Made for our sun
Anyone who has grown up here knows the particular quality of the sun in this part of the world. It is not the gentle sun of a European summer. It is the sun that empties the streets between noon and Asr, that turns a car door handle into something you approach carefully, that has shaped how we build our houses, when we travel, and how we spend our afternoons.
We built Fay for that sun.
The name
Fay is the shade that returns in the afternoon — the shadow that lengthens back across a courtyard once the worst of the heat has passed. It is a small, specific word for a particular kind of relief. We could not think of a better one for a sunscreen.
Why we started
Sunscreen in this market has always been an import. Formulas developed for milder climates, marketing built around beaches most of our customers will never visit, and packaging that has nothing to say to anyone living here. Good products, often. But products made somewhere else, for someone else, and sold to us afterwards.
We wanted to make the opposite: a sunscreen designed from the beginning for the conditions we actually live in, by people who live in them.
What we make
Fay is a broad-spectrum SPF 50 mineral sunscreen. Mineral, because it sits on the skin and reflects rather than absorbing into it. SPF 50, because SPF 30 is not a serious number in Riyadh in July. And formulated to disappear on a range of skin tones rather than leaving the grey cast that has put so many people off mineral formulas entirely.
It is one product. We would rather make one thing properly than five things adequately.
Where we are
Fay is a Saudi company, based in Riyadh. We are a small team and we read every message that comes in.