Transcript

Wellington College: Does making it natural make it more expensive for the consumer?

Karen Farley: It certainly is for the producer. You actually do pay a lot more for the ingredients when you’re using natural. That is why people use synthetics really. The synthetics are dirt cheap.

It would probably be quite an eye-opener if you were to find out how much some of these skincare companies are actually producing their product for. I mean, they have huge price labels on them, but the actual cost of a lot of the synthetics they’re using in them is very, very small.

To use natural skin-care ingredients is more expensive, but for the consumer, you can’t really pass on a lot of that cost because you’re competing against big brand names who might use cheaper ingredients, but they can market. They’ve got huge marketing arms behind them. I think one big company, I think L’Oreal, have a five million dollar advertising budget just in New Zealand alone!

It probably just means that we just don’t quite make as much money as if we were in a big, huge conglomerate.