At the age of 27, following the death of her father, Annemarie Widmer took over the family business Louis Widmer, specializing in skincare and dermatology. Now, twenty years later, she gives her first exclusive interview about her family, her favorite beauty products, and the importance of sustainable business practices
You are deeply involved in the operations of Louis Widmer, what does an average workday look like for you?
AW: “I work now for twenty years for the company and I can tell you I have not been bored for one day in all these years. Sometimes I’m even looking forward to a very boring day. It’s difficult to say what a typical day looks like as we do development on our own production, assemble, and we are also handling the distributions throughout subsidiaries on our own. So each day new challenges do come up on very different company levels. There is nothing like a typical day for me, which actually makes it nice, challenging, but also exciting. And I think that’s one of the reasons that I’m still on this very deep operational, daily operational level. This company makes me still happy after 20 years.”
You just mentioned challenges. Can you give an example of a challenge you have been confronted with lately?
AW: “What is really challenging for us as, let’s say, is to grow in new countries. So we have difficult economical times these days with the second war now coming up, but the one in Europe that we already have, inflation that we face, especially in the European countries and in the eurozone. So the possible new distributors are not that keen to build up new business these days. So this is something that is one of the most important topics actually on the table of the management today.”
Can you give an example of a country or region you’re focusing on and would you enlarge your distribution channels or will you only stay in pharmacy and para pharmacy?
AW: “So if I look at Belgium, this is for sure the right way to go also in our own country, Switzerland. And this is how we build up our brand and company. And this very specific retailer strategy is still important for us today, which doesn’t mean that if we go to a very new country, let’s say India, maybe there, the pharmacy will not typically be the right channel for general cosmetics. But in the countries that we are today, the focus is in all the European countries on specialized retailers such as pharmacies and parapharmacy and also doctors, clinics. And we stick to this strategy also in the future, especially in European countries. For example, we would like to conquer more than Nordics. And there are still a lot of countries to conquer around Switzerland.”
If you talk about Nordics, you need to be or the best way to be is very natural, very ecological. Can you give an idea about the percentage of natural elements in your products? And can you elaborate a bit on the packaging, about the sustainability of the packaging?
AW: “So we are not a natural cosmetic brand. We are manufacturers of high quality dermocosmetics and we have consciously decided to use different raw materials. This is, let’s call it a product philosophy. The primary basis for the decision making is not the origin, like is the case for natural brands that focus on the plant as the first decision they take. In our philosophy it’s not the origin, but it’s rather purity, efficiency and the tolerance of the raw material. So this is a very different approach. And it’s difficult for us to say how much percentage is natural and how much is more synthetical substance. We do have this all. We have 100% plant or natural origins. We have half and half and we have a lot of syntactic substance that are used also. So in our products you find them all. Which does not mean that sustainability is not important for us. We select our raw materials on very high quality standards that they have to face, but we are also paying attention to the animal welfare. We try to do as vegan products as possible, but we still have some products, for example, beewax that we use for the lips. So we are not 100% vegan, but nearly. But of cours the conversation of natural resources or environmental protection is very important to us. And I have a nice example for you. For example, if you compare almond oil to vitamin A. The process is clear that we will always source natural almond oil because it’s easy actually to gain. You can gain it in good quality. The process is easy. You just press this knob, you filter it, and then you have a high standard. But for example, vitamin A, we will always use it scientifically because imagine for one kilogram of vitamin A, you would need 60 tons of carrots to gain it on a natural basis. So this is not at all sustainable. And what is good about chemical ingredients is that you always have the same quality standards. You are not having fluctuations in quality. We also see it in our, for example, Remederm Body Oil Spray. Colour is changing because there are six natural oils in it so the colour can change a little bit. But let’s say that purity, tolerance and this is what has the first priority to choose the ingredients for any product. Louis Widmer is evolving. We are developing the old brand, we are not standing still. Maybe you don’t always see it from outside, I say marketing or packaging wise, but we are also always adapting the existing products to the latest, the methodological findings or new technologies or new ingredients. For sure, in the future, there will also be new things.”
I don’t know whether you lived also with your grandfather, whether you have a history together. I don’t know what age you were at that time. But do you have souvenirs of him, or is there something that you inherited from Mr. Widmer, where you’re really proud of?
AW:”So it was actually my father and grandfather who build up the company together. Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to meet my grandfather as he died in the year that I was born. So we missed each other. But my father was very present for sure. He was building up the business, making it a bigger build with all the subsidiaries that we still have today. And I had the chance to work four years with him. So it was not a very long time. He died when I was 27. When I had, I could take over the heritage that he built up. And what he did is he always put people at the center of the meaning also of this company. So we serve the skin, we serve each client, each consumer. But we also try to serve the employees. No matter in which hierarchy they work, no matter in which country they work, for sure then the general managers of the country lived this philosophy. But I think this Louis Widmer spirit that he built up you can still feel it today. He was very tolerant person and it was important for him to have fun because he always said, hey, come on, we spend more time at work than we spend with our loved ones. So let’s, don’t forget to laugh and to have fun and to celebrate success together and to move on. So he was a tolerant, generous boss, I would say, and expressed his gratitude. And I think this is the main philosophy. And I hope that if you ask employees of mine, here at the headquarters that they can still feel it. And what we have in common, very important, that we have the same understanding for sustainable business management. So I think this is also what leads us to this. We are still 100% independent. We are still family owned. And this independence, also financially independent, 100% it gives us also the opportunity to take our decisions as we want; to handle as we want. I think this makes us also special and it’s also a good environment for employees to know that there’s a family standing behind it and the ways are short taking decisions. But since 1960, we never had to dismiss people due to economical effects that hurt the company. And I think this is something that we still live today and it’s important for us today.”
