Our Story

Galen Labs’ founder Kevin Olson started mixing a foray of natural skin products in his home as an adolescent.

“The first appreciated product I made was a body scrub with olive oil, sugar, and lavender flowers from our garden; my mother loved it.”

Olson’s search for the perfect skin and body care solutions has turned him into a life-long product aficionado. Becoming more and more disenchanted with the performance of the products on the market, he started scrutinizing over their labels and questioning the purpose of so many ingredients. It wasn’t long before he realized that modern skincare was really just a combination of fancy packaging and synthetic ingredients engineered to cheaply replicate nature! I love great packaging,” he says, “but the rampant use of synthetic ingredients is what really got me.” “And for what; higher profit margins?”

In researching the history of skin care, the use of essential oils and other healing elements, Olson became interested in the discoveries of Claudius Galen, a physician who practiced medicine in the second century. A prolific herbalist (among other things), Galen wrote 30 books on pharmacy called Galen’s Pharmacopoeia, where he listed and described more than 700 plant ingredients he used in his prescriptions. (Galen’s Pharmacopoeia was used as standard reference for more than 1,500 years.) In addition to his vast research of medicinal herbs, Galen is credited with creating the very first cold cream; which is still the foundation of all skin care formulas today.

It didn’t take long to realize that these natural formulas still hold the same beneficial properties as they did then. This was the foundation for the creation of Galen 150 A.D. “natural skin care”.

“Our modern knowledge of the beneficial nature in the use of herbs, combined with the variety of ingredients available today, makes for even better skin care solutions.”

“Our cells respond to natural ingredients and, when given the option, are drawn to them over synthetics,” says Olson. “I firmly believe that if my mother’s generation had the option of natural skin care products, breast cancer would not be nearly as prevalent as it is today.”

Galen Labs will donate a percentage of our net profit to the Susan G. Koman for the Cure, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the fight against breast cancer.