Meet Irina, founder of I Read Labels For You.
Irina's vision is a world of clean air, water, food, and care products—from the moment of a baby's first breath, bottle, bath, or sleep. For Irina, a parent's peace of mind should not mean hours of mind-numbing consumer product research, internal debate, and hassle. Clean living and health should be available to all.
Irina's mission started simply enough when looking for a baby shampoo for her newborn son. Why such an unwieldy list of ingredients she wondered as she read the fine print of strange words. The sheer number of ingredients nagged at her, and she got curious. At the start, she felt herself going down a rabbit-hole of information. Undeterred, she relied on her analyst-savvy, professional research expertise, and attention to detail.
Fast-forward three years. Irina has compiled multiple sets of product recommendations and notes from her thousands of hours of independent label reading and systematic research. She subscribes to several chemical databases and continues to contact manufacturers, asking the hard, detailed questions about ingredient choices and manufacturing processes. And she's alert to the possible unlisted toxic chemicals that may remain in trace amounts from the multi-step chemical processes used to produce even clean-sounding ingredients like surfactants derived from coconut oil. Irina pushes for openness against a company's veil of "proprietary information."
Irina and I connected in the spring of 2015. She had received invitations to guest on radio shows and podcasts, and knew that a professional profile video would soon be in the works. Irina wanted to have an opportunity (and a strategic-thinking partner) to reflect on what she had accomplished, refine her positioning, and help define her next steps.
Our conversations and strategy discussions produced a story-script for her video, as well as several insights that allowed her to hone her messaging and offerings.
What Irina also knows, and what motivates her work, is that if enough parents advocate for these kinds of toxin-free products, change can happen. And she's seen it occur.