Based in Schull, Moden Botany was founded by John Murray and Dr Simon Jackson, in part to prove that it was possible to build a national or even international business from a rural setting in Ireland, something Murray feels they have achieved and will continue to expand on.

Having built up sales over the past five years, the company has become an example of how to embrace the challenge posed by Covid-19 with the company seeing a surge in online sales direct to customers.

“We rocked up here in 2015 and there were like five back to back storms … we thought oh my god what are we doing!"

"But we've got a great local internet service and, if there's anything with Covid, we've all learned now that we can work remotely and make things work successfully.” 

Indeed, the pandemic has served as a real “reset” for the business, whose products are stocked in high-end stores such as Brown Thomas, Arnotts and Meadows & Byrne as well as pharmacies and health food stores across the country.

“We were and still are very much a retail business ... but we said to ourselves, if we want to survive in this business, we're going to have to really move with it and be flexible, and the best way to do that was to change our business to a direct to consumer model.”

 Prior to the Covid crisis, the retail market accounted for 60% of the brand’s sales.

Since redirecting their focus to website sales, the ratio of online versus retail is now 55/45% with the UK market accounting for 70% of online sales.

By 2024, Murray projects online sales will account for 70% of the business.

“Since we focused on a more D2C model last summer we have seen our monthly sales grow by 600% month on month compared to 2019.” 

“We built a new website and brought in a digital media company,” Murray says, adding that a process of rapid remote recruitment also began during lockdown, fast-forwarding hires that had been previously earmarked for later down the line.

One person taken on during this time was industry leader Tracy Woodward. Ms Woodward, who is now credited as being a co-founder in the business, has over 30 years experience in cosmetics and natural beauty working with brands such as Estée Lauder, Aveda and Aromatherapy Associates.

“Tracy is in London, we've got people in a marketing team based in different parts of London, we've got somebody working at the moment in Brazil. We've got a lot of people working around Ireland, so it's kind of all working in unity.”

While the team has never been further apart physically, Murray believes that the pandemic has actually brought them closer together as they faced challenges head-on. 

“I think if all of us were in the room, all of those consultants, those key players in our business, if we were all sitting around a room [instead of Zoom] I don't know if we would have been as creative. It's really made us think outside the box.” 

Ten people now work for the company, though seven are on a part-time or consulting basis. 

“By 2022, we're hoping to have 12 full-time staff, so a lot of those people will become full time,” Murray added.

In an industry renowned for its ability to constantly peddle new ‘must-have’ products, Modern Botany has taken a very deliberate departure from the norm, but this is a testament to the ethos of the brand, which is about creating staples that can be used by the whole family. 

“We don't want people using 20 million products," Murray says. 

“You don’t need three different types of moisturiser.” 

Murray’s partner in life and in business is Dr Simon Jackson, who has a PhD in pharmacognosy, the study of medicinal drugs obtained from plants or other natural sources, and this has formed the backbone of the Modern Botany brand. That, and the philosophy that personal care products should be kind to our bodies and kind to the planet.

The pair have started growing some of these key ingredients on their farm over the past five years.

“The idea is to grow, five or six [of the ingredients] ourselves over time,” Murray says, but this is a slow process. 

“We've been doing test crops to see if we can actually grow them down here which have been successful so far. Hopefully, we'll have a good crop this year of calendula and chamomile and we'll start putting those into the supply chain next year.”

The long-term plan is for the project to grow to an extent that it creates local employment for people in Schull Murray explains, and even for more local farmers to get involved in growing the crops for the brand and diversifying their own output.