GEODERM, ECOLOGICAL COSMETICS

A. The main facts about the activities of the company.

Geoderm is a cosmetic enterprise founded in 1998 in Alicante, Spain, constituted from the beginning as an organic and natural brand. Geoderm has been the first certified Spanish manufacturer of natural and organic products, being the leading brand that uses natural resources to produce their final cosmetic products. It has also received an organic certification that authenticates their ecological production.

It provides a wide range of products, such as Moisturiser for Skin, eye contour, Shampoo, facial exfoliate, Aloe Vera Gel and Rosehip Oil, Tonic, Hand cream, toothpaste, anti-wrinkle, to name but a few. What makes special this firm is that since its origins, it has been loyal to its vision, mission and objectives. Geoderm aims to offer to its customer ecological and organic cosmetic products of superior quality without causing any harm or damage on customers’ skin.

In order to guarantee 100% natural and organic cosmetic products, Geoderm has established many rigorous environmental and quality controls along its supply chain; starting from the selection of raw materials until they are processed into skin products. It is their manufacturing process what determines their product’s efficiency. Natural Solter is the laboratory company that processes their final products. Geoderm’s products are manufactured under the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) guidelines, facilities provided by Natural Solter as advices. It consists on an advanced laboratory technology formed by a specialized scientific team, a microbiological test and many exhaustive quality controls. They also own some high-tech clean room environments (designed to control and maintain minimum levels of contamination, control temperature, humidity and pressure). So, all the procedures are kind to the environment.

The values of the company are reflected on the way they develop their products. We can observe clearly that their main objective is to guarantee the mission and vision of the company, under their philosophy. All the efforts to carry out these activities have been recognized by obtaining the IONC-BDIH company Standard.

B. The Ethical challenges this company is addressing.

In order to develop all the activities mentioned above, everyday the firm faces many ethical challenges. Geoderm is constantly investing in technological, reinforcements and human resources’ actions, facing high expenses but to ensure the quality of the processes developed. What is more, they also invest on product and manufacturing quality controls.
The raw materials’ selection criterion is also a challenge: they use ingredients collected from organic cultivation. Moreover, they do not use neither colorants, nor synthetic fragrances and preservatives, which are responsible for many allergic reactions. Their products are oil-free, and in addition they do not contain paraffin or synthetic petroleum or petrochemical derivatives. Instead, they use natural emulsifiers. Besides, they do not use ingredients acquired from dead animals, and following that, they do not taste their products on animals.

C. What makes you believe this company is really ethical and why you trust it?

The key point for us in order to trust in this company is that they have an official BDIH certificate of ecology. It certifies the practice of the business activity with respect to the environment in all the steps of the production process.
It may confuse that some products are said to be natural or ecological but there exists a difference between being natural, ecological or ecologically certified.
  Natural cosmetics are at least 80% made of natural products.
  Ecologic cosmetics are made by at least 95% of natural products coming from an ecological farming.
  And finally, certified ecologic cosmetics are those that guarantee that the obtaining and treatment of the product have been respectful to the environment and the same regarding the origin of the raw materials. Moreover, it shows that these products are at least 95%-100% made of natural products.
We also have to take into account the type of store where the company sells their products; we can find them in pharmacies and specialized shops. That directly implies having to charge on them higher prices. This helps them to differentiate themselves from other companies and products that tempt to be natural but are not.
Furthermore, we also trust this company because since their beginnings, their main objective has always been having natural and ecological products, being ethical; not lying to their customers and having the market share in a second level. Nowadays, many companies behave and show themselves as if they were ethical because of today’s new trend. However, Geoderm has always followed their main and clear objective of providing high quality and eco-friendly cosmetics to their customers.

D.The possible challenges facing the company in the future and how you think this company may improve.

Nowadays, due to the fact that the great majority of people are more concerned about all the environmental issues and the negative consequences those would have on our immediately future lives, many firms are evolving through a more environmentally friendly and social responsible behaviours. That directly implies an increase in the number of companies Geoderm has to compete with. However, at that point, we would like to highlight that the fact that Geoderm has always been well known and positioned as an environmentally friendly cosmetic firm whose main objective has always been guaranteeing 100% natural products of high quality, really differentiates them from all these firms that either because of trends or because of a fair “green” awareness, have changed their business’ mission. It is for this reason that we strongly encourage Geoderm to continue with their eco-friendly philosophy and avoid all these possible “captivating” incentives of reducing costs at expenses of less quality controls so that to compete with the above mentioned type of firms.
Secondly, we consider that it would be really interesting if Geoderm tries to be more clear and transparent in the way they explain all their production process and the quality requirements they must fulfil in order to provide 100% natural products that offer the highest quality. For instance, uploading some pictures and videos on their website could be another way of showing how the ecological certification process works. In fact, that would allow Geoderm being at the front of the eco-friendly cosmetic’s market as we are in no doubt that many other cosmetic firms would not be able to put them on the same sustainable level.
In this way, we really encourage Geoderm to continue with their ecological and natural business’ philosophy so that they can be differentiated from the remaining cosmetic firms and hold onto their eco-friendly and 100% natural cosmetic leadership position.