When Nara Smith launched her debut product in late October — a garlic-yuzu algae cooking oil made in partnership with Algae Cooking Club — it sold out in just over 24 hours. By the end of the week, the company had cleared its monthly inventory and expedited a second production run to meet demand.
Diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease, Smith was drawn to algae oil in part for its anti-inflammatory properties. “The best products — the ones that are made with care, perform beautifully and actually make your life better — naturally rise to the top of culture,” Smith says. “Algae oil is one of those.”
For Kas Saidi, co-founder and CEO of Algae Cooking Club, the sellout affirmed a long-held belief in algae’s potential. The launch was culinary in form, but its implications extend well beyond food. Algae has been steadily gaining ground across wellness and personal care, with beauty brands now investing in the ingredient as an evidence-led, high-performance active that meets the expectations of today’s ingredient-literate customer. Saidi explains that unlike many other trending wellness ingredients, algae offers both consumer appeal and business efficiency. “Once the infrastructure is in place, scaling is all about volume,” Saidi says. “The more volume we do, the more costs come down. The long-term economics actually favor algae.”
According to Spherical Insights, the global algae skincare market is projected to more than double over the next decade, from $207.9 million in 2024 to $443.5 million by 2035. The firm notes that this growth is partly fueled by rising consumer demand for natural, multifunctional ingredients that support skin hydration, barrier repair and signs of aging.
As consumer demand for algae in beauty accelerates, brands like Mara, Blue Lagoon Skincare and 111Skin illustrate a commercial playbook for luxury and prestige brands who want to win in this emergent frontier. But like any trending skincare ingredient, there’s risk in treating it like a fad.
What algae actually does
In beauty, “algae” refers to a diverse class of marine organisms. This includes macroalgae (aka seaweed — brown, green, red) and microalgae (microscopic strains like chlorella, nannochloropsis, and spirulina), each offering different benefits depending on the species and extraction method.
Triple board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon Yannis Alexandrides, who is also the founder of London-based 111Skin, describes algae as operating on a systems level — harmonizing the skin’s internal environment by “maintaining redox balance, hydration and metabolic efficiency”. Unlike narrowly targeted actives like peptides, which function “as targeted messengers that are signal-specific” for firming and smoothing, or ceramides, which help rebuild the barrier, algae works more holistically — creating the optimal conditions for other ingredients to perform their best. “In essence, peptides repair, ceramides rebuild and algae harmonize,” Dr. Alexandrides says.
This ability to function both independently and synergistically is what makes algae so versatile. “With thousands of species offering distinct biochemical properties — from antioxidant-rich microalgae to deeply hydrating macroalgae,” he explains, “our team can tailor extracts to enhance resilience and long-term performance.”
That versatility is on full display in 111Skin’s collaboration with Aman, the ultra-luxury hotel group. For the development of a bespoke mask, Dr. Alexandrides shares that the brand turned to kalpariane, a brown algae extract offering multidimensional benefits: antioxidant protection, collagen preservation and barrier support. “Aman specifically requested a nourishing mask that would resonate with their clientele,” he explains. “While we typically formulate masks to target specific concerns, kalpariane allowed us to meet Aman’s brief without compromising our science-driven standards.”
For Dr. Alexandrides, the ocean is “one of the most sophisticated biolaboratories on earth”. He sees algae not as a fleeting trend, but as an enduring source of innovation: “[The ocean’s] organisms have evolved survival mechanisms that mirror the skin’s own adaptive intelligence — from cellular defense to osmotic balance and barrier renewal. Algae embodies this parallel perfectly, allowing us to harness marine resilience and translate it into clinical performance and sensorial refinement.”
This belief — that algae mirrors the skin’s own adaptive intelligence — underpins the brand’s use of species like wakame (for tissue regeneration) and nannochloropsis oculata (for antioxidant-rich hydration) within its product line. “As a plastic surgeon, I understand how vital cellular health, regeneration and protection are to achieving lasting results — both in the operating theatre and in daily skincare,” Dr. Alexandrides adds.
Today’s beauty founders will be the first to say that while clinical relevance matters, it’s not enough on its own to command a luxury or prestige price point that still drives consumer demand. For algae, the challenge most brands will face is translating its clinical efficacy into broad, scalable commercial value.
A luxury ingredient?
