Seed Phytonutrients: Embedding personal wellbeing, ecosystem health and community values in all aspects of product development
By Hope Freedman
Shane Wolf | Image credit: SB
On Wednesday morning, Shane Wolf — creator of Seed
Phytonutrients at L’Oréal USA — took
the main stage to discuss his brainchild: a disruptive natural, sustainable
beauty collection. Launched on
Earth Day in April 2018 in the US, Seed Phytonutrients — a mission-driven line
of hair, skin and body products that was incubated by L’Oréal USA — is the
result of Wolf’s experience growing up on a farm and long career in the beauty
industry, including working in various senior-level marketing and sales roles
within L’Oréal.
His first inspiration for a farm-to-beauty brand arose from his mentor, a
pioneer in the natural products moment. His brand’s mission is “to plant the
seeds of health, wellbeing and sustainability for future generations.” With the
current line of 25 products, formulas are primarily developed using seeds from
organic US farms. As Wolf related, the brand has four obsessions:
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Cleaning up beauty's ugly impacts
Join us at SB'24 San Diego as Victor Casale — co-founder of Pact Collective and co-founder and CEO of MOB Beauty — shares insights from ongoing collaborations with materials innovators to create fully compostable, refillable, plastic-free, and easier-to-recycle packaging alternatives for beauty and wellness products.
Preserving seed diversity
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Supporting US organic farmers
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Promoting natural beauty
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Leading environmental sustainability
As Wolf explained, the seed is the most potent part of the plant, and when seed
oils are extracted safely, they provide nourishing ingredients for hair and
skin. By using heirloom seeds (open-pollinated, related to the reliance on
natural pollination from wind or insects), the brand supports genetic diversity
of seeds — important for better-tasting and more nutritional vegetables and
fruit — which is an increasing concern, since about 94 percent of US seed
varieties have become extinct over the past decades.
Partnering with Hudson Valley Seed Company, Seed Phytonutrients is helping
to cultivate communities to “save, share and celebrate” seeds by enclosing an
artistic, garden-themed seed packet inside the bottles (which break open in two
parts). Wolf proudly stated that Seed pays organic US farmers 100 percent
upfront, regardless of yield, so that the farmers can count on that income. Wolf
is adamant about full transparency to consumers about the definition of
“natural,” as to align with the brand proposition and ethos. And as he stated,
the brand embraces the notion that “natural beauty means healthy living.”
Wolf passionately pointed out the unacceptable sea of plastic created by the
beauty industry and called on fellow beauty brands to dial up action. With the
first shower-safe paper bottle, Seed Phytonutrients is revolutionizing
environmental sustainability. The brand packaging is composed of 100 percent
post-consumer recycled paper and a post-consumer recycled liner — which is 60
percent less plastic than a typical bottle — and the pump can be recycled
through partner TerraCycle. Additionally, all formula ingredients are 93-100
percent natural origin.
Wolf recounted highlights of his journey within L’Oréal to bring his vision to
market. Since 2013, L’Oréal has been committed to Sharing Beauty with
All,
a platform to bring shared value to its products and packaging. The company aims to empower
employees to bring forward a range of small and big idea — including new brands
— and foster an inclusive environment that thrives on diverse perspectives,
voices and ideas. While Wolf considered branching out on his own, he saw
tremendous benefits of tapping into the biggest global beauty business that has
been around for over 100 years. With L’Oréal executive leadership agreement,
Seed Phytonutrients operates independently — essentially as a startup in a
Pennsylvanian farm town — within its French parent company. On formula and
packaging, Seed aims to set a new standard for L’Oréal product sustainability.
As Wolf stated, “this truly sustainable product can demonstrate to the entire
beauty industry that beauty and sustainability are no longer separate.”
Joining Wolf in a breakout session that afternoon were moderator Danielle
Azoulay, Head of CSR & Sustainability at L’Oréal USA; Julie Corbett,
president & founder of Ecologic Brands — makers of the paper
bottle;
and Ken Greene, co-founder of Hudson Valley Seed Company. This group of
collaborators spoke about key elements of their partnership that enabled and
empowered Seed Phytonutrients to be commercialized and gain momentum only a year
after its April 2018 launch.
One essential occurrence was connecting and partnering with Ecologic to solve
the challenge of producing paper packaging at a mass level. As Corbett said,
“The story of building a 360-degree, sustainable product was so compelling, yet
we were afraid of failing again after a redesign mode. Failing is not so bad as
long as you have parallel paths.” Wolf was only committed to launching with the
right packaging. In under 18 months, the team made the “cracker jack” packaging
work at scale. Wolf added:
“You need to have stamina and to deeply believe in what you’re doing to
demonstrate intrapreneurship. You can push the envelope more. We had a
distribution opportunity in the natural channel.”
Wolf brought together “the Seed Quad” — a supportive ecosystem of trusted
individuals who are integral to the brand. As a small local company, Hudson
Valley Seed Company views its partnership with Seed as an opportunity to educate
consumers about biodiversity and cultural diversity. With artwork from over 200
artists, each seed packet communicates the origin and importance of seeds —
utilizing visual cues to establish a relationship between customer and
packaging. Panelists’ heads nodded when Greene stated, “We’ve all had to stretch
and grow to make this partnership work” and, referring to Wolf, pointed out that
“you’ve also listened to us. You could have walked away and done it easier.”
