Expanding market potential for marula oil
Marula Pure Beauty Oil won this year’s CEW Eco Beauty Award. And, just last month the company launched Marula Foaming Cleansing Oil which is formulated with a surfactant derived from the botanical oil.
Everywhere at once
Thus far the Marula Pure Beauty Oil product line has been sold in-store at Sephora across North America, including the shops inside JC Penny.
Going forward, the company’s products will be available on the ecommerce sites Sephora.com and Nordstrom.com. And Nordstrom’s retail locations will sell Marula Pure Beauty Oil beginning in September.
A global expansion effort is in the works too. “The brand is implementing new strategies to expand upon its current international presence in the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Malaysia, adding distribution in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, with more launches soon to come for Germany, the Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong and Macau, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and China,” announced Marula Pure Beauty Oil this week in a statement to the press.
A sense of ethics
This expansion necessitates growth across the supply chain: “We have created a supply chain involving over 1,300 rural women in 2014, and we target to increase rural women harvesters to 10,000 by 2020,” explains the company’s statement.
Marula Pure Beauty Oil’s hair and skin care products are made with fair trade marula oil. And the company takes great pride in the sustainability efforts that, in large part, led to the aforementioned CEW award. The oil is sourced from wild-growing trees, therefore sidestepping a need for pesticides or irrigation. It is cold-pressed by hand and filtered without chemicals or solvents.
Processing takes place at rural locations in Namibia and Swaziland. And, the company boasts “utilizing less than 1% of the available Marula resource in [those two countries],” according to its questionnaire on the CEW site.
In sum, “Pure Beauty Marula Oil is a connection between the American consumer and the rural women of Africa.”
Demand for naturals
"Marula Pure Beauty Oil has maintained a loyal following since its launch, even in the very competitive environment of Sephora because the products truly deliver on both the results and the experience,” says co-founder, Jonathan Kendrick.
“They also provide a fair trade living to thousands of women in Africa with whom we are privileged to work to harvest this rich and wonderful natural resource."
Marula isn’t the only oil seeing an uptick in demand. Products in an array of categories are increasingly formulated with argan oil, chia oil, and rose-hip oil among others.
The trends for naturals and sustainable beauty will likely help fuel this market for some time.
What else is going on in skin care?
Find out during Cosmetics Design’s upcoming Skin Care Ingredients 2015 virtual event. Registration is FREE. And, panel discussions will cover advancements in anti-aging, global regulatory issues, trend in the segment, and much more.
