For 16 years Orean Personal Care has been focused on the masstige premium segment of the personal care market, offering products across the skincare, haircare, pet care and suncare markets.
Dan Williams, Orean’s CEO, has been with the company for 12 years, a period that has seen the firm grow its turnover from £3 million to £30 million. But it has not achieved that growth by chasing new customers.
“When I came in, I forged a strategy based on looking after the existing brands we work with, rather than spearheading the search for new accounts,” Williams tells us. “In our industry people move around a lot, and they talk. That means that if we look after the customers we have, word will get around.”
As a strategy, Williams is the first to admit it was not the most glamorous.
“It was underwhelming to some of our shareholders,” he tells us. “But the vision for our company is to provide the most desirable manufacturing experience. That drives everything we do. We remove as much friction as possible, so brands continue to work with us.”
An Enjoyable Experience
A core part of Orean’s business model is that the company does not charge for product development. Nor does it licence out the IP it develops – instead that IP is transferred entirely into its customers’ ownership.
“Our customers continue to work with us because they enjoy it, rather than because they signed a contract,” Williams says.
That pattern is replicated in all of Orean’s relationships. Its employees enjoy the benefits of Orean’s investment in people, and the exciting and fun environment it creates in the workplace.
“If our staff enjoy the experience of working with us, that rubs off on our customers,” Williams says. “Then to complete that circle we also want our suppliers to enjoy the experience. We pay on time and build lasting relationships that go beyond the transactional. They give us good terms and the best pricing, and we treat our suppliers the way we treat our customers. It all keeps our stakeholders excited about what we’re doing.”
Beauty Built Better
It all comes down to Orean Personal Care’s guiding motto – “Beauty built better”. It is a motto that can be used to describe exactly what it does. “Beauty” highlights the categories and sectors it operates in, “built” describes the way Orean does this through innovation, formulation, manufacturing, and filling, and “better” is how it does it, supporting the industry community, its local community, and the environment, both on a micro and macro level.
Orean was encouraged by industry leaders to work with B Corp, and achieved its B Corp accreditation in 2022, becoming the first contract manufacturer to achieve that status.
“It is a stamp of credibility for everything we do,” Williams says.
That credibility, combined with Orean’s insight, innovation, and flexibility, set Orean apart in the industry.
“Our vision is to provide the most desirable manufacturing experience, and when we tell people that they say; ‘What does that mean?’” Williams observes. “We want all stakeholders, suppliers, brand partners and employees to love the experience. We do our utmost to remove any friction or challenges and make the process as simple as we can. Our customers all, without question, have said that our speed, agility, and flexibility set us apart from other manufacturers they have worked with.”
The Development Chemists are continuously developing new products which are then handed to our clients. To maintain the excitement, Orean needs a constant stream of innovation. Maintaining that stream of innovation is a key challenge for the company.
“We work across a wide range of categories, hiring graduates from university to complement our experienced talent,” Williams says. “It gives us a fresh set of eyes and a fresh way of working.”
These complementary perspectives are combined with trips to exhibitions and industry events around the world, and subscriptions that keep Orean’s team updated on the latest ideas.
“It keeps us on the front foot for product development,” William tells us. “If you are an experienced chemist, you know what works and you can do the same thing repeatedly. But fresh eyes can see things slightly differently. They will try things they don’t know won’t work. That outlook goes throughout our whole business.”
To maintain that influx of fresh talent, Orean is visible and active on social media, showing potential recruits how it operates as a company. But fundamentally, Orean grows its workforce by creating positions to suit the talent it wants to recruit, rather than the other way around.
“We get inundated with CVs across all our departments. We come across individuals that stand out and are special, people with the same values, and we create a unique role for them,” Williams says. “We are continually growing as a business, with vacancies across all our departments. We have established an internal creativity and marketing department, building a following and a reputation in the industry.”
While the social media presence is a strong selling point for Orean as an employer, what really attracts and keeps the talent is that the culture within the company actually reflects the social media brand.
“Both new starts and customers have said that the culture portrayed and visible online is what they find replicated in the company,” Williams shares.
Heading Stateside
Orean has achieved impressive growth by focusing on providing quality to its existing stakeholders and letting word-of-mouth do the work, but that does not mean it has not been proactive in pursuing growth. Five years ago, the company expanded its operations to span the Atlantic, making it unique among US and UK contract manufacturers.
It is not just an opportunity for growth, but a bridge for brands in the UK and US to enter markets across the Atlantic with access to production facilities in their new market while avoiding import duties. Yet while this looks like an ambitious expansion of the business, Williams describes it as simply another way of caring for Orean’s existing customers.
“It was a good way of cementing our relationships and protecting the business we already had,” Williams says. “The US is such a big market that any company expanding into it could find that its existing UK market became as little as 10-20% of its total revenue. It makes this process so much easier for the brands we nurture and support as they enter the market with a manufacturer they know and trust.”
Williams continued to talk about these advantages on the back of Brexit’s challenges.
“The US and UK markets are more important than ever. Trading in Europe for brands is getting more challenging as each country has its own language requirements, warehousing requirements, and other unique demands. The potential for British Brands in the US market is huge. We want to be there to support our brand partners as much as we can with these opportunities through introductions, marketing and regulation support and localised manufacturing’.”
Williams has always prioritised customers’ experience, but he believes the pandemic highlighted its importance.
“The pandemic tested everyone. Looking back now, it cemented our relationships with our stakeholders and allowed us to become better at communication internally and externally,” he says.
It was an experience that crystallised Orean’s plans going forward.
“When you do a lot of sports, you are always advised to share your goals, because humans inherently want to help each other,” Williams says. “Last year our management team defined our five-year vision. We closed our factory in November so that we could share that plan with all 230 members of staff in the UK and our staff in the US, then rolled it out to our suppliers and the brands we work with. Over the next five years, we intend to become a £100 million turnover business with 50% of our turnover coming from the UK, and 50% of it coming from the US. That strategy will define every site and department to focus on our strategy and support that bigger vision.”