Wolf revealed that the packaging challenges and lessons learned from thoughtful
consumer education and retailer interactions is influencing his organization in
interesting ways. One obstacle that the team is starting to overcome is
convincing consumers that the inside contents are as appealing as the beautiful
external packaging design.
“You’ll go on a date with us because of what you see in the outside. You’ll
marry us because of what you see and experience on the inside.” — Shane
Wolf
Wolf views Seed as an innovator for the professional haircare brands he oversees
as Global General Manager. He finds it rewarding to migrate sustainable
technology to bigger brands. As moderator Azoulay summed up, this “small brand
is proof of concept. By starting small in a non-threatening way, it can be
brought to other areas of the organization.”
The future of packaging: An inside look at Loop
By Melissa Radiwon
L-R: SB's Tamay Kiper, Simon Lowden, Alicia Enciso, Anthony Rossi and Virginie Helias | Image credit: SB
Meanwhile, it was standing room only for the nearby panel discussing the Loop
reusable packaging initiative, featuring representatives from Nestlé
USA, Procter &
Gamble,
PepsiCo and TerraCycle — and if
the audience size was any indication, this was going to be interesting.
Launched in
January,
with pilots now taking place in Paris and the northeastern US, TerraCycle’s
Loop initiative is an online shopping platform that features products in
reusable packaging, delivered and picked up utilizing a reusable tote.
“Tom-on-tour was a big element,” said Alicia
Enciso,
chief marketing officer at Nestlé USA, referring to Tom
Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, and his
one-on-one approach to pitching the Loop idea to consumer brands.
The ice cream team at Nestlé USA was on board right away, with a can-do attitude
and motivation to make a significant change. But it wasn’t easy — the team went
through 15 packaging iterations to create something durable, yet still able to
be comfortably handled by the consumer at frozen temperatures. The solution — a
container within a container.
However, not all packaging design needed to go back to the drawing board. As
Virginie
Helias,
VP and chief sustainability officer at P&G, pointed out, some of their designers
had past ideas tucked away in the drawer. Designing for disposal is cheap,
designing for durability is an investment.
“With Loop, the packaging becomes a brand asset,” Helias said. Noting that some
consumers that never would have considered the platform are now interested
because of the “cool” packaging:
“You can understand the business benefit of this.” — Virginie Helias
Helias listed four tactics employed to get the Loop initiative rolling within
P&G:
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Go where the passion is. She looked to leadership brands, but asked who
wanted to be a part of the initiative. If they wanted to be in, they had to
fight for it.
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Bring the outside in. Use “Tom-on-tour” as a means to reinforce the idea
of Loop within P&G.
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Externally announce. Launch the idea at the World Economic Forum.
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Peer pressure. Play on the international competition — who is in, who is
not.
It is too soon to provide any statistical results, with the Paris and New York
launches happening only a few weeks ago. Anthony Rossi, VP of global
business development for TerraCycle, stated that so far results look phenomenal,
but they are looking to learn and grow from these initial launches. Next up is
London by the end of 2019; and Canada, Germany, Japan and the
west coast of the US in 2020.
PepsiCo's Quaker and Tropicana brands in their new Loop packaging | Image credit: Loop
Simon Lowden, president of the Global Snacks Group at PepsiCo, stressed the
importance of working with partners, customers, consumers and governments to
make this effort successful. Several areas — for example, Saudi Arabia,
China, India — have regulations around recycled material use in food
grade products that will require effort.
“We have to understand, that we don’t understand what is going to be the winning
card,” he said. “The card will be different in different regions. The universe
for us to make a difference is massive.”
Early feedback indicates that some people don’t like shopping online. Loop may
need to expand to existing retail partners including Kroger, Walgreens
and Tesco, and get Loop products on the shelf and in front of an audience
that expands beyond the sustainably conscious online consumer.
Ironically, Lowden predicted we will be thankful for China closing its doors on
recycled plastic
imports
in the years to come because, “Their action is forcing our action.”
“This is a new era of CEOs that marry business intent with the right thing to
do. Making changes will have short-term business impact and long-term business
health.” — Simon Lowden, PepsiCo
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Consumer & Brand Purpose Marketer
Hope Freedman is a passionate Purpose practitioner who guides brands to discover, strengthen and activate their social missions to increase consumer loyalty, grow revenue, deepen employee engagement, and positively impact communities. She brings her extensive background in CPG marketing, advertising, and communications – on both client and agency sides – to enhance brand differentiation and consumer engagement from strategy to execution.
Her work ranges from optimization of current CSR programs, resources, and partners to thought leadership initiatives for clients. Hope focused on developing differentiated brand social initiatives through a proven, insight-driven methodology for clients including PepsiCo, Unilever, Edgewell and others as a strategist in Edelman’s global Business + Social Purpose practice (read more ...).
Melissa Radiwon is Marketing Director at Resource Recycling Systems, based in Detroit.
Published Jun 9, 2019 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST