Purposeful beauty: asa Beauty marries sustainability and luxury with refillable make-up concept
The brand launched in January this year with a product range including lipsticks, concealer, powders, and cheek tints.
Most notably, the brand uses a smart refillable and reusable system to minimise wastage and reduce plastic consumption.
The brand was founded by Asha Jindal Khaitan and her daughter-in-law Sukriti Jindal Khaitan.
Asha is a veteran in the health and beauty industry, who co-founded the nutraceutical brand Pure Nutrition. The family is also closely associated with the Jindal Naturecure Institute in Bangalore.
The duo developed the brand to bring local consumers quality products that they have experienced overseas.
“We’ve seen products of really good quality overseas. Unfortunately, India’s standards in terms of regulation are not so high, so the process of launching products is not so thorough. That’s why we decided to create a beauty brand with quality products as good as what we can find abroad,” said Sukriti.
Eco luxe
The founders also wanted to bring beauty consumers a sustainable product without compromising on luxury.
“Obviously, consumer behaviour has changed quite a bit after COVID-19. People have moved in the direction of being a lot more purposeful. It’s not just about looking out for yourself but being conscious about the path you’re taking,” said Sukriti.
Compared to other industries like fashion, Sukriti considers the beauty industry to be lagging behind in terms of sustainability and dealing with waste.
“[The beauty industry] is a huge contributor to plastic wastage and waste management issues in the world. We wanted to go down this path of combining utility, luxury and purposeful beauty. So, for us it was so important to make sustainability a major pillar for the brand.”
asa Beauty’s packaging is made entirely from aluminium, a material that can be infinitely recycled. The company offers products as a refill, which can be easily loaded up into beautifully crafted metal casings.
“Because it is metal, it can stay with you for many, many years – and you’ll want to keep using it because it’s beautiful. All our designs were inspired by nature and have a luxurious feel to it.” said Sukriti.
Retaining the prestige factor was a huge consideration for the brand and primarily why the firm did not opt to use post-consumer recycled (PCR) materials to developed recyclable or compostable packaging.
“We wanted to ensure that we are also adding a luxurious feel to our products and plastic doesn’t necessarily give that feeling. Whereas aluminium is a metal and the feeling in your hand, it just feels and looks a lot more like luxurious product,” said Sukriti.
A worthy challenge
Asha told CosmeticsDesign-Asia that choosing to use refillable packaging presented many challenges during development.
“It was difficult mostly because it was never done this way in India before. There was a lot of R&D and we had to work with different people just to get one thing done. Even now, we are still changing and improving the packaging.”
She added that the company persevered because it believed strongly in the concept.
“It would have been very easy to go to China and order some packaging, but we wanted to something different and make it in India. This way definitely wasn’t easy, but we were in no hurry to launch – it was more important to get it right.”
Despite the hurdles, Asha encouraged other brands to explore sustainable packaging options. “At the end of the day, I would say that it was a lot of fun.”