All companies need a vision. Although we didn’t really understand it, SUDS did have a vision. We believed you, the consumer, wanted effective products. Natural (although who knew exactly what that meant), fresh (and by that we were throwing shade at our competitors who were selling sterile, stale chemical concoctions that were three years old), and we didn’t want to spend more money on the packaging than on the contents. So, above all, we believed you wanted good value products, not cheap, but loads of hair and body goodness for your money.
Hindsight is great and it’s only looking back now that we realize our vision was just a dissatisfied reaction to our competitors’ products: a wish for something more wholesome and more in tune with the flowers and the bees than air-conditioned skyscrapers and a morning that starts with a pumpkin spice latte.
When faced with life’s challenges, we often discover that while we may want a lot of things, what we need is very simple. We thought that while our products weren’t everything you, the customer, wanted – age-reducing, silicone, shiny, botoxy sort of stuff – we can now see that what we make is all you need.
So, where are we now? Let’s reassess.
Natural – have we got there yet? No, but we’re not far off. In the financial year of 2017 to 2018, natural ingredients represented 65% of our global raw material spend compared to 35% spent on safe synthetic materials.
HOW WE’VE GROWN
How many of you have unused products sitting in your bathrooms? Because when you got home you found that product isn’t what you hoped for, or it doesn’t suit your skin, hair or lifestyle. You end up with bathroom cabinets, window sills and shelves full of unwanted stuff, on its way to landfill. When we make products for every need, everyone is able to buy exactly what’s required and ultimately reduce waste.
Providing personal service is the best environmental practice. If we can get you connected to the appropriate product for your needs, you get really good value for money, we get a regular customer, the consumption of unneeded product falls and money is no longer wasted. When you think about the product people really want, they want products to be made from rainbows, unicorns and waterfalls and we’ve got it!
Our raw materials are the best they can be. As just one example, we’re using salt in our products with genuine benefits, and we’re sourcing it from the flight paths of birds.
One of our suppliers, Antonio, both harvests our saltworks and works to protect and sustain the salt marshes of the western Algarve in Portugal. Birds including greater flamingos, spoonbills, black-winged stilts and many species of ducks use the salt marshes as wintering grounds while whimbrels and curlews rely on the site as a resting place on their migratory journeys.
Preserving this beautiful and important coastline is essential to the wildlife flourishing here and the generations of salt shepherds to come, so we’re protecting those birds and the salt shepherds.
What we do is not rocket science; humans have been preening and grooming forever. But in recent years many formulae have become synthetic, complicated, over emulsified and most of all over preserved.
None of these amazing ingredients are tested on animals. Since the beginning, we have continuously proved that a brand doesn’t need to test on animals.
So, what’s next?
Working on your aspirations is a challenge. SUDS has been working hard for a long time, so it can be tricky to think about what we can do next. This has been playing on our mind ever since a journalist recently asked just how much more creativity we can have left after 12 years. The answer is: it’s everywhere. SUDS is oozing with creativity, sometimes I even find it hard to contain; it’s fantastic.
For many years we haven’t written a plan for SUDS. The last time we had a cohesive plan was back in 2012 when we first laucnhed; it was a good plan and it lasted us quite a long time. Each year we kept trying to renew it, but we never did. This year, we wanted to write a new plan. So here it is, on the internet for all to see.
The Secret SUDS Master Plan
1. Make products for every need. It’s not what customers want, it’s what they need.
2. Be number one in every category. Do not accept the status quo: invent new products that fulfil all of the vision.
3. Create a cosmetic revolution to save the planet. We’re running out of time – we need a revolution.
We should be the gleaming example that every other cosmetics company wants to be, it shouldn’t be Proctor and Gamble or L’Oréal, because SUDS is doing the right things over and over again. Fiercely, bravely, sometimes foolishly, and with courage.