Ms. Kraus, you are actually a pharmacist. Today you run an online shop for natural cosmetics. How did you come up with this idea?
My husband and I are both pharmacists and we founded Greenglam together in Augsburg in 2008.
At that time the cheap pharmacies came on the market, which worked with strong discounts and reductions, and it quickly became clear that one should bow to the price pressure and join in or do something else in order to differentiate oneself.
Since for us drugs are not a product that can be sold, we came up with the idea of a green pharmacy.
My husband and I both received PhDs in Herbal Medicine.
So we started with homeopathy and three organic beauty brands in a corner of our pharmacy.
Today a whole range has emerged from it.
As it got bigger and bigger, my husband got a bit afraid of who should buy all of this in Augsburg. That's when he got the idea that we should go online with these products. But that wasn't so easy either. In the beginning we had problems getting our dream brands. At that time, the Internet was still considered cheap and was best known for its discount battles. Many companies did not believe in the Internet at the time, nor were they enthusiastic about the idea of their products being sold in a pharmacy along with medicines. So I had to choose. But I had so much fun from the first lesson that it was clear that I wanted to continue on this path. And so I looked for my own shop space that I could use as a warehouse at the same time.
You are originally from Sweden, so you can look at us Germans from a distance. In terms of natural cosmetics, where are you further than we are?
Indeed in Scandinavia and also in Great Britain.
Above all, the Scandinavians' clean-classic aesthetics go well with German women and also correspond to my idea of aesthetics.
I grew up with it, and design is important to me as well as content.
The packaging has to be environmentally friendly, it has to feel and look good.
Several more natural cosmetics companies enter the market every year. What do you pay attention to?
First of all, of course, I ask myself where our needs are.
At the moment I don't have enough brands for hair dye, but six different brands for nail polish.
But then I immediately look at the ingredients to decide whether a brand is even an option.
Often it is called vegan, but that does not correspond to my ideas about natural cosmetics.
What does that mean, vegan?
A car tire is also vegan.
Are there any products that cannot be produced 100 percent naturally?
It's difficult to find fragrances that are 100 percent naturally produced.
We have a few, but also many that are only 85 percent natural.
But we explain why you need a synthetic molecule to produce a fragrance.
Even with nail polishes, it is not entirely possible without solvents.
Are there really customers who buy a perfume online that they don't know? Or a face cream? Don't you have to smell and feel something like that?
In fact, there are a lot of first-time purchases in the store.
That is why we completely changed our online shop at the end of August, and you can now get a sample of almost every product that we carry.
From a sustainability perspective, of course, that's a bit ambiguous when you think of single-use plastic packaging.
The other way around, sending back and forth is not good for the environment either.
Are there any bestselling products?
Definitive.
The Organic Pharmacy serum, for example, from day one.
Body butters and eye creams from Susanne Kaufmann are excellent.
We have also been selling nail polishes very well since the pandemic.
Do you test the products before listing them?
We test most products for 28 days for effectiveness.
Of course, this does not apply to nail polishes.
But we do make sure that the right person on the team tests the product.
For example, if it comes to a product for curly hair, the colleague who also has the appropriate hair will get it.
At the moment, face and body oils are very popular. Can you explain the trend?
You can explain that very well in my person.
I have latent rosacea.
Chronic reddening of the skin. . .