Mara’s cult-favorite Algae Enzyme Cleansing Oil, which counts Hailey Bieber among its fans, retails for $58 — and frequently sells out. This is a level of resonance hard-won in today’s fragmented skincare market, especially for a brand that launched in 2018, when algae was still on the periphery.
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But Mara’s early commitment to algae was more deeply rooted in its clinical strategy than one might expect. “While there wasn’t a lot of consumer awareness at the time, the science was compelling,” says Mara founder Allison McNamara, who identified algae’s potential through its dense concentration of amino acids, antioxidants and omega-3s. Her bet paid off. Algae became both Mara’s formulation anchor and its brand story — reinforced by results consumers could see and feel.
“Our positioning has always been about performance and sustainability,” McNamara says. “That said, algae isn’t always the most expensive ingredient in our formulas, we balance cost with performance. What truly makes it a luxury ingredient isn’t the price per kilo, but its efficacy, traceability and the results it delivers.” Algae’s luxury positioning depends on the clarity of its storytelling, which is closely linked to how rigorously a brand frames and proves its 360 benefits — its sustainable and regenerative sourcing methods, or its clinical efficacy in addressing a broad range of consumer’s skin needs.
Mara blends wild-collected and lab-grown strains across its portfolio, often pairing algae with clinically legible co-actives like peptides and stem cells. “Consumers know what niacinamide or peptides do,” McNamara explains. “So we draw parallels — firming, brightening, barrier repair — to position algae as the next-generation luxury active that’s naturally derived, scientifically validated and sustainably sourced.”
Blue Lagoon Skincare applies the same principle of specificity, while factoring in provenance and exclusivity. The brand’s patented microalgae, discovered in geothermal seawater in Iceland, is grown onsite using carbon capture and renewable geothermal energy — a process the company controls end-to-end. “People aren’t just buying a product,” says head of R&D Ása Brynjólfsdóttir. “They’re benefiting from more than 30 years of scientific research.”
Sustainability risks
Blue Lagoon Skincare and Mara differ in how they approach algae sourcing and sustainability. Blue Lagoon Skincare is a certified B Corp that meets the COSMOS standard — an international benchmark for organic and natural cosmetics that enforces criteria on ingredients sourcing, clean processing and environmental responsibility. It also cultivates algae onsite under a proprietary model. In contrast, Mara sources algae through “wild collection” in Ireland and France, a method designed to prevent overharvesting and to preserve ecological balance. Mara does not list any algae-specific certifications for its suppliers.
More broadly, the ASC-MSC Seaweed (Algae) Standard is the leading certification for sustainable algae production across wild harvesters, farms and microalgae sites. According to McNamara, Mara is already “looking at becoming ASC-MSC Seaweed Standard-certified”. “Typically, this was more for food brands, but we are actively talking to them about certification,” she explains. “As of now, we just independently vet all of our suppliers, and from whom we request all extraction practices directly.”
For consumers, the challenge lies in deciphering which sustainability labels actually reflect ecological impact. For brands, the risk is reputational, particularly if they fail to offer full transparency around species, sourcing methods and certification. As algae’s profile rises, substantiating sustainability claims will become a key differentiator for brands who want to future-proof their customer positioning as the race to dominate algae-forward skincare intensifies.
What brands need to know
Brands looking to take advantage of algae’s rise should know that there’s both opportunity and risk in leveraging the clinical-first positioning that’s working for the likes of Mara, 111Skin and Blue Lagoon Skincare. Brands using scientific language without substantiated evidence risk being accused of “sciencewashing”, a term used for clinical-style marketing that’s not backed by credible data.
The emergent white space for beauty brands is to take ownership of their storytelling, through authority, transparency and innovation. In algae’s case, precision matters. Unlike familiar actives such as hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, or peptides, algae cannot be marketed as a monolith. It only carries meaning through scientific specificity; each strain delivers distinct biochemical properties; and credibility now depends on naming, sourcing and clinical validation.
For Blue Lagoon Skincare, “the difference is in the science behind it — and that it is unique to the Blue Lagoon Skincare”, says Brynjólfsdóttir. “Sharing that proof has become an important part of how we communicate.”
If the last decade in beauty was defined by acids and actives, the next might belong to biointelligence. Algae, with its blend of performance, provenance and clinical proof, may be where that begins. “In a landscape where actives become standardized, the brand that can say, ‘This strain, this study, this story,’ wins,” says Dr. Alexandrides.
