Rituals: 'By 2023 all our formulas will be at least of 90% natural origin'

‘The Ritual of Namasté Body’ range recently launched online and into travel retail locations globally, adding to the brand’s already-existing skin care collection. The new line featured five products: a body scrub, shower cream, deodorant stick, body cream and body cream refill – all made using natural or naturally derived ingredients, including holy lotus, sweet almond oil, sugar, shea butter and arrowroot powder, and active ingredients like natural AHA, sodium bicarbonate and hyaluronic acid.

‘Best of nature and advanced science’​

Neil Ebbutt, director of travel retail at Rituals, said the collection was focused on “hydration and natural exfoliation”​ and like most product development cycles at Rituals, took around two years to finalise.

“With our formulations, we combine the best of nature and advanced science to create trusted, high-performing products that do what they promise​. We use as many natural ingredients as possible and for properties that nature can’t provide – or when it’s more environmentally friendly – we choose lab-made alternatives,”​ Ebbutt told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.

And this push forward with natural was “not a trend” ​for Rituals,​ he said.

"It's something that we consider in the development of all our formulas (...) By 2023 all our formulas will be at least of 90% natural origin."​

Skin care consumers ‘now experts’​

Ebbutt said Rituals had seen increased demand for products that not only offset everyday life factors like pollution but were transparent.

“Consumers are now experts and really care about where the products they buy come from and whether a product is sustainably or naturally-sourced,” ​he said. “They are looking for authenticity – both in storytelling and product ingredients.”​

Rituals was proud to add a body care range to its natural and naturally derived offering, he said, as it helped “cater to this topical and important need” ​among consumers.

And the company would continue to develop and evaluate product offerings based on three pillars in the future: clean, conscious and caring, he said.

Au naturale still trending?​

Recent findings from Euromonitor International indicated ‘natural’ was the number one product claim made across online beauty and personal care products in 2019. The ‘natural’ claim featured on more than 700,000 product SKUs, just ahead of ‘hydrating’ and ‘no parabens’.

However, Gabriella Beckwith, senior analyst for beauty and fashion at Euromonitor International, said consumer interest in natural was “slowly waning”.​​

Lack of certification standardisation and the realisation that natural was not necessarily always best for efficacy or the environment was starting to have “a knock-on effect”,​ Beckwith said.

Considering this, she said consumers were now prioritising credentials like “safety, transparency and ethical sourcing”​ and taking a more targeted and personalised approach to skin type, rather than dismissing entire ingredient groups.