For actress, mother, and skincare magnate Jessica Alba, luxury is about peace of mind— knowing that the things you buy won’t hurt you or the earth.
Jessica Alba never envisioned herself as a business mogul. She has always been conscious of the environment (“I think it’s a generational thing, this type of awareness,” she says), but she was never particularly entrepreneurial. The Dark Angel actress, who became a fixture on Hollywood’s sexiest people lists after lead roles in hit movies such as Honey (2003) and Sin City (2005), was content with her acting career until she gave birth to her first child. Honour, born in 2008, changed everything.
Having suffered from acute allergies and asthma as a child, Alba was determined to raise her daughter in an environment free from the irritants and chemicals common in baby, household, and personal care products. She searched for goods derived from natural ingredients but found her options shockingly limited. She wondered: if her contemporaries were so concerned about the of the planet and of themselves, why were there no ethically produced, safe alternatives to the synthetic, cheaply formulated goods on the market?
Alba founded the Honest Company four years later. In the six years since 2012, her startup has become a household name, with a staff of over 300 and a recent valuation of more than US$1 billion. Her brainchild produces baby products, personal care products, vitamins, and household cleaning products that are vegan and organic where possible, and free of substances like BPA, silicones, and polyethylene glycol.
Honest only caters to the US market at present, but Alba says she “would love to expand into Asia.”
“Every step of the way it has been a daunting endeavour,” says the mother of three on the phone from New York, where she is on a business trip. The 37-year-old Californian speaks calmly and deliberately. Her manner is more serious, more professional than her on-screen personas might have one believe (Alba is often cast as a sexy femme fatale or a sweet girl next door). She’s the first to admit her journey into consumer goods has been challenging. “When it comes to starting something you’ve never done before, you kind of have to fake it until you make it because you don’t know if it’s going to work and you don’t know if anyone is going to be interested in your business. You have to learn as you go.”
As founder, she guides strategy, marketing and product innovation, and always personally tests the products before they hit the shelves. “We have skincare chemists on staff in my office so that when they make products, I can go down the hall and poke around and change things. I can say, this is too creamy or not creamy enough, I want the serum to look like this or feel like this or smell like that, so I help develop stuff with the chemists right there. That’s what’s really special about what we do.”
Honest is one of many natural skincare brands, such as Drunk Elephant, Amala, and Susanne Kaufmann, that have shot to prominence in the past few years. But top- tier mainstream brands—ones you might see in the duty-free section at international airports—haven’t yet shifted their focus to the natural. How long, I ask, until these brands are forced to rethink their formulations and marketing strategies?