Living Nature

Founded in 1987 by Suzanne Hall, Living Nature is one of the world’s original truly natural brands of skincare.  Over 24 years Living Nature has pioneered truly natural skincare and personal care solutions based on New Zealand’s unique native flora. Living Nature’s ambition is simply to market the most natural, safe and effective skincare in the world – “Made of New Zealand”.

Living Nature possibly represents one of the best examples of what New Zealand must get good at achieving consistently in business and that is, exporting high value added consumer packaged goods that are based on native plants (or other natural competitive advantages) that can only ever come from this country, with a brand that builds New Zealand’s reputation as a progressive, clean, green, pure and natural western economy by showcasing our countries unique nature backed by world class science and marketing.

To compete against the largest and most aggressive multinationals in what is of the most fiercely competitive consumer goods categories in the world – Living Nature like most SME’s exporting from New Zealand has had to be very innovative in every area of it’s business. It has also had to aim to achieve some of the highest standards in the world with very limited resources compared to all of its global competitors.

To compete globally from New Zealand, Living Nature has had to aim a very specific market niche which is more defendable long term that other larger market segments.

There are arguably fewer than a handful of brands globally that are achieving similar standards of naturalness, safety and efficacy as Living Nature.

TNS (The world’s largest consumer research company has confirmed via three separate research overseas studies that Living Nature is one of the best positioned brands to do Natural Beauty in a mainstream way. “No other brand is harnessing the purity and harmony of nature or has such a clear ingredient story and benefit on the skin.”  Over the last few years Living Nature has been approached by some of the world’s leading retailers and industry players.

Living Nature has had to study the real needs of LOHAS (Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability) beauty and personal care needs and design everything to meet the high quality, natural and ethical standards that they demand.  As such, the company has been accredited with the highest independent certification that it can in each critical area.  Living Nature exceeds the German BDIH standards for natural products and is 100% Natural by their criteria. Moreover, Living Nature has one of the best safety ratings possible under the “campaign for Safe Cosmetics” criteria and it is the only brand in the world that fully complies with Wholefoods Premium Natural Bodycare standards.

Today Living Nature offers one of the most coherent ranges of truly natural Skincare, Body care, Hair care, Men’s and Colours cosmetics in the world. For any retailer that wants to do the natural beauty category well it represents one of the few ranges that can meet all of the key needs with the least number of SKU’s and that they can recommend with confidence when asked for natural (= safe) personal care and beauty solutions. It is also one of the most awarded natural brands in skincare in the world and it is represented in over 12 countries and currently has large list of over 120 potential new distribution partners actively pursing it for distribution rights in various new markets.

Living Nature has invested a lot to ensure that packaging and the supply chain is completely scalable and sustainable. From supply of water using rainwater to fully recyclable packaging, Living Nature has some of the most eco-friendly packaging of any brand in the beauty market. “We have had to develop many new supply chain and natural product harvesting and processing technologies in house to ensure that we stay ahead and to walk the talk in                                                                               sustainable and ethical business practices.”

In the Natural products space globally there are many brands that claim to be natural that really are synthetically preserved and often artificially fragranced. These brands are deliberately confusing consumers and damaging the perception of other natural brands and even the countries that they come from. It is OK not to be natural but it is not OK to claim to be natural knowing that your products are not. The trend past “Natural” is to “Truly Natural, Safe and Ethical products”

To produce truly natural products is extremely difficult technically and that is why most of the large multinationals have not entered this market fully yet despite the phenomenal growth in this sector. The larger players have all preferred to acquire niche brands and their technology at this stage rather than try and achieve this in house. Within this context Living Nature shines as one of the most natural, safe, effective, with some of the highest sensory profiles and the best natural brand story imaginable.

Living Nature will create a highly profitable billboard for the best of what New Zealand represents in many of the world’s top retailers in the years to come and the best part is that it can only ever come from New Zealand.

More information: http://www.livingnature.com/