GUAM enters the longevity business We talked about it with Giulia Siena, CEO
Do you remember the GUAM seaweed mud? The commercials, for us girls of the nineties, were pounding. For years, I myself dreamed of using them, even in middle school. I was looking for them in supermarkets, I wanted not so much the product (maybe I was too young to understand it) but the feeling I thought those muds would give. I wanted to take care of myself. Today, GUAM is renewed. We talked about it with Giulia Siena, CEO and new generation of a company that this year celebrates 40 years of history. “I literally grew up in GUAM,” she told us. “My father, Egidio Siena, founded the company in 1986 and since I was a child I have breathed the world of algae, the sea and cosmetics. Today my goal is to evolve GUAM with an eye to longevity, without losing what has made us unique for 40 years: our deep knowledge of seaweed.”
Interview with Giulia Siena, CEO of Guam, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary
What was it like for the new generation to take up this witness and what new energies or perspectives have you brought to the company without distorting the family legacy?
My father had a great intuition in 1986: to understand the potential of seaweed when they were still little known in the cosmetic world. My goal is not to change this identity, but to make it evolve and give it a contemporary reading. I believe that our generation has a different relationship with beauty. We are no longer looking only for a cosmetic product, but for 360-degree well-being: we are much more attentive to what we eat, to physical activity, to sleep, to skin health and, increasingly, to longevity. This is why I want to bring GUAM more and more into the world of wellness and longevity, keeping seaweed at the center of our research. Our challenge is therefore to take a heritage built over 40 years and reinterpret it through the needs and lifestyle of the new generations, combining cosmetics, research, technology and wellness.
How do you transform a complex and ancient raw material such as seaweed into a technological and performing skincare?
For us, everything starts from nature. Seaweed is an extraordinary raw material and contains a concentration and a variety of natural active ingredients that are difficult to compare with other cosmetic ingredients. The real challenge, therefore, is not to transform seaweed into something different, but to be able to preserve and enhance its natural heritage to the maximum, through research and technology. It is precisely from this principle that Alga Longevity is born. We wanted to rethink the very concept of cosmetic formulation: no longer considering seaweed simply as an active ingredient to be added to a formula, but to make it the protagonist of the product. After 40 years of experience in seaweed processing, we continue to discover how incredibly rich and versatile this raw material is. This is what makes it possible for us to create a skincare that is both natural, technological and highly performing.
Longevity today is one of the strongest trends in the world of well-being: what does this concept mean for GUAM and how is it linked to the regenerating power of algae?
For us, longevity doesn't simply mean living longer, but living better and taking care of ourselves over time. It is a change of perspective that concerns well-being at 360 degrees and that, inevitably, also involves the way in which we take care of our skin. We don't want to talk about anti-aging as a fight against time, but about skin quality over time: keeping it healthy, vital, luminous and in balance for as long as possible. And this is precisely where the concept of longevity meets the GUAM world. Marine algae are ancient organisms, capable of living, adapting and regenerating in complex environments, and they contain an extraordinary wealth of natural substances. With Alga Longevity we want to bring this philosophy to cosmetics: to use all our experience on seaweed to take care of our skin not only thinking about how it looks today, but about how it will look and feel over time. For me, this is true longevity: not simply adding years to life, but adding well-being to years.
How does your green commitment translate into practice and how did the collaboration with the Marevivo association come about?
We feel a great responsibility to contribute concretely to the protection of the ecosystem from which it all began. From this vision comes the collaboration with Marevivo and our support for the Replant project, dedicated to the protection, restoration and repopulation of Mediterranean marine forests. These ecosystems play a fundamental role: they contribute to the production of oxygen, absorb CO2, protect biodiversity and help to combat coastal erosion. For us, it is important that sustainability does not remain just a declaration of intent, but is transformed into concrete actions. Replant perfectly represents this approach, because it intervenes directly on the protection and regeneration of marine ecosystems. Then there is a very deep bond with our identity: the sea has given us an extraordinary raw material and we feel the duty to return something to the sea.
