One grandmother's recipe for success

Picture: RICHARD BRIGGS

By NICK GENTLE The Canberra Times, Wednesday, 22 December 1999

The cosmetic industry is so obsessed with things like proanthyocyanidins, retin-A, coenzymes, and wonder acronyms like PHA and AHA, that one particular acronym, OFR, is often over looked.

An OFR, or old family recipe, is the driving force behind a new moisturiser being introduced to the Canberra market by Canberra Institute of Technology biological science student and mother of two Inelda Lovi.

Inelda's Moisturiser, as it is called, is made according to a recipe passed to Inelda by her grandmother many years ago, and it is only since August this year that Mrs Lovi has been producing it for limited sale in selected outlets.

"I have tried lots of products on the market," she says. "But always I kept coming back to my own." Mrs Lovi's efforts in trying to get her product into the marketplace provide an interesting case study in how to take an idea from infancy to market readiness, and she is the first to admit she was totally unprepared for the experience.

She says she was so caught up in the process that she did not really contemplate what she was letting herself in for. "If I had stopped to think, then maybe I would never have done it," she said.

Her moisturiser is made from totally natural oils and plant extracts (most of which come from her garden), plus extra vitamins. The cream is readily absorbed by the skin, and does not leave a greasy residue.

Mrs Lovi spent some time talking with a pharmacist friend about how to take the cream from a relatively unattractive concoction of plants and oils to a point where it would appeal to consumers, and then set about doing it.

She standardised the formula, according to industry guidelines, added emulsifying wax to give it a familiar appearance, then ordered packaging and began designing her marketing materials.

Mrs Lovi said it was very hard to get ingredients for her cream when she was acting as an individual, but that problem was overcome by registering a business name and getting a sales tax number.

She said her motivation was knocked about a bit during this period, but people kept encouraging her to go on. It was only when she received her first box of tubs for the cream that self-doubt crept up on her.

"When I bought the box of 231 containers I thought, 'What am I going to do with all this," she said.

As it turned out, what she did was sell them. She went door to door to businesses she thought would be interested, and just about every one ended up with a few tubs of Inelda's Moisturiser in their stores.

"It was a big surprise," she says of her reaction when people actually began reordering the product. "All of a sudden, it spread." Since then Mrs Lovi has had some time off from the cosmetics industry to sit her end-of-year exams, but her eyes are now firmly focused on opportunities in the New Year.

Mrs Lovi does not think what she has done is particularly special, and she says it was more of a ploy to motivate her fellow students than a plan to corner the moisturiser market.

"I've done something simple, but other people can do so much more."

As for the future, Mrs Lovi is philosophical about her prospects of making it to the cosmetic industry's big time. "If it becomes big, then terrific," she said. "But if not, at least I tried."