Can you give a few examples of how you try to improve the sustainability of your company?
AW: “So we do have only one big strategy paper for sustainability in our company. We have different goals. It’s the year 2025 and 2030. And the goals range across the whole company. So we do have, for example, production goals, or that you want to have a zero pollution production here in Switzerland by 2025. So it varies 40 targets, very short time targets, but we are working constantly on them. One topic is also social responsibility. This concerns our own employees, but also cooperation that we do with with different companies. One is upcycling plastic of the Mediterranean Sea, for example, we have different partnerships there. Then we are working on clean beauty. Maybe you have heard of it. So this is the way that we want to go. This is about biodegradable or we want to become microplastics free. So today we already don’t have any solid microplastics anymore in our products, and we are constantly working on also taking off the delicate microplastics. It is all under the target of clean beauty. And I think the most important for our consumers today is about producing less packaging, but that the packaging is also better recyclable.”
Would you work with refills or is that difficult? Because you have a lot of tubes and bottles.
AW: “Yes, good, very good questions. I hear this very often. No, we decided not to do the refills that we skip this step and go immediately to the next step to have higher quality of plastic material, but also less plastic material. So for example, if you have a shower gel tube, the bottom will be less plastic. So we try to reduce plastic at lower percentage per product or per range. These are goals. And for us, it was a decision that we take because we said if we do the refilling, on one hand, it makes sense. But if you do a deep dive into it, you produce much more SKUs with it, you need more space in the shelves. You do produce if we have 100 products, then you double actually the product range. This means you need more space, more transportation, more space in the shelves of the pharmacy. So we decided to skip this step, and immediately do the efficient way of upcycling and recycled packaging.”
You mentioned in the beginning that you celebrate your 20 years at Louis -Wittmeyer. Can you give an example of how you saw the beauty business evolve in a positive way over those 20 years and how in a negative way?
AW: “The positive way is actually what we embrace is what we were just talking about. So that sustainability and environment topics we all have to take more of. This is something that we embrace and are very happy that this is leading to the right direction. It’s not going to be that easy for a cosmetic industry because also for Louis Widmer, top priority is quality and tolerance of the product. And it’s not given the fact that with all these new raw materials that we can use, the quality is still at the same level. So this is going to be very, very tricky for our industry in the future to maintain the same quality level. But with the history we have and with the knowledge that we have in this specialized theme, I’m sure that we can handle it. But still quality and tolerance is the top priority for us, talking about raw materials which in the clean beauty philosophy will not be longer acceptable. But which often give very smooth textures or a good feeling or do not make the creams too sticky or too glossy or too whatever.”
Is there a kind of ingredient you have high expectations from?
AW: “That’s a difficult question. Maybe I should hand you over then to our R &D specialists. But I think what makes our products maybe different to other ones, or also other demo cosmetics, is that we do, we make high dosage also of active ingredients. And we have those signature ingredients, which we call Biostimulator Complex made out of nine amino-acids We have it in the most day and night creams. And otherwise we also stick to certain ingredients, we work a lot with vitamin A, vitamin E, panthenol, urea, hyaluronic acids in different fragmentation. So these are key ingredients that we use very often and in high dosage.”
What is your favorite product from the Louis Widmer range?
AW: “I am using eleven to twelve Louis Widmer products a day. But if I would only be able to take two products with me on a weekend or so, it would be Extrait Liposomal, it’s the serum that we have. That’s a basic serum. And the other one is more complex product. It’s called anti-aging intensive complex. But mostly people just use it for concentrated wrinkles in certain areas but I use it all over my face. I really love it, yeah!”
Is there something which you realized that people don’t know about Louis Widmer and which you think they really should know?
AW: “Maybe the fact that we produce, develop, fulfill all the products in one building. So it’s all here at Schlieren, it’s a suburb of Zurich actually. And it’s all in one building. So from the very first beginning until it’s in the last car to Belgium, you can follow the product. And this also means that we manage and control all the processes and that we do have all the quality controls in-house. And it’s all on our responsibility. I think this is also one key success factor in terms of quality reasons. All our products are made in Switzerland, so you could say that the customer can be sure of the quality. We even have in our values that marketing is actually not allowed to shout out things that we cannot prove in our products. This is one of the guidelines we have. So that’s important, yes.”
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