From the Diary of Caroline Lewington

A theatre nurse on how to read a collagen label, and why the one she is launching has two ingredients.

For Caroline it was her thumbs first. Opening vials at work, twisting lids at home, holding a coffee cup after a long shift and feeling the ache sit there a little longer than it used to. She has been a nurse for over 20 years, mostly in operating theatres, and her hips and knees ached from standing at the table. It was the aching that got her looking at collagen in the first place. Colleagues kept talking about it, so she went to buy some.

She couldn’t make sense of it. “So many types, flavours and doses, and extras I wasn’t sure anyone needed,” she says. Powders, tablets, liquids, bovine, marine, and claims that all seemed to blur into each other. “I remember thinking, oh my goodness, this is ridiculous,” she wrote afterwards.

Her view is that a lot of the aisle is more marketing than medicine, and that the research is still developing: anyone telling you collagen is proven to do everything is selling.

Simply Glow is her answer. It’s a collagen powder with two ingredients: 10g of hydrolysed bovine collagen (Type I and III) and 250mg of vitamin C. No fillers, no flavouring, no anti-caking agents. It’s unflavoured, it comes in a pouch that lasts 31 days, and it’s made in the UK. Caroline Lewington is the founder of Simply Glow Ltd, and she is building it alongside the day job. She still works in theatres.

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Two Ingredients and Nothing Else

The vitamin C is there on purpose, she says, because vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation in the body. That is close to the wording of a claim authorised for vitamin C on the Great Britain nutrition and health claims register, the only list a label in Great Britain may draw a health claim from. Everything else stayed out.

“As a nurse I don’t like things in a product that don’t need to be there. Every extra is another chance of an intolerance, or something clashing with someone’s medication.”

Caroline Lewington, Founder, Simply Glow Ltd

Because it’s unflavoured, you stir it into tea, coffee, yoghurt or a smoothie. Her one piece of advice is to let a hot drink cool a little first, because vitamin C doesn’t like heat. The powder is tested for heavy metals and microbiology.

The manufacturer offered extras along the way and, she has written, made a reasonable commercial case for them. She said no. “It gave me the conviction to keep it simple when adding more would have been the easier, more profitable route.”

The short list is not where she started. About a year ago she was boiling bones.

Boiling Bones in the Kitchen

Caroline started making her own collagen about a year ago. Boiling bones in the kitchen for days. The first attempts gave her a foul-smelling brown powder, and at one point she bought a capsule machine. “It taught me a lot,” she says, “mostly that I couldn’t tell if what I’d made worked.”

That was the moment she decided the product had to exist. She looked at the powder she’d made and realised she had no idea if it was any good. “I couldn’t tell whether the collagen was broken down enough for your body to use. I didn’t want to guess, and I didn’t want anyone else to have to.”

So she stopped guessing and went to a specialist supplement manufacturer and a chemist, and built a bespoke formula where she chooses what goes in and what stays out. A ready-made formula would have been quicker and cheaper, she says, but then it wouldn’t have been hers to decide. She has put her own money into it and kept going.

The most expensive decision so far, she wrote, was choosing between two options for the collagen itself, both in her own formula. One was a standard, unbranded collagen: clean, tested, cheaper, with a better margin, and nobody would have known the difference from looking at the pouch. The other was a branded, clinically studied collagen: the same clean approach, but with published research and years of real feedback behind that specific ingredient. With the first, she’d be asking women to take her word for it. With the second, the evidence already exists and she can point to it. She went with the more expensive one. “More money out, less profit in, a better product at the end of it.”

“Twenty years of nursing has taught me that you don’t cut corners on the part that actually matters.”

Caroline, Founder, Simply Glow Ltd

She gives the same test to anyone standing where she stood in the aisle.

How to Read the Aisle

This is what Caroline would do if she were shopping, in her words:

Look at the dose. How much collagen is actually in a serving, not just that it ‘contains collagen’.
Read what else is in it. If the list is long, ask why each thing is there.
Ask where it comes from and whether it’s tested.
Be wary of big promises. The research on collagen is still developing, so anyone telling you it’s proven to do everything is selling.
Pay attention to real people who actually use it and recommend it. To her that counts for more than anything printed on the pack.

“I won’t make promises I can’t back up in writing,” she says.

She has written about a woman her age who was taking collagen because she kept seeing it online and felt she probably should be. The woman had started it for her joints and was taking a marine collagen, and the two of them ended up having a long conversation about how hard it is to make sense of health information when most people have never been taught how to understand what their own bodies need. “I don’t just look at what a brand is highlighting, I ask what they’re leaving out.”

Reading a label is the part she already knew how to do.

Still in Theatres

One correction Caroline made to our questions: she hasn’t left nursing. She still works in theatres, and Simply Glow is being built alongside that.

The nursing didn’t prepare her for the rest. She knew how collagen works in the body, and she knew about vitamin C and synthesis. “I did not know what an MOQ was,” she wrote. “I did not know how to find a manufacturer or write a brief for a chemist. I did not know how to build a Shopify store, code a landing page, or set up a business account.”

The most frustrating moment so far was a Teams meeting she couldn’t get into. Her account manager at the factory was waiting. Her son Harry was already in it from his house and talked her through joining from hers over the phone. She’d been sent a few different links and kept clicking the wrong one. In the end she emailed the factory and asked if they could do it on Zoom instead, and got on that way.

“I’m used to being the calm one when things go wrong in theatre, so feeling completely lost over a link was humbling.”

Caroline, Founder, Simply Glow Ltd

Her son also sat next to her on the first Zoom call with the chemist, she wrote, because she didn’t want to do it alone. The rest she is working out with a lot of help and a very patient husband.

A colleague showed her the shape of it without saying anything. She started her own business selling camping accessories at summer fairs and events, and she’s still nursing too. “Watching her build it a bit at a time, and seeing how much she loves it, showed me you can do both.”

Four children, a husband, Barry, she has known since she was 14, and a brand in production. “Now I’m 55, a mother, a nurse and now a founder,” she wrote. “I keep waiting for it to feel strange, building something completely new at this point in life, but it doesn’t, it just feels like the next thing.”

Where Caroline Is Now

It’s early, and she says so. The powder is being made now, the pouch is being finished, and she’s launching as soon as it’s ready. The website is live with a waiting list. Before any of that she had one-to-one conversations with well over 300 women about what they want from a collagen, and those conversations shaped a lot of the decisions. There are no sales yet. She’s right at the start.

She has also said on LinkedIn that Simply Glow is in talks with local coffee shops.

In twelve months she wants the business to continue to grow, and she wants to keep learning, because running a business is all new to her and there are so many areas to get to grips with, like finance, stock and marketing.

Asked for one thing outside work, she comes back to the business. “My dream is to make Simply Glow a success and then bring my children into it, so it becomes something we build together as a family. Harry already helps me, and I’d love it to grow into something they’re all part of.”

What she took from the Teams call applies to the rest of it. “I don’t need to know everything before I start. I ask for help, or just ask for a different link.”

Five Lines from Caroline’s Diary

“As a nurse I don’t like things in a product that don’t need to be there.”
“I didn’t want to guess, and I didn’t want anyone else to have to.”
“I won’t make promises I can’t back up in writing.”
“Collagen is a continued commitment to your health.”
“Confidence does not come first, action does.”