About
We started Manda in 2015 with one idea: if you wouldn't eat it, why would you put it on your skin?
We called it food for your skin. We meant it literally. Zinc oxide, organic oils, nothing we couldn't trace to a source. At the time that made us strange. Now it's on billboards.
We launched with a SPF50 Sun Paste with all food-grade & organic ingredients. A couple years later we released a SPF50 whole body Organic Sun Creme and After Sun Organic Papaya Salve.
What We Got Wrong
For years we sold a product wrapped in bamboo over aluminum because it looked sustainable. We sourced coconut oil from China and thanaka from Southeast Asia because the supply chain was easy.
We had our products made a large facility with no sourcing transparency other than labels. With no knowledge of food miles. This also made us brittle, and our innovation suffered.
Who We Are
Cyrus Sutton and crew founded Manda after his father got skin cancer. After two decades of making food-grade sunscreen, he's formulated every version of this product himself. He knows what performs climates from cold North Pacific surf, to tropical reef passes, alpine sun, and in conditions that expose every weakness in a formula.
Manda has never been a marketing project. It's what we actually make and use.
History
MANDA was founded in 2015 by six friends in San Diego, CA. We launched with a SPF50 Sun Paste with all food-grade & organic ingredients. A couple years later we released a SPF50 whole body Organic Sun Creme and After Sun Organic Papaya Salve. We were the first food grade SPF50 sunscreen in the USA and were featured in most major travel and outdoor publications, spreading the word with influential surfers from all walks of life about the importance of only putting on your body what you would eat.
We Dropped SPF Claims
The sunscreen industry has a problem. "Reef safe" has no legal definition. SPF 100 exists while the FDA has been trying to regulate it for years. Chemical filters absorb into the bloodstream the FDA's own research confirmed this in 2020. The industry still hasn't provided the safety data the FDA requested.
Our active ingredients are the exact same as when we were certified SPF50. But we are no longer playing the corporate game. If you want to know what's in it, the ingredient list is short enough to read in thirty seconds.
What Manda Is Now
Every ingredient in Manda either grows west of the Rockies or has a story worth telling.
Tallow from a regenerative cattle ranch in Lookingglass Oregon, the closest analog to human sebum that nature produces. Grass-fed & FInished. No pesticides or synthetic fertilizers.
Kaolin Clay from the Southwestern United States: volcanic, mineral-dense, the geology of where we live.
Non-Nano Zinc oxide the same one lifeguards have trusted for a century.
Beeswax from West Coast hives.
Raspberry seed oil from Berry Beautiful in the PNW.
Rosemary CO2 from Mountain Rose Herbs in Eugene, Oregon.
Batched by hand in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge
The Standard
High performing elemental protection meets food grade, organic integrity since 2015.
