Organic cosmetics’ secret lies in soybean

[S.Annadana]

Organic cosmetics’ secret lies in soybean
BY ELLEN BYRON THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Posted on Monday, December 31, 2007

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CHEROKEE, Iowa — When Mark Schuett mentioned to his wife that Estee Lauder Cos. wanted to work with him to develop an ingredient for a new line of beauty products, she took him to the nearest mall — an hour’s drive away in Sioux City — to prove how important this potential new client was.

“I’d never heard of them before,” said Schuett. “I thought it was spelled ‘S. T. Lawder.’” A year later, Schuett, 50, has no problems spelling the Lauder name. His company, American Natural Soy Inc., a seed processor that makes ingredients for organic food, has become a key supplier for Estee Lauder’s Origins Organics line of beauty products.

Cherokee, a small town in the farmlands of northwestern Iowa, ended up as a stop on the worldwide beauty map thanks to the booming sales of organic personal-care products, which rose last year almost 20 percent to $ 318 million — about eight times the rate of increase in overall sales of cosmetics and toiletries, according to Euromonitor International.

Some 44 percent of women say makeup with an all-natural ingredients is important to them, according to a survey earlier this year by data company Mintel International. And young beauty consumers are especially enthusiastic: About one-third of teens surveyed said that all-natural, mineralbased or ecologically friendly claims are important when selecting makeup products to use, Mintel reports.

While Origins lines have claimed to be all-natural, competition from a flurry of competitors including L’Occitane en Provence and L’Oreal’s Body Shop in the increasingly crowded field of products boasting organic ingredients prompted Estee Lauder to seek the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s organic seal — requiring at least 95 percent of the product’s ingredients to be organic.

Before Estee Lauder launched the nine-product line this fall, it spent three years on a global treasure hunt for ingredients that would allow it to qualify.

Organic palm oil was found in Brazil, clove in Indonesia, coconut oil in the Philippines, olive oil in Greece, thyme in Spain and lavender in Bulgaria. But Origins Organics was nearly a bust because a crucial ingredient for the planned moisturizers and lotions couldn’t be found.

After repeatedly scouring organic-industry trade shows, newsletters and the Internet, Origins researchers still couldn’t find the organic emulsifier they needed.

“We were told it wasn’t possible,” said Lynn Mazzella, vice president of global product development for Origins.

An emulsifier serves as a chemical bridge that unites oil and water in products. Makers of organic foods such as peanut butter and chocolate can rely on an organic egg-based emulsifier. But that wasn’t an option for the brand, which had declared it wouldn’t use animal products.

While not all the Origins Organics products need the emulsifier, it was crucial for some of the most important ones, such as body lotion and facial moisturizer.

“Body and face lotions are our biggest sellers,” about 40 percent of Origins sales, said Daria Myers, president of Origins. “But we learned organic lotions are very difficult to make.” Eventually, after two years of looking, an Origins researcher last year spotted organic soy lecithin — a type of emulsifier — while scouring the ingredient lists of packaged organic foods in a grocery store. Armed with a new Internet search term, she eventually found Schuett’s plant in Iowa.

Usually soy lecithin, which is derived from soybeans, is extracted chemically. But American Natural Soy’s plant in Cherokee was extracting lecithin mechanically using a process that involved heat and pressure, thereby qualifying for organic certification.

Schuett, working with another company that sells soy, had spent four years perfecting the process of extracting lecithin from organic soybeans, seeking to fulfill the need for emulsifiers in organic foods like chocolate and nutrition bars.

“We had a lot of sleepless nights trying to figure it out,” Schuett said. The Iowa farmer went into organic-seed processing in 2000, hoping that a local plant would encourage more small family farms in the area to go into organic farming as they faced increasing competition from large-scale corporate farming operations.

Business is booming. Over the past two years, his company has grown from eight people to 23, and now operates around the clock.

Early next year the company will complete an expansion project to double its capacity. Schuett deliberately keeps a low profile on his company, for fear of overextending his facilities.

“We’re always maxed out in production,” Schuett said.

Working with a beauty company was a new frontier for Schuett and his partner, Clarkson Soy Products LLC. Because the germ levels permitted in beauty products are stricter than those of food products — given cosmetics ’ long shelf life and vulnerability to contamination — Estee Lauder’s technical requirements for the emulsifier were tougher than the two companies were used to.

Curtis Bennett, vice president of Clarkson, said he told Origins researchers they couldn’t meet those standards. “But they kept persisting and wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Microbiologists from Estee Lauder traveled to Cherokee to help Schuett and Bennett finetune their processes.

Meanwhile, researchers worked to maximize the antimicrobial elements of the products’ other ingredients, including lavender, red thyme, clove, patchouli and rose, a blend that the company is in the midst of patenting. Origins also found an “airless pump” for its packaging to keep germ-fostering air out of the product.

By June of this year, Schuett and Bennett finally had four drums of soy lecithin ready to ship to an Origins production plant. “That was a big moment,” Schuett said. Four months later, Origins Organics hit store shelves in the United States, and has launched in Europe and Asia over the past several weeks.

Origins, a high-end line of products, isn’t sold in the rural northwest corner of Iowa where Schuett and his family live. But his wife, Julie, planning on driving about five hours north to Minneapolis for some post-Christmas shopping, hopes to find an Origins store and purchase some of the products their plant made possible.

“I can’t wait to see it,” she says.