Thanks to lockdown, we've thrived: 3 Irish beauty brands share their secrets to success
“We’ve had a Christmas like never before,” says Donagh Quigley of The Handmade Soap Company, which he and wife Gemma founded in 2008.
The Meath-based company thrived during lockdown, a pandemic success story that started with hand sanitiser.
“We just got lucky. There was a particular moment when hand sanitiser was almost impossible to find, people needed it and we were producing it,” says Donagh, recalling how the overnight rocketing demand for the product caught the company by surprise – and finding staff needed outside-the-box thinking.
“It was a crazy few weeks. We were doing 18 hour days with shifts around the clock. We called hotels that had laid people off, asking if any of their employees would be interested in working for us. We tapped into the local GAA clubs. Pretty much from March on we had a great core team, all college kids who couldn’t get the PUP. There was great energy.”
The hand sanitiser demand drove traffic to their website and the momentum kept going through 2020. “The Irish media got really behind the push to buy Irish and we felt the benefit.” By year’s end the workforce had practically tripled – from 25 to 70.
Even pre-Covid, The Handmade Soap Company’s mission was to become the kindest body care brand in the world. “Kindness is a decision-making factor in all we do, in how we treat employees, suppliers, customers and retailers.”
Their ethos encompasses kindness to the planet. Ingredients used are 100% natural, with eco-cert accreditation across the whole product range.
“All our card is made from recycled card, all our plastic from recycled plastic – it’s important to make a market for recycled materials.” The creation of electricity from a water turbine they re-commissioned – it once powered a local linen mill – also feeds into the kindness philosophy.
The December launch of their new Anam range represents their “most sustainable step forward yet”, says Donagh. It introduces lifelong glass bottles that are refilled by the world’s first 100% compostable pouch. The environmentally-friendly technology took two years to develop – the pouch can be put in the food bin and fully decomposes in 90 days.
The company also connected with something very tangible in people’s emotional experience when they acknowledged in their Mother’s Day newsletter that ‘these days of heightened emotion can be a raw day depending on where you are in the grief cycle’.
“People said thank you for recognising that,” says Donagh.
It was another kindness.
https://thehandmadesoapcompany.ie/
In the midst of a pandemic, with non-essential retail shuttered for much of 2020, Sonia Deasy saw her Kildare-based skincare company, Pestle & Mortar, grow by 400%.
The launch of a new updated website, a surge in online sales and the fact that Pestle & Mortar’s main stockists – pharmacies – stayed open, all helped. Sonia – who founded the company with husband Padraic – attributes the exponential growth also to the brand’s philosophy and messaging.
“It really suits the current climate where less is more.”
The company favours a more natural look with less make-up, and Sonia says this was right in sync with the reduced focus globally on make up, given the rise in remote working and the restriction of social outings.
“Women were wearing less make-up. They didn’t want to cover their face in foundation and then wear a mask. And they were on Zoom and becoming more aware of how they looked.”
Pestle & Mortar’s focus on clean, natural ingredients and the company’s PETA cruelty-free certification also fits with the trend towards sustainability. Pestle & Mortar is named for the implement that grinds down food and medicine. It’s a name rooted in Sonia’s Indian heritage in natural healing. Her paternal grandfather was a natural healer in India and her uncle still practises in the same spot today.
“Pestle & Mortar use ingredients from nature combined with science. We’ve a simple but effective product range that works.”
And with some of the products taking up to three months to show the benefits, Sonia, a mum of five, says the slower lockdown pace meant women had more time to put a skincare routine in place – and see the results. The launch of two new products (Glow Drops, a self- tanning product, and Vitamin C 2 Phase Serum) last year was also well received.
A big lockdown strategy was staying in constant communication with the company’s B2B (business-to-business) customers, e.g. Brown Thomas and Arnotts.
“We called them all up, let them know we were still here to serve. Some had online stores and we did promotional activity, for example giving gifts with purchases.”
Four years ago the company became the first Irish brand to sell out on American home-shopping channel QVC, a feat achieved in seven minutes.
“It was unbelievable. It got our products stocked in many US stores including Bloomingdale’s. Now we’re going on QVC UK in June, live from our showroom in Naas.”
Also on the horizon is a new product launch in June – in a “brand new different category” for Pestle & Mortar.
https://www.pestleandmortar.com/
When Peigín Crowley launched her own brand of wellness products online with Brown Thomas last November, they sold out within a week. The same happened when she began selling them in-store.
Created during the pandemic, her ‘Ground’ wellbeing range – made from pure botanical vegan ingredients – are pesticide and herbicide-free.
“On the counter at Brown Thomas before Christmas, I was recommending products only to go home that evening and make more,” says Peigín, based in Ovens, Co Cork, with husband Shane and daughters Anna-Louise, 12, and Bella, 8.
Her success is something the award-winning spa design consultant couldn’t have imagined a year ago. When Covid-19 struck she’d just embarked on two new spa design projects. These were shelved, as were the private-label products she was putting into other spas. “My business literally fell of a cliff.” Faced with a pandemic that came with a stark ‘do not touch’ warning, and in a sector that’s literally hands-on, Peigín recalls how “everybody feared we wouldn’t open again”.
Lockdown grounded her. Her calendar opened up and – from being a frequent long-haul business traveller – she was home and soon saw how slowing down served her as a mother. “I felt in my nest as a mother. I could be in my own head and space and honour how I do wellness at home.” Always a believer that self-care’s paramount, she sees aromatherapy oils as central in self-care rituals – whether pre-bed or back-from-school comfort routines.
Knowing her business future now required her to pivot into retail and create her own range of wellness products, Peigín decided to massively reconnect with her talent for aromatherapy. Until now, she’d created in collaboration with clients, who’d give her their brief. “Last May I realised I could do this to my own design, my budget, my brief, my scent, the therapeutic benefit I wanted.” All ingredients in her four ‘families’ of products (Talamh/reconnect with nature, Codladh/invite sleep, Beo/thrive and Curam/care) are naturally-sourced and, where possible, organic.
The lockdown/pandemic timing was critical to her success. “Everyone was experiencing low levels of anxiety, disturbed sleep. A need for wellness was coming to the fore. Before we’d ‘say it with flowers’ – now we’re ‘saying it with wellness’. There’s an appetite for gifting wellness – sleep, calm, comfort – to people we can’t see or hug.” Currently stocked in Brown Thomas, Ground launches its own website groundwellbeing.com in May. Ground Treatments & Rituals will launch at the Spa, Fota Island Resort in June.
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