Mádara: Nordic active agents as success factor

The long days in northern Europe, the short but much more intensive summer – that’s the  point of departure for a start-up company in the natural cosmetics sector in Latvia. The desire to have products that are kind to the skin and whose origin is the natural world of the Baltic countries and Finland brought together four women from Riga. They got to know each other via the internet blog of Lotte Tisenkopfa. At that time the women, who were all in their early twenties and had just finished their studies, attempted the impossible, and they won - with Mádara. Organic-Market.Info visited the personable Lotte in Riga. 

(Picture: Mádara in an organic-supermarket in Helsinki) Mádara now has 41 employees. Turnover is rising year on year, and in 2012 it had climbed to € 2,5 m. The founder of the company, Lotte Tisenkopfa, is anticipating further growth of 30 % in 2013. Mádara’s natural products are now exported to 25 countries. The country where the charismatic brand is most favoured by consumers, Latvia’s northern neighbour Finland, is also a source for some of the raw materials used to create the products. Other countries topping the export list are Denmark, Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland. (Picture: Madára-cosmetics in Helsinki)
 
“We had the idea of setting up a business to produce natural cosmetics when I arranged to meet Zane Tamane, who used to work as brand strategist at marketing agency  in a café in Riga and she came along with a bar of soap,” says Lotte Tisenkopfa with a grin. That was some time in 2004 and Lotte was 21 years old. The two later founders of the company had made contact via Lotte’s blog, where she talked about recipes for home-made natural cosmetics. She started her blog because she had an allergic reaction to a conventional eye cream and she wanted to find out precisely the reason why. "Although I was healthy and careful with my diet, the idea that cosmetics were responsible didn’t occur to me,” says Lotte thoughtfully. Because the cream caused an adverse reaction, she wanted to know more and went onto the internet to find what substances are contained in conventional cosmetics. “Once I had got detailed information, there was only one thing to do – I threw out everything I had in my bathroom – even the stuff from Bodyshop.”   

And she was not really convinced by the various alternatives from an organic shop in Riga either. So she set about making contact with like-minded people via her blog, and in no time at all she had done so. There was a great support for her ideas and recipes, and that’s how the meeting with Zane came about. In 2005/2006, together with her sister and a friend of Sanne’s, she started work on developing products. “Vija Enina from Riga, an experienced pharmacologist and an authority in botany, showed us the way. She recommended not to go down the simple route of buying raw materials in bulk and simply mixing them together,” Lotte reminisces.
Vija Enina’s advice was to look thoroughly into plants from the northern regions, because they contain a very high level of active ingredients on account of the longer days in summer and the greater intensity of sunlight to which they are exposed. “That was the right way for us but, of course, it involved the high cost of investigating and researching the plants, because not much was known about most of them,” Lotte Tisenkopfa (picture) explains. 

Mádara – also a girl’s name - is the Latvian for lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum). You see the image of the herb with its little yellowish flowers on all the packaging. However, they use far more plants than this and they are cultivated or collected wild in the Baltic region and Finland: lady’s mantle, horsetail, sea buckthorn and red clover. These are examples of the ingredients found in the Anti-Ageing Range, whose base is birch sap. It was put on the market in September 2012. Lotte is thrilled with the products’ rejuvenating effect on skin cells, the speeding up of cell division by 25 % and their skin-pampering characteristics. All this combined with the antioxidant and other properties of Galium verum. Birch sap is extracted by tapping the trees in Karelia in northern Finland and in Latvia. The process involves boring into a tree and fixing little tubes at right angles. The tree is tapped for only two weeks in April as the leaves are coming out.  

“We want to transfer the emotions people have for nature to our brand,” explains Lotte, who is now thirty years old. We want to absorb into our products the power and energy that enrich the plants after long, hard, snowy winters.” Their own laboratory carries out a wide range of research on the effects of the ingredients and of the finished products. “In vivo, in vitro and with a placebo control,” says Lotte proudly. Since 2008, all Mádara products have been examined by Ecocert, and they have therefore the status of controlled natural cosmetics. For many years, the founder of the firm has been giving lectures on natural cosmetics and the materials they contain. “Safe Cosmetics” is her mission, that she propagates in the context of a Safe Cosmetics Academy. 
(Picture: the four founders of Mádara)

The four entrepreneurs received a grant from the EU founders’ forum for women to set up production facilities in a district in the west of Riga – in the middle of a residential area between the old part of the city and the airport. In an unremarkable building (1500 m²) they produce the cosmetics they sell at home and abroad. The four women complement each other in the running and development of the firm: Lotte Tisenkopfa is responsible for product development and training sales personnel. Lotte’s sister Paula Tisenkopfa is in charge of the production and Liene Drazniece is the designer in the company. (Picture: advertising poster of Mádara) 

The four business partners have now become six: Lotte’s husband, Uldis Iltners, has taken over the management of the firm. An investor acquired a minority share in 2008 to provide the extra capital they need for investment in their business.  They began marketing their first four creams in 2007 in the Finish department store Stockmann in Riga. This one outlet has now mushroomed into 40 in the Latvian capital – in perfumeries, wholefood stores, department stores and drugstores.
 
Stockmann now offers Mádara in all its stores in Tallinn in Estonia and in Helsinki. With a population of 2 million in Latvia, sales are, of course, rather limited, and this is the reason why the constantly rising exports play a crucial role. In faraway Hong Kong, the prestigious natural cosmetics chain Beyond Organic stocks the product range from the Baltic country. In Finland there are already over 100 shops that sell Mádara products, and in Denmark the figure is nearly 200. However, since Germany already has many manufacturers of natural cosmetics, you rarely see these products from the Baltic region, and they are listed by only 21 natural cosmetics shops, pharmacies, health food and wholefood stores. The four creams have now become around 45 articles: over the last seven years, they have developed a range of products for face care, anti-ageing, body and hair care, plus baby care.
(Picture: Mádara cosmetics at a German cosmetician's store)  

Tip: http://www.madara-cosmetics.com/