‘We never copy’: Inside Clarins’ ‘permanent innovation’ and how family values created a skincare revolution

It sounds like science is also an important part of R&D at Clarins. Can you elaborate on this, please?

R&D is key for everybody. But what is more [important] is the R&D, the research, for the best quality of the product. It’s the reason why, sometimes I compare, a little bit, [the concept of] cooking to skincare. You cannot have a good dish if you don’t have the good ingredients. You have to look for the best. It’s what we are doing. It’s the reason why we have our own. In the mountains, for instance, we bought land where we cultivate medicinal plants that we use in our products. And more recently, we bought a big territory in south of France, where we will be able to have about 50 per cent of our needs [met] in the near future, in terms of the plant that we use. So like that, we do control the quality and it’s naturally organic. We respect nature this way and we do it in respect of biodiversity. And so it’s helped us also to look at the way the plants grow and to understand them a little bit better and to have better quality.

In terms of R&D, we have a big budget. We test about 600 plants every year. We are using, on a constant basis, around 400 types of ingredients. When we find one that is better for moisturising, we change it out. That’s part of R&D, I would say, on the natural way. Otherwise, we work with a laboratory that looks at the skin and we work with dermatologists. Then after we try, according to what the dermatologists tell us, we do our research in our laboratory.  

How many labs do you have in France? 

We have one laboratory, just one, where we concentrate about 110 research people in different fields. And that’s enough for us. Because thanks to the fact that since my father created Clarins, we have been mainly working on natural plant extract. So we have a huge know-how of natural plant extract. For us, it’s much more easy to create a new product with our knowledge. And we use tumeric, which is a booster for our ingredients. The main purpose of tumeric in the double serum is that it boosts the actives of the plants. 

What role do you believe sustainability can play in future innovations at Clarins? 

You have to be creative. We have been looking at different types of plastic. Unfortunately, we still need plastic today. It’s why I told you we do everything in order to be sure that the next product will contain less plastic. Sustainability is a must. It’s something that we have to keep in mind. Soon, we will be able to use only recycled plastic to create a new product, new packaging. Sustainability also means that we have to respect the biodiversity.   

So the mission of Clarins since 1985, under my direction, was to preserve the biodiversity and to reintroduce the biodiversity where it disappeared when Clarins was involved in the plants. That’s why I started very early to be in a sustainable world because I was always conscious of that. The only thing that is still difficult is plastic. At the end of next year, we will use mainly recycled plastic.

We also participate to something that is quite interesting. We call it the Plastic Odyssey. It’s a big boat where we have a team of young engineers that create machines that can recycle locally the plastic. There are two types of plastic. There is what we call ‘soft plastic’. You can melt them and you can create a pavement, a bag, a roof—you can do many things. And there is a ‘hard plastic’. When you recycle it, you can create something like petroleum or oil for a little automobile or things like that.

So these boats go along the shore of many beaches in the world, in underdeveloped countries. We create a business by asking to local people to give money to the kids to go and collect all the plastic on the beach—all the plastic that comes from the river. So they make a little bit of money. The people classify the plastic, hard or soft, and then they clean them, they cut them in small and then they melt them with heat and they do what they want.

They have mould for the stone, for pavement, for many things; they can do everything they want by recycling the plastic. The big advantage is that this plastic was supposed to go somewhere in the sea and unfortunately end up in the stomach of the fish, of the birds, of everything. Now, it’s a chair or a pavement or something like that. And we do that all over the world where we want to implement in a developing country the possibility to create a business by recycling all the plastic that gives awful pollution to the sea.

I was the first one to stop using plastic bags in the cosmetic industry. Do you know why? Because one day I was on my boat, I fell asleep and I had a nightmare. My boat was surrounded by Clarins’s plastic bags floating around me. In the morning, I called the office and said: “Stop using plastic bag. I don’t want to see any more plastic bags. It’s forbidden for Clarins.”

