Allard founded Aethic in 2011 and started work on the first formulation and getting this tested scientifically.
Once this was completed two years later we launched Sôvée in Selfridges, London in 2013 during Project Ocean.
At various times we’ve retailed in Whole Foods, Planet Organic, La Rinascente (Milan), El Corte Inglés’s Primeriti site, A.S. Cooper & Sons (Bermuda), Beauty Works West, Harvey Nichols (London) and various specialist skincare stores and websites.
We are working with Hotel and Resort operators such as COMO, Six Senses, Carpe Diem, Rawa Island Resort and several more.
We’ve also successfully retailed products in Duty Free on board Air Canada, Alitalia, Blue Panorama and KLM.
We are making Aethic the skincare company that meets the needs of people like you. People who put their skin only just ahead of the environment and recognise the relationship between skin and nature as being a mutually beneficial one. We would like people to live with healthy feeling skin that looks great and to feel good about their positive contribution to ocean life.
Allard Marx is the founder and he is surrounded by passionate people who have a lifetime of knowledge in over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, consumer goods and sustainability. They have worked with the likes of Maybelline, Colgate-Palmolive, Parfums Christian Dior, Coca Cola, London International, Schwarzkopf and also worked in food – where ingredients are quite critical!
Having collected these experiences they set out to establish and grow a company that would break the mould and innovate with scientifically-proven substance to its claims.
We are more careful with this term than most.
We discovered that many ‘organic’ certifications are self-completion questionnaires. And at which point was a field growing organic flowers last subjected to pesticides. We don’t know!
So we really do prefer natural and pure ingredients. And the word we care about most is ‘compatible’.
For your skin, there are natural and organic ingredients that you may react against. That does not make those ingredients nasty, it just means that they don’t suit your skin chemistry. Small wonder then that many allergens of known ingredients that we are legally obliged to list in our ingredients, are in fact excipients of essential oils.
The same compatibility criterion applies to marine life. Crude Oil is organic. Yet spill millions of gallons into the ocean and it does enormous harm. It is not compatible.
Imagine our surprise when Zinc Oxide and Titanium Dioxide proved harmful… while they are in any event not naturally harvested but man-made, they are nonetheless often trumpeted as ‘organic’ and ‘reef safe’. Studies show that this is not the case and that they also react with the sun to create hydrogen peroxide which is harmful to phytoplankton.
The first truly organic and naturally harvested sun filters are MAA’s (mycosporine-like amino acids) and we’ve secured the worldwide rights to probably the most effective one of those. More on that another day.
It means that a product does less harm and more good to the marine environment. Its net contribution is positive. In the case of Aethic Sôvée, the product already has a very low acquatrail because the cream is fully ecocompatible and the bottle is too. Only transportation needed to be ultra-offset and this being done, the product qualified for that certification.
The honest answer is sometimes! (Also see above in answer to whether ours is a new company). Bricks and mortar retail loves new products to keep people coming into stores with items that arouse their curiosity.
Yet to stay in and not be replaced by yet another new product, they have sales expectations which are often higher than our own. So on a number of occasions, we’ve been very happy with sales yet they wanted more – something a small growing company can only achieve with massive marketing expenditure. And we’re not quite there yet.
So let’s say we’re in and out stores and we’ll keep you posted on new wins as and when we are listed again.
We’re available in a growing number of resorts and outlets close to the ocean and cruise activity.
As sales rise and people like you talk about Aethic, we’re confident that more stores will also want us back or keep us in!
