From skincare to care beyond skin: Between Conscious x La Prairie

Nov 28, 2022

In the last decade, the beauty business has been growing at an unprecedented rate, thus meaning that its environmental impact has also been increasing. The first step to take in order to tackle this challenge is awareness. As the world looks forward to the post-pandemic era, we should not expect to go back to the old habits, but to build new ones.

As Between Conscious Program, we have made our mission to help companies to build the consciousness and find the solutions from rethinking the business model to designing and producing more sustainably.

La Prairie, whose origins can be traced back to 1931 in Switzerland, is one of the most popular brands in the beauty industry. It represents exclusive, scientifically advanced skincare and is globally considered a luxury leading brand for cosmetics. As the company has been investing to increase its presence in China with a new set of locations in 2022, it also decided to join the Between Conscious Program to enhance the consciousness of its employees.

A half day of corporate education and engaging activities, in fact, took place last week, on November 28, in the conference venue of the St. Regis Ritz-Carlton hotel in Shanghai.

A selected group of 50 participants across all departments, participated in the private event for3 hours of training completely dedicated to improving the sustainability culture within the company.

The educational program tailor-designed for La Prairie revolved around five topics: biodiversity and climate action, circular economy, inclusive development, support for young-female artists, and passing-on culture.

In the first section of the day, moderated by Cherie Ding, BETWEEN RESEARCH Director and General Manager of Asia Pacific, we focused on inspiring the participants with relevant case studies: one for each of the above-mentioned topics. The purpose of this structure was to open the mind of the participants by showcasing how other companies between the fashion and the beauty industry, faced the same challenges.

In fact, non-financial factors are increasingly part of the analysis that investors make in any industry. Depending on the industry, of course, business implications can be diverse. A great orientation tool is the UN list of 17 “Sustainable Development Goals” - in short SDGs - which points out the directions businesses and governments should take in order to achieve sustainable development. From reducing poverty to preserving nature, from clean energy to equal opportunities: each goal is associated with a number.

To make the association between business fields and purposes more immediate, the 17 goals were also broken down into three main categories, Economy, Society, and Biosphere, as clearly displayed in the infographics below.

By using this system, participants could visualise how each one of the initiatives from companies alike managed to address one of the SDGs. This way the link between business and sustainable development is well established in the mind of the trainees and they are ready to treat it not as a challenge anymore, but as an opportunity to grow.

With this new mindset, the second part of the day is organised as a workshop led by university professor Sunny Lee, Green Transformation Consultant and Ambassador for Circulab Asia, an agency helping all kinds of organisations shift towards a circular model.

Ms Sunny Lee has 22 years long working experience in the field of consultancy. With her passion for working for a better tomorrow, she has been always aiming at matching economic growth and technology development with social welfare and environmental protection.

During the two hours of workshop, each group had to deliver an actual sustainable project that could realistically be implemented by the company. Based on their experience in La Prairie they should have developed a credible business plan - obviously not refined to detail - and a presentation to convince their peers.

Between Conscious staff was there to guide groups, in fact providing a demonstration of the consultancy job that BETWEEN is able to provide by defining goals and connecting a company with the best expert to achieve the defined goal (which in the workshop environment was obviously embodied by professor Lee).

After the five group presentation, all participants took a vote to choose their favourite project. The whole point of the day was of course not about winning a contest, but to put their professional experience to serve a sustainable goal within their corporate framework.

The workshop alone, as an educational and inspirational time for their employees, is a valuable investment. But it is just the beginning of a journey that aims to bring more awareness into the industry. A journey that La Prairie and the Between Conscious Program are now prepared to bring together to the next step.

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