Terrorists of Beauty
· Updated: · 5 min read
NATURAL SOAPS FROM HAMBURG
An underdog fighting against the standards of the big beauty industry – that’s the “terrorists of beauty”. Founded in 2018, this Hamburg-based start-up sells its “made in Germany” natural soaps online and at 200 locations across Germany. The products by Natalie Richter and Mar Navajas Garcia are not only vegan and unisex, but above all sustainable. But who are the “beauty terrorists” and where do the two of them actually come from? We met them and asked.
How it all began
Sometime in late spring 2018, Natalie and Mar were sitting together over a bottle of red wine in their ten-person shared flat, pondering just how much plastic waste is generated whilst showering. “It really piles up in a big shared flat like this. We thought to ourselves: surely there must be a cooler and better way,” explains Natalie. The foundation for terrorists of beauty had been laid. Mar already had some prior knowledge, as her Spanish family makes their own soap. “Soap-making isn’t exactly rocket science. But creating a really high-quality soap that’s good in the long term and really stands out is a whole different matter,” Natalie continues. Incidentally, the name came about thanks to a comment from a friend who said that the pair’s plans were rather “terroristic” and radical.
From the idea to the bar of soap
Once the core idea was established, the pair set about looking for partners. As soap production usually involves palm oil and is not vegan, many manufacturers were ruled out from the outset. When it came to fragrance, too, Natalie and Mar had a different goal to most mainstream products. They believe that, regardless of gender, we should only wash our skin and hair based on natural needs – in other words, not necessarily every day. “Mar, for example, has a huge mane of curls, whereas I, with my fine hair, have completely different requirements when it comes to ingredients and care,” Natalie continues. After a few months, the pair found a suitable partner and ordered their first batch of around 1,000 small soap bars.
The online shop opened during the 2018 Christmas season and within a month all the soaps had already sold out. The pair hadn’t anticipated such high demand; until then, soap-making had been just a small side project alongside their main jobs. But more and more orders, which couldn’t be dispatched that quickly, were arriving in their inbox. One of the main reasons for this: producing a bar of terrorists of beauty soap takes around four weeks. All the parcels were packed in the evenings after work and taken to the post office the next morning. Looking back, Natalie says that the whole start-up process seemed to happen of its own accord: “It was as if someone had decided that now was the time, and one thing led to another. Looking back, I don’t even know how we managed it.”
When it became clear that this was no longer a small project, both gave up their main jobs. Natalie even left the company she had founded herself, the fruit juice manufacturer leev, so she could devote herself entirely to her “terrorist life”. Through the “Stiftung Mensch”, they found a workshop for people with disabilities that now packs the parcels. But it didn’t stop at soap production alone; they needed a suitable accessory for storing the soap in the shower – a concrete holder. To sort this out, the pair quickly brought a pottery workshop on board, so that Mar wouldn’t have to cast them in the shared flat’s living room as before. A local print shop, which uses carbon-neutral paper, handles the packaging. “These may seem like small details, but they are fundamentally important to us and really underpin the overall concept,” explains Natalie.
Who buys the natural soaps?
The Hamburg-based women’s products are now available as far south as southern Germany, though the greatest demand still comes from the north. Purchases are made regardless of gender; customers are aged between 25 and their late 30s, but there is also significant interest outside this group. “We often get calls from customers, mostly women over 60, who remember handmade soap from the old days and aren’t afraid to try it,” explains Natalie. They then buy the natural soaps for their grandchildren too, and so the “Blocks” from terrorists of beauty, despite their radical name, are becoming a cross-generational product.
A day in the life of a “terrorist”
But what does the everyday life of these self-made entrepreneurs actually look like? “First of all, the fundamental question every morning is: where do I want to work today – at the kitchen table, in the co-working space on the top floor of our shared flat, or in a café?” says Natalie, describing her morning routine. Most of the work is done on a laptop. Whilst she takes care of marketing and sales, Mar coordinates production and logistics.
The question remains: where will the journey take them in the future? “As a ‘terrorist’, you have to maintain your independence,” emphasises Natalie. That’s why they both want to grow organically without investors. They are well aware that this is the longer and also the harder path. “But this way, we can make decisions that may not be economically viable and go against the grain, but which fit the concept better.”
