Talking Greene is a series of discussions centered on the idea of sustainability in Kuwait, the group leading this movement, and locating tools to assist the general public in making wiser decisions. As a business owner in the same industry, I believe it is my responsibility to promote local organizations and individuals working to change the way we shop for goods and to increase environmental consciousness both domestically and abroad.
In this month’s interview, we met Noor Assiri, one of the founders of Happy Herbalist, a local skincare brand. Happy Herbalist is based around sourcing 100% natural and cruelty free body care ingredients to create a unique locally based brand that’s all packaged in glass packaging. Noor has a background in Marketing with a Master’s in Human Resource Management from UCL in London. Sarah Vornholt grew up being involved in organic skincare working product production for her families skincare business in Florida. Sarah studied Physiotherapy at the University of West Florida. Nourah Al Derbas studied finance but found passion in bringing awareness to clean skincare products as she has sensitive skin.
Have you always had a passion for beauty and body care products?
It’s been a field I have always had an interest in for a long time. At first, I always had different ideas in my mind for other things to start, but it all changed one summer I was in the United States couple of years ago. I got the opportunity to learn more about herbs and their medicinal properties, so I decided to enroll myself into a number of courses to get into it more. These courses taught me a lot about reading labels, checking certain ingredients, and learning more about sourcing the correct healthy and clean ingredients to create such clean, eco-friendly products. Upon my return to Kuwait, I began discussing what I had learned with Nourah and Sarah. We then started researching the local market and decided to get involved together due to our mutual interest in clean, organic, herbal based products. Along with our desire to have more organic local options here in Kuwait.
What’s the reason behind the brand name Happy Herbalist?
We came up with a few names in the beginning, the goal being a name that is easy for people remember. We have even tried to come up with a made-up name ourselves but realized that we might face an issue with regards to pronunciation and probably permits being written in Arabic using the name. This has led us to come up with the name Happy Herbalist, which gives you an idea of what the brand is all about. My partners and I also decided to use the letter H in Arabic “Ha’a” as our logo to show the Arabic origins of our products and set it apart from other brands.
Having lived abroad for a number of years during your studies, has that enlightened more with regards to the sustainability and the different brands within that industry?
Very much so. When I was living in London, I was living just down the road from Aesop. Whenever I pass by it, I would usually go in and explore their products as I am a big fan. I also appreciated their earthy tones, their exquisite interiors, and the core values of their brand. The whole amber aesthetic was very attractive to me with very minimum to no use of plastic whatsoever. The society itself in London, many of which are well informed about sustainability and the bare minimum they do is recycle, which I have learned as well. Not only has London influenced me into sustainability, but also my time living in Colorado has affected be in many ways regarding recycling and the importance of taking care of the environment. Other brands have also been realizing the impact of global environmental issues and have been changing some of their products to become more aware and less wasteful and harmful to the environment.
Is it hard to source some natural ingredients needed to produce your products?
We do have a tough time sometimes. For example, we like having accessibility to frankincense, we do at times find it difficult to source the right type for our products and have them shipped to Kuwait. It’s not as easy as having it right in front of you in some cases in some countries for example. Other ingredients, such as Calendula and other types of flowers, we have to make sure we get them at the right time so it can be freshly added into our batch of products. We also try our best to educate our customers about the importance of our ingredients to show how hard we work choosing and sourcing them to create an amazingly clean product line. Our country’s location, environment, and weather make it difficult to grow such ingredients unfortunately but that didn’t stop us at sourcing them from abroad.
Could you elaborate more about what challenges you have encountered as a brand.
The first major challenge is the lack of the ingredients being available. There are a few of the ingredients we can source here locally, but they’re not as high quality as I or my partners would want to provide to people. So, if I want to take the easy way out, it’s an option; however, that’s not the path we as a brand want to take. Second challenge we face is the whole delivery and shipping of our outsourced ingredients. We’ve been facing a lot of problems when it comes to delivering them to us, even though we’re licensed, and all our paperwork is up to date. This is due to our local customs department. We do hope sometime in the near future these hassles and challenges we face would be made easier as a support mechanism from the government to young local entrepreneurs trying to work hard and start a business.
Where do you see Happy Herbalist within the next couple of years? Any plans to introduce more product lines and/or expand existing ones?
Our main goal during this period is to expand locally in Kuwait, as we have just launched our brand back in March. Our aim is to build a loyal locally based clientele that have used our products and trust its quality. We would ask for feedback from our clients, whether good or bad, to ensure that we are moving in the correct path at the right pace as well.
We also will be adding new product lines as well as adding to existing ones. We have just introduced the smaller sizes of the body oils that we are marketing as travel size. We have also introduced a lovely new product line, which is the hair spray. As you can see, there is room to grow of course however we are doing it at a steady pace to make sure any new product introduced in the marketing from Happy Herbalist is up to our high standards and expectations.
For more information about Happy Herbalist, check out @happyherbalistkw on Instagram and their website.
