD comes from a small scale farm in Switzerland that is Bio-Suisse certified. “The soil has been pesticide free for 20 years. Crops are sun grown, hand harvested for three days of the year for optimal conditions and then extracted with extreme precision. From there, our in-house Swedish chemist takes over and creates the magic in Sweden. Swiss precision meets Swedish functionality,” Landgård says.

MANTLE was born from a critical time in Landgård’s life. Through trying to meet a personal need, she and Lönnkvist have revolutionised a much-loved skincare ingredient and encouraged women everywhere to love the skin they’re in. Landgård hopes that existing and emerging brands will continue to break beauty norms and bring more realness and skin barrier repairing products to the market. “We love being part of this movement,” she adds. Her advice to anyone who wants to get into the beauty industry is to have a clear vision of what they want to create and do it. “Once you have a vision, then it’s really all about commercialising it and building the best team possible. Invest in your product and your offering.”

So what’s next for MANTLE? Landgård tells us that there are lots of interesting launches coming out this year with healthy, summer skin and hair in mind. European market expansion is also in the pipeline, so watch this space.

For more information about MANTLE, visit its website.