ICYMI: We spent a week in London with Aesop recently, and it was quite the informative experience.
READ: Beauty Diaries: I spent a week in London with Aesop—here’s everything I did
Over the course of the week, we spoke to Aēsop’s Chief Customer Officer Suzanne Santos, Customer and Store Experience Manager James McMeans, European Store Design and Global Innovation Manager Jean-Phillippe Bonnefoi and Head of Global Store Design Marianne Lardilleux to learn more about the brand.
Spoiler alert: We’ve learned a fair bit. It was a pretty intensive crash course in the brand, and so we think it’s only fair that we share the wealth of knowledge we’ve now accumulated. Your first fun fact, on the house: It’s pronounced ‘Ee-sop’, not ‘Ay-sop’.
Like that tip? Lucky for you, there’s more where that came from. Ahead, find seven things you didn’t know about Aēsop (but really wish you did):
FACT 1: AĒSOP STARTED OFF AS A HAIR SALON
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According to Santos, who has been with the brand from the very beginning, the story goes like this: The year was 1987. Dennis Paphitis, Aēsop’s founder, was working as a hairdresser in Europe when, all of a sudden, his father passed away. In order to be with his mother and sister, he returned from Europe to Australia as a young man at 25. It was not exactly what he’d expected of his life, but he decided that, now that he was home, he would open his own salon. His first employee? Suzanne Santos.
Now, there are some bits and pieces missing from Santos’ account, but that’s the general gist. Who could have predicted that the small, exclusive, Melbourne-based Emeis Hair Salon would one day grow into a multi-million dollar business with over 200 stores globally? No one, apparently—yet, here Aēsop stands. Impressive as ever.
FACT 2: AĒSOP IS BUILT ON FIVE TENETS: ARCHITECTURE, LITERATURE, FOOD, MUSIC, AND ESSENTIAL OILS
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The aforementioned Emeis salon—where the first Aēsop products were launched—was created as part of one contiguous movement that originated these five tenets. With regards to the first, architecture, Santos recalls that “there were two things [Dennis] spent all his money on: The mirror and the floor. The mirror, in particular, was flush to the wall—that means that someone had to chip all the wall out and embed the mirror, which in Australia, was a very expensive thing to do. Within that emblematically lies the symbols of the history of Aesop, because we are about detail. Perfect craft-created details. Aēsop was born of that detail.”
Of course, the salon opened its doors with a party, complete with a delicious vegetarian meal and a wide variety of people very close to the founder’s heart in attendance. According to Santos, the salon became very famous very quickly, but its tenets have remained consistent. “It was very small and it was very hard to get into. We played amazing music, we could only drink coffee or sparkling water, we imported magazines, and we had oil burners. So, for our entire lives, we’ve had food, music, literature, and oils at our heart. All of these symbols have remained continuously throughout our life.”
FACT 3: AĒSOP WAS AMONG THE FIRST GLOBAL BRANDS TO INCORPORATE ESSENTIAL OILS INTO THEIR FORMULATIONS
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According to Santos, the essential oil industry was on the verge of a huge boom in 1987: “At the time, essential oils (which are, of course, ancient), had sort of reemerged through the hippy period. People were burning incense and essential oils and, from that, was born an entire industry which remains today.”
“The products that were available all over the world were made with fragrance; with artificial colour; with ingredients that were absolutely deplorable for people to use,” she continues. “Dennis was brave and bold and incredibly confident in creating Aēsop in this mainstream environment where essential oils were not being used. The creation of our hair care, skincare, and body care began with essential oils, and was all done without the influence of any other (or very few) other brands—and those who did, did not do what we did.”
“We changed the cosmetics world,” Santos asserts. “It was a handful of us—five of us that thought philosophically differently; thought about the composition of what people were using and then took the notion that quality was the most significant factor.”
FACT 4: AĒSOP WAS THE FIRST BRAND TO PACKAGE PRODUCTS IN AMBER BOTTLES
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Aēsop pioneered a functional aesthetic that has since been replicated countless times; copied all over the world by other brands. But, Santos maintains, they did it first—and, arguably, they did it best.
“When we launched, there were no brown bottles. There were no black and white labels. There were no combinations of [our] ingredients; the entire market was unrecognisable from what you know. And they all followed us,” she explains. “[To] everyone who has stolen from us—the brilliance of Dennis cannot be replicated; the purity of our world has remained. When you go to our stores, when you come into our offices, the purity of the brand has remained.”
FACT 5: THE ICONIC 500ML TESTERS WERE CONCEIVED FROM DESPERATION
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When you walk past any Aēsop store, there’s one thing you’ll notice: a row of full-sized testers, neatly lined up at the door, ready for sampling. It’s ubiquitous across every one of the brand’s stores, but its origins are equal parts funny and ingenious.
The ideas for the testers were actually the brainchild of Santos, who explained that Aēsop’s signature decor was actually quite the deterrent for some customers. “Some people found [the decor] very scary, because no one was doing what we were doing back then,” she remarks. “I became so frustrated that people weren’t walking in that I walked up the stairs and—this happened a lot in our lives, incredible circumstances that occurred—there was an architectural cement pillar, just the right height, positioned just near the store. Incredibly fortuitous!”
“I plonked the product on there and I put down the paper brochures, and about 10 minutes later, two women tried the product, looked into the store, and I beckoned them in,” she recalls, triumphantly. “That was the first time those 500ml testers were used, which then became omnipresent to the brand. But that was definitely born of desperation.”
FACT 6: EVERY AĒSOP STORE HAS TWO RECOGNISABLE CODES
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No two Aēsop stores are the same—so what unites them? According to Lardilleux and Bonnefoi, there are two codes in the Aēsop signature. The first is the products. All the products share the same design, and they are displayed in abundance in every store.
The second is the experience. This includes four pillars: “The first is the smell—you can really recognise our smell when you pass by and, when you enter, you know you’re in Aēsop,” Lardilleux explains. “The next is the sink—we have sinks in every one of our stores for beautiful demonstrations. Then, it’s the tea and then the sitting area.”
“We have some guidelines that allow the store architects to be as creative as they can in the location, but at the same time maintaining the codes that tell you that you are in an Aēsop store,” adds Bonnefoi.
FACT 7: AĒSOP DOES NOT SUBSCRIBE TO CLEAN BEAUTY
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The skincare community is currently at odds with itself, and McMeans summed it up gracefully in a question to Santos: “There exists this odd polarity, particularly within the skincare community, where we have companies that market [themselves] as clean, plant-based, all-natural, etcetera. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you have consumers seeking formulations that are almost pharmaceutical. Where is Aēsop on that scale of polarity?”
“We never described ourselves as natural,” responded Santos. “There isn’t a product that we make that doesn’t contain some kind of botanical. But, those incredible botanical ingredients are then coupled with the right choice of efficacious man-made ingredients. And, we have masters who can craft the best formulations incorporating both, so you end up with the most optimal environment. Internally, we’re very comfortable with that decision.”
“There is, without a prescription, a limit to what you can put inside a jar. And, because we don’t make [unsubstantiated] claims, we struggle to be shouted down by brands that are promoting concepts that are not real,” Santos elaborates. “For us, we have always remained very comfortably inside that sense of truth: that we have made and produced exceptional formulations which deliver enormous value to the skin and that, in the absence of a prescription, deliver a performance that is greater than just an empty claim.”
Interview excerpts have been edited for length and clarity. Find more beauty stories like this here.
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