I was on vacation. When [my staff member] called me back, she said ‘We have a big problem’. I said ‘What problem?’. She told me plastic bags are not expensive. A paper bag costs four times the price of a plastic bag. But I didn’t mind. And then we never had any more plastic bags. That was in 1988. So now I don’t know if it is the same in Asia, but in France, it’s forbidden to use plastic bag. We don’t have any more plastic bags. We start to charge in supermarkets. You know, the point is, it may be late, but it is never too late. So it’s better to do it than not to do it.

What are some challenges that the company or you have faced when it comes to R&D? Is there something you wanted to highlight on how you overcame this challenge? 

When you are a family company, you are in it for the long-term. Our philosophy, you know, in the family and in my business is to communicate, to train, to be sure that the people, we explain very well what we do, why the product is efficient, how to use it properly, etc. We do it with a lot of passion. That's also very, very important. I love people that are passionate. I prefer sometimes to argue, to fight with somebody that disagrees with me, but I mean, you know, because at one moment I will say, maybe he's right or she's right. Maybe I have to balance a little bit my view. So listening is a key issue. And if you listen, that gives you the possibility to see what's going to happen. You know, so I'm extremely listening to the customer. We are also, you need authenticity.

Clarins was born in a spa. My father, when he started, had a spa. And he was using his product on the skin of his customers. And that’s communication between the hands of a professional and the skin of a customer—which then guides us to correct the product scientifically. Because science creates the product, and then we use it. And then we see it's not easy to apply, it's too early to see, it does not work, etc. So this communication between the empiric, the fact that you touch, and the science make the quality of the product. clarins products are made with a know-how of the skin and the product, and the scientific aspect, you know, of the chemical, chemist. Sorry, sometimes my English. So that's authenticity.

We are [all about] real skincare. Imagine that I tell you that I am a chef, but I never cook. How can you pretend to be an expert in skincare, if you don’t know how to apply the product or if you don’t have all the techniques? 

You know, I’m very proud to say that I never copy anybody. Never. For me, I will never copy. I will create. For instance, we created a lot of things. The Double Serum is something unique and we have also created our lip oil in makeup.

The new lip oil balm is great, too!

Why we use oil is because we know oil. The first [products we released] were the oils for the face and the body. Can you imagine that they were created in 1964 and 1965? And every year, we serve more tonic oil and more orchid oil in the world without doing the advertising, just by word-of-mouth.

I use [our oils] every morning. I take my shower and on my face, I apply some oil—the Blue Orchid Face Treatment Oil—and I put it on my face just like that. Any excess of oil will go away with the shower so I just have to dry myself; so I already have skincare on my face that is of pure plant extracts. Then, I will apply cream according to the weather. In Singapore, when you go out, you have to be very careful of what you put on your face.

How did you move so quickly from the lip oil to the lip oil balm? It was released so quickly after the lip oil. 

As I told you, we have 110 research people. We will put five, six, seven people on formulating one product. Others say, oh, that gives me an idea, and they come, and they do, and they say that work or does not work. And we are very agile.

What values from your family members have you taken with you from the beginning till today as a leader?

My father taught me how to be confident in people so he told me if you want to be confident in others, you need to be confident in yourself and you need to offer confidence to others. It takes a long time before people trust you. You make one mistake and you erase everything quickly but I learned to give my confidence to others and to follow. If Iook back at my life, I’d have been disappointed maybe three or four times by people I trusted. But the 90 or so other people make me forget these other people.

It’s very important. And again, it’s about listening and discussing. That’s a value that my father gave me. It’s a type of respect. And respect is a word that is very frequently used in Clarins’s vocabulary. We respect people. I [launched Clarins] in 130 countries. In Singapore, we launched maybe 45 years ago. Back then, Singapore was much smaller. And every time I visit a country, I always read about [it in advance]. I buy a book or two and read about the story about the country—its economy, religion and more. So when I’m in your country, I have an idea of what to expect—even if it is a little bit. And people will be surprised because I have knowledge about the country. For the French, we [are known to] think we’re superior. But that has changed. For me, I adapt and I listen. 

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