How 5 years of R&D proved a local skincare company had a product that actually works

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt.

Everyone will be familiar with the way that skincare companies use science to sell their products, but how many people actually trust that the science is anything more than marketing?

Well often it actually isn’t. This episode we’re talking to a person who worked out that most were just selling 'hope in a jar' and set out to change that. Soraya Hendesi came to New Zealand as a trained cosmetician with a plan to make skincare that would actually work. This led to years of new research with partners like the University of Auckland and Callaghan Innovation, and the discovery of active agents that passed the gold standard of clinical trials, leading to skincare that actually works. Soraya’s company uses natural materials and has its own plantation north of Auckland, that fosters native plants long known and used for their properties, and by matching these with rigorous R & D turned her company Snowberry into an international force, attracting the attention of Procter and Gamble one of the world’s biggest cosmetic companies who bought them last year.

Soraya and her Husband Mark still run the company, here, and to talk the journey, the sale and what’s next, Soraya joined the podcast

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