About

What do we do?

We offer colour cosmetics and personal care products that are good for the environment and for you. We expect our products to deliver great results while upholding our standards.

These standards revolve around four main aspects:

• Quality: We ensure that you get your money’s worth. Our choices are based on the results products get, not on their marketing slogans.
• Good ingredients: We do not allow ingredients that could possibly harm you in any way. You can apply them without worrying about short or long-term effects for your health and your skin will thank you for it.
• Eco-friendliness: We research the brands for you, ensuring that they don’t employ any practices or use ingredients that are harmful to the planet. We apply the same principles to our own strategies. Whether we are wrapping products or dropping them off at the post office, we always strive for the most eco-friendly solution.
• Cruelty-free: We prefer products not to be tested on bunnies. We also don’t want crushed beetles in our lipstick to get that perfect red colour (ieuw). All the products on this website are thus completely vegan.

With each product or brand added to our range, we check these conditions, so you don’t have to.

We want to provide a one-stop shop for everything your skin requires, like cleanser, toner, serum, eye cream, moisturizer, oil, balm, exfoliators, face masks, body lotion, and hand cream.

And everything you enjoy, like eye shadow, eyeliner, lipstick, mascara, blush, bronzer, contour, nail polish, foundation, and concealer.

Why natural products?

Jana started being interested in natural cosmetics after reading “without parabens” on her shampoo bottle. What are these parabens and why are they harmful, and why was it in so many products? Learning what possible harmful effects certain ingredients could have surprised her. She spent a few months researching the topic, looking up ingredients’ lists and figuring out what all these ingredients meant. Slowly but surely moving away from conventional products into more natural ones. She tried out a lot of stuff from health food stores, online shops and DIY Pinterest face masks, until she found products that actually performed well, even better than their conventional counterparts. And eventually Jana’s whole skincare and make-up routine consisted out of natural products exclusively, without possible effects on your wellbeing. The products once again got changed (less drastically this time) when she completed her journey into veganism (and a more eco-friendly lifestyle in general), now banning all products that contain animal derived ingredients or are tested on animals.

Jana’s had really sensitive skin her whole life. With the change into green beauty due to possible health concerns, other positive side effects started appearing: Jana’s skin improved dramatically and make-up didn’t irritate her eyes and face anymore. Redness went down, dryness became less prominent, and there was more of a glow. No more irritated skin and watery, itchy eyes after wearing make-up for a whole day.

Summarized, you want products that don’t hurt the environment, the animals or your health, but that do have an active effect in making you look and more importantly feel better.

Why this webshop?

For Jana, it took multiple years to find products she was actually happy with. Brands that live up to her standards are scattered thin and wide across both the globe and the internet. With every purchase come so many questions:

• Are the ingredients good for my skin (and health)?
• Does the company work ethically?
• Were animals hurt to make this product?
• What packaging is the product in?
• Does this product do what it says on the bottle?

Which is why with this webshop we want to offer:  convenience.

We ask and answer all these questions, so you don’t have to worry about them and can just buy and enjoy the products.

Convenient shipping and payment: It was impossible to find all the products we use in one place. This meant having to order from multiple places in multiple currencies just to get our monthly personal care products to us. To address this, we wanted one place where everything we need can be found, with shipping staying inside the EU and payments in euros.

Convenient overview of products: It’s hard to find eco-friendly, cruelty-free, natural, high-end skincare, and especially make-up. And not just because of the amount of keywords you have to type into Google. We wanted a place where we can just browse products, without having to worry about ingredients, animal testing, or impact on the environment. Florissana is that place.

We want to make it convenient to everyone to find the cosmetics and personal care they deserve.

Why 'Florissana'?

The name ‘Florissana’ is taken from the french word ‘florissant’. This can mean multiple things, include blooming, happy, and healthy. This name reflects what we want for our customers, we want them to bloom and be happy and healthy without worry.

Who are we?

We are Jana and Mathijs, both Belgian, both computer scientists. That’s not a coincidence, we met over 6 years ago when we started studying for our master’s degree together.

Jana, 28, spends her day managing all things Florissana, teaching yoga and sometimes developing websites or web applications. She was BE Vegan's vice president for several years, a.k.a. the Belgian vegan society, taking care of all things IT and design. She helped to grow Vegan Summer Fest to what it is now. She decided to leave after a few years to pursue her own ventures. Even though she spends most of her time on Florissana and Ylva Yoga, she takes up some extra IT projects at times for good/small companies as well. Her hobbies include yoga, practicing handstands, watching good movies, reading informative or scary books, preparing delicious plant-based meals, playing with her dog Nala, photography, and experimenting with make-up.

Jana looks at experimenting with make-up as a fun activity, not a necessity, so she might apply a full face of make-up when she's home all day, just to try out a new technique or product, or just because. And then go to work the next day without any make-up when she doesn't feel like it. She can spend days researching the best product for a job. This includes checking every ingredient and doing a background check on the company.

She selects the products and brands that appear in our store. She ensures the quality of the products and personally tries all the new products before they even have a chance of getting into the store.

Mathijs, 28, works at Mobile Vikings. His hobbies include gaming, boulder, watching good tv-shows and reading. While working in academics, his entrepreneurial itch is not scratched. This is why he decided to support Jana in the creation of their own web shop.

Being a couple for almost ten years means we know how to work together. Jana brings the technical knowledge, she knows everything about the products and the brands. Her deep care for animals and the planet ensures that product selection is strict and correct. Mathijs supports her with business insight and operational support.