Indie beauty conversation with Réduit

21 Sep 2021 --- Launching into the delivery device sector in January 2020, Réduit hopes to remove issues with skin and hair care application and ingredient wastage. We spoke with Paul Peros, CEO of Réduit, to learn about its innovative delivery system, how it meets today’s consumer demands and how it is positioned to appeal to a post-pandemic beauty and personal care (BPC) industry.

What was your inspiration behind launching Réduit?

We were founded in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Réduit is a brand and business built on innovation, formed to disrupt our category using technological advances that are simply going to elevate the way we apply skin care and hair care. The brand is new but our work on enhanced delivery technologies spans 20 years via our parent company, Wellfully.

Click to EnlargeRéduit hopes to eliminate ineffective application and unnecessary ingredients. Source Réduit.Réduit was inspired by nature. Rather than focusing on specific plants, or extracts, we are fascinated by integrating nature’s core principles in our innovations. Magnetic fields, for example, are key to our products' performance, but at the same time these are the very same ones that make life on earth possible in the first place by protecting our planet from solar radiation.

Our research and development (R&D) process for Réduit has always been to take enhanced drug delivery technologies, traditionally used by the world’s top pharma companies such as GSK, Pfizer and J&J, and utilize this innovative technology to enhance skin care and hair care for better delivery. 

We launched on to the market in January 2020 - the year COVID-19 was disrupting the world. So we are essentially a COVID brand, which did have some benefits. This gave us the time to approach our product development and go-to-market strategies and we were able to really think about how we would approach our customers for this ‘new normal’. 

What was missing from the mainstream delivery device beauty market that you sought to fill with Réduit?

The Réduit proprietary enhanced delivery method is a revolution in the beauty treatment industry, answering the industry’s biggest problems of ineffective application and unnecessary ingredients used in formulation. This is exactly what was missing completely from the delivery device sector. This was a gap in the market that no other brand was paying attention to. No device out there would allow consumers to apply skin care without using their fingertips, as well as push active ingredients exactly where they need to go, without any product wastage. 

In our early research Click to EnlargePaul Peros has plans for a personalized hub for every consumer. Source: Réduit.days we noted a more sober approach from consumers and the desire for real results. In the wake of a health crisis, consumers had much more bandwidth to think about ingredients in their products and what would be best for them.

There is also a need for at-home solutions as salons and clinics closed their doors in lockdown. There was a real need in the market to provide tools and solutions that would give customers salon-worthy results with optimum health and benefits at the forefront, but easy to do at home. The convergence of health, wellness and beauty were more apparent than ever. 

We also noticed a clear divide between consumers looking at entertaining skin care; those who like the idea of skin care and are excited about the new gadgets on the market versus those who really ‘desire’ skin health and are educating themselves on ingredients, how to penetrate the skin in the best possible way and, above all, are looking for real results for their skin health.

How does Réduit answer today’s leading consumer demands?

Firstly we are meeting the personalization demand by constantly evolving our offering. Very soon we will be building a personalized hub for every consumer which will not only store personal information and Réduit product solutions, but will allow them to store all of their favorite skin care treatments, brands and information. We will just be the ecosystem and will allow them to deliver their treatments in a much more beneficial manner using the enhanced delivery technology. This is coming very soon.

We are already meeting the demands of sustainability by packing our 5ml Smartpods with only the essential active ingredients and removing traditional thickeners and binders that are not needed. Additionally from the packaging perspective, we initiated a Return and Renew program where consumers can send in their empty pods for recycling and reuse, and get rewarded for doing so in the form of free pod coupons.

In terms of the digital connection, we identified early on that consumers have more bandwidth for content over transactional, and before COVID would shop around, test, try and engage with in-store ambassadors and experts. However in COVID times, as a brand, you must be able to provide all of this experience digitally. This was the case when we launched and therefore altering the Réduit experience to digital platforms from the very beginning was key to educate and influence consumers. As the landscape for this is ever-changing, we stay ahead of the curve and develop our digital strategies every day to ensure we are on the platforms that our consumers are using every day. 

What did the process to launch involve, from conceptualization through to commercialization?

It was super important for us to be vertically integrated so we could keep moving at our own fast pace and focus on communications and tackle end to end across our global offices. 

We continued to Click to EnlargeRéduit aims to eliminate fingertips from application. Source: Réduit.keep our new product development and R&D pipeline buoyant where iconic and heritage brands almost ceased in new product development. This meant from launch we were continually championing the change and filling the gaps in the market. 

Keeping our foundations healthy, our logistics and supply chain strategic, retaining the ability to make short and long term decisions to best suit our brands and keeping our commercial strategy 'COVID-friendly’, we surpassed the challenges faced by many of the beauty brands when we launched and, for these reasons, we were able to go from launch to commercialization in a relatively short period of time. 

What were the greatest challenges to achieving your vision for Réduit?

Patience and climbing the learning curve alongside consumers. Launching technologically driven solutions that have simply never existed before is a very bold move. Consumers need to be educated on every touchpoint. They need to see, try and adopt a brand new way of delivering skin care when they have most likely been using their fingertips for decades. 

To drive that education and consumer adoption and take consumers over that hurdle of change has been a challenge. However, with all the great inventions in life, someone has to do it first and then it becomes the norm. While it has been a learning curve, I envisage enhanced delivery becoming the only way for consumers to deliver topicals going forward.

What are your short and long-term hopes and goals for Réduit and the wider BPC industry with regards to delivering products?

The beauty and personal care industry has far-reaching potential beyond traditional ‘cosmetic’ applications, reaching all the way into health and wellness-related aspects. 

Aside from the technical differences, these new platforms will also allow for dramatic changes in the application spectrum. So our long-term goals will be to bridge the gap between beauty and health and wellness by using our enhanced delivery technology by way of providing consumers better ways in which to administer and apply - to meet all of their needs whether that be in beauty or wellness. 

In September 2021 we will be launching Réduit’s Sister brand, Swisswell, which will revolutionize joint pain management, again powered by the proprietary enhanced delivery technology. 

Additionally, we are also getting ready to launch the biggest innovation in personalized beauty, powered by Réduit. Consumers can use all of their favorite beauty brands alongside this innovation, we will just empower them to deliver these correctly and bring the technology to market for them to do so. 

By Natasha Spencer-Jolliffe, BPC Insights Senior Journalist