The cosmetic category — as with everywhere else — isn’t short of brands proclaiming their sustainability credentials. It’s clear which way the wind is blowing, and the link between doing good for your skin and the planet at the same time is an obvious one to make. 

And that’s a problem for a brand trying to make a name for itself in this space. It doesn’t matter how serious you might be about sustainability or how much you feel the competition may be only paying lip service to the idea – there’s a powerful current drawing brands into a new sea of sameness that will see your story lost in the noise. 

Skincare brand Haeckels has charted its own challenger course to ensure it stands out in this space. Importantly, the company frames sustainability through a distinctive and compelling narrative about place and identity. 

They’re not a big international brand —they’re from Margate — a seaside town on the South coast of England, of faded Victorian-resort grandeur, now in the process of regeneration with a counter-cultural flavour.

And their locally grounded sustainability message isn’t just marketing tokenism – a trap the founder Dom Bridges is passionate about avoiding. “It’s just a plethora of crap out there claiming to be one thing that it most certainly isn’t,” Bridges told No Reply Mag. “It’s just branding, there are products out there that have all the same ingredients, but it’s just a different nice label and a different Instagram account. 80% of it is just total bullshit”.

Margate is where Haeckels’ team walk the beaches to collect the seaweed and botanicals they use to make its products. It’s where the company draws inspiration for (even) less conventional products – like candles that evoke the smell of petrichor – (or to Haeckels, the scent of rain on dry coastal promenades).

And Margate is where Haeckels is re-investing the profits of its success, turning a dilapidated casino into a new and expanded base of operations – along with a beauty academy.

Margate has even informed the company’s commitment to a more sustainable delivery chain. As Haeckels has expanded into London (reversing the conventional direction of travel), it’s taken to the sea to supply its new shop and spa – using a sail-powered sea barge to transport cargo via the Thames.

There are other notable elements to the brand’s story too – from a strong drive for transparency driving its choice of location for a new factory and HQ – so people can drop by to see how things are made, to being very open about its production process and percentages of ingredients in each product (complete with Wikipedia links for the curious).

And Haeckels has found a more crafty, approachable take on science — from the laboratory glassware in its shops (distilling purchasable product) to grown to order products (and packaging) complete with your own petri-dish to make the final preparations.

And of course, everything is designed beautifully.

So why watch Haeckels in 2022?

Well, as the business continues to grow (now in 40 markets and counting), it will be interesting to see how the brand maintains the sense of place and identity that has set them apart when it can no longer rely on its audience’s implicit understanding of what that means. What’s the attraction of a product inspired by Margate’s Dreamland, for instance, when consumers don’t understand the reference? 

Perhaps Haeckels’ sense of place and identity, acting as an internal lighthouse to navigate by, will be enough — the company certainly isn’t short of the creativity to make it one to watch as it explores new shores.

Toby Brown is a Strategy Director at eatbigfish.