Feature
Supermood looks at beauty from all angles
A jar of expensive body lotion won’t help much if other parts of one’s wellbeing are routinely neglected. Finnish company Supermood is spreading its holistic approach to feeling well across the US.
Wellbeing isn’t just about one thing – and thus feeling unwell can’t be fixed with just one simple solution.
“Our idea is that beauty and wellbeing are a sum of three factors,” explains Joni Kukkohovi CEO of Supermood. “The first is how you nourish yourself; the second is how you look after the largest organ of the human body, your skin; and the third is about how you rest and let your body recover.”
Due to its holistic approach, Supermood isn’t an ordinary natural cosmetics company. Instead, it offers a selection of products that are aimed to support all aspect of beauty both internally and externally.
The three product ranges are called Beauty Sleep, Youth Glo and Egoboost, each of which is meant to focus on one area with various kinds of products. For example, Beauty Sleep includes an anti-wrinkle pillow, originally developed to plastic surgery patients. Youth Glo, in turn, fights the signs of ageing with skin products, capsules and even chocolate, and the Egoboost selection boosts ‘external radiance’, as the company puts it.
Personal ideas, personal testing
The idea originated from co-founder Anne Kukkohovi, who’s well known in Finland as a TV presenter and former model. As someone who was used to premium beauty products, she was surprised to find out how difficult it was to find high-quality natural cosmetics.
“She started researching organic cosmetics but didn’t come across anything that appealed to her,” Joni Kukkohovi notes.
Together, Joni and Anne Kukkohovi started looking at the market and noticed that premium-quality natural cosmetics was a widely underserved market. As is the case with a lot of startups, Supermood was created to answer the needs of its creators.
The company was founded in 2014 by the Kukkohovis and two other business partners, one of whom had plenty of experience in dietary supplements and health products and the other a background in the beauty business and selective cosmetics. A suitable manufacturer was found in Helsinki, and so Anne Kukkohovi came up with the concepts – and even tested all the products herself prior to officially required testing.
International from the outset
Supermood doesn’t target women of any particular age. Instead, Joni Kukkohovi says that the products are designed for people who are used to using luxury cosmetics but have taken note of the rise of eco-friendliness and naturalness.
“Values are by far the most defining factor in purchase decisions,” he says. “That’s also why we are careful in our profiling and, for example, how we choose partners.”
From the word go, it has been obvious that the Finnish market is nowhere near large enough for a brand like Supermood. The company has been gaining interest from all over the world, but, with its three-strong team, Kukkohovi tells that it has had to prioritise tasks. Right now, the focus is on the US, where the company has a local manufacturer and a logistics partner.
“The US is a challenging and demanding market but also inspiring and full of things we can learn,” he notes. “All of our efforts are there at the moment, but in the future we can utilise the lessons from North America elsewhere.”
Some steps have been taken in Russia, and there are resellers here and there in some EU countries and Singapore. In the future, expansion will happen mainly through partners and agents.
Questions and requests keep flying in from places like Dubai and Asia, but Kukkohovi likes to keep things simple and sensible.
“With our current model, we’ve got no way of handling various markets at once. Our main goal now is to establish ourselves in the US and strengthen our position there.”