Plainly on Monocle Radio — the full Entrepreneurs interview

The following is the full transcript of Plainly's appearance on The Entrepreneurs, Monocle Radio's show on inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Hosted by Tom Edwards, in conversation with Plainly co-founder and CEO Artsem Kruk.

Show introduction

Interview with Artsem Kruk

So during my travels and my experiences, I've developed a lot of passion for design and aesthetics. I also realized that there were many beautiful products in the market, but all these products often lacked high-quality ingredients. And when you look at the clean beauty products, they somehow didn't have the sophistication in the design, and this gap in the market kind of motivated me to explore ways to combine both elements: premium ingredients and exceptional design.

And at the same time, I also found that the hand care space is a very interesting and underserved niche. For example, in Germany, there's 25 million people using hand cream every day, multiple times a day, and hand care is the most popular product in cosmetics with the biggest turnover. So I thought that this might be a very interesting underserved niche, and this is how we kind of started focusing on the hand care and developing a brand that really reinvents the hand care.

“Your hands tell your life story. This is the most important tool that we have. But we don't really tend to care for our hands that much.”

We use our hands every day, we meet people, we say hello. If you look at your hands, you can tell your age, you can tell how you feel, you can tell if you're nervous, if you work a lot, if you bite your nails. So your hands tell actually your life story. This is the most important tool that we have. But we don't really tend to care for our hands that much. I think what we learn from the industry is that our face is the most important appearance of ourselves. We want to focus on the niche and create a product that is really beautiful, has the most superior ingredients, and a very design that is focused on strong aesthetics.

The way we design products, it takes around one or two years because we want to take our time and make sure that our customers love the products and that they're developed the way that then can be associated with the brand. One example is that what we did is the product that all consumers like is our nourishing nail oil. We've looked at the market and saw where the gap was in the market, and we created an oil that is really fast-absorbing and great to your nails.

But the packaging was also important because most of the nail oils come with like hard application stuff. You have to either drop it on your nails and you just can't do this on the go, so we've included a roller for this. And you just have a bottle, you know, you open it, you can put it in your pocket and just use the roller on your nails. Some of the products that are coming up is, for example, a rich cream that will repair your hands. And another product that is in the line is a hand cream with sun protection factor, which is almost nonexistent in the market. But we're also looking at stuff like anti-pigmentation serum, and we're also looking at expanding our portfolio and going into hotels, for example.

A family business, and a high bar

My wife, she's very involved in the business of Plainly and every decision that we make, it goes through my wife and she approves kind of every product. But at the same time, she's also super sensible and allergic to scents, to tactile experience of hand creams, and this is like — the bar was really, really high for creating something that is also natural but has a scent profile that smells like a sophisticated perfume. So every product is approved by my wife. It's a huge female-oriented market, and it also shows our dedication to the market and that we wanted to create a products that have the best scents that you can smell.

And when customers buy our products, I actually keep receiving emails where people say me, “Thank you, I fell in love with the cream, the scent is amazing.” And I get the same feedback from the shops, and it's like the first time I hear people saying that they fell in love with the hand cream or with its scent. That's a great feedback, and we love that.

On design and the iF Design Award

We just won the iF Design Award for our packaging, which has been designed with Winkreative together, and that's a great sign that our design has been appreciated in the space of beauty and product development. And also what I hear from the shops is that we are kind of the first brand that combines or really thinks about a great design, but also combined with great and superior ingredients.

And if you look at the design, there's a lot of thought that went into this. We have a lot of very little details that we've thought about. There's references to our Bavarian roots, for example, if you look at the logo, there's a diamond motif in the back of the packaging which references to the diamond of Bavaria, which is our kind of hometown with Munich. So the challenge was to create a branding that is timeless but still elegant and simple. And we also wanted the brand to stand out in the shelves or in retail with small moments of sophistication and little details.

To do that, we reduced the number of elements on the packaging. For example, the packaging is just great paper from Gmund. Gmund is a German Bavaria-based paper manufacturer. There's white space on the packaging that kind of catches your eye and shows you the most important information of the product, but it doesn't have any loud information. It's like very descriptive, it's very simple. We just say it's a hydrating hand cream, it's an anti-aging hand cream, it's a nourishing nail oil. That's all that you need to know and it's just one or two sentences that describes the product, that's all. And that was kind of our approach and our goal, and I'm really happy to see that the iF Design jury has kind of appreciated what we've done with the packaging together with Winkreative.

Ingredients and the case for hand care

So right now we have six products in a line, there's more products coming out. What makes us special is that we use very unique and the most superior ingredients that are usually only used in skincare. For example, one of the ingredients is a kahai oil. It's a sustainably grown oil, and we combine it with argan oil, which also has been fermented, so that it kind of creates one-of-a-kind formulation that absorbs really fast and also creates a non-greasy sensation on the hands. And the kahai oil, for example, it is very rich in vitamin E, it's a very powerful anti-aging ingredient, and it's just kind of started gaining attention in the beauty industry in the last couple of years, so this is what we decided to use in our creams because it just creates a really, really great experience for your hands.

The skin on the back of our hands is the thinnest, and it's two to three times thinner than on our face, and it's also more delicate compared to our palms. The hands are also exposed to the sun, we carry heavy objects, we wash dishes, we scrub toilets, we change diapers, we go with our dog, and so on. And once we leave the house, our hands are exposed to the sun. Usually, you don't pay attention to your hands until in your 20s, and you start noticing it when you're in your 30s, for example. But then you really start paying attention when you're in your 40s and your 50s because we then get age spots on our hands, we get sun spots, we get hyperpigmentation, and the skin loses elasticity, and so on. So you see the signs of aging on your hands first, and this is why we wanted to focus on the hands and make sure that we reinvent the hand care and bring a luxurious and sophisticated aspect into this.

Outro