A 'Natural' Journey to Beauty

IT扴 EARLY morning and the steam is rising off the trees as the first sun hits. It's going to be a hot day, so Chantal Vanderhaeghen is out walking early on the track near her home in the hills outside Perth, Western Australia. This is a routine she cherishes; an opportunity to not only keep fit but also to be surrounded by the natural bush she loves. To see Chantal in this environment is to begin to understand the core of her business - Franc Essential. Franc Essential (www.franc.com.au) is a natural skin care line that brings together Chantal's deep sense of environmental awareness and her connection with natural healthcare. When she talks about skin care, Chantal could just as easily be talking about walking in the bush or meditating: "A skin care ritual is an essential part of every day - a moment spent in quiet contemplation to nurture the body and soul. When we feel at ease with ourselves, we feel at ease with the world." As a child growing up in Switzerland, Chantal received an early education in the holistic approach to healthy living; however, it would be many years, and a continent away, before she found an outlet for these ideas. After completing a degree in languages and a post graduate degree in administration, Chantal took her first step towards bringing her business skills and ideas about healthcare together through her work as a holistic massage and facial practitioner. It was during this time that her disappointment with products that either failed to deliver, or, more detrimentally, caused skin irritations and reactions, set her on a path towards creating her own skin care range.

Franc Essential brings together Chantal's deep sense of environmental awareness and her connection with natural healthcare

With her Certificate 4 level training in aromatherapy and massage as grounding, she set out on a learning journey across Australia and Europe in order to meet with and learn from experts in the medical and beauty industries. Her travels eventually brought her to Melbourne to be formally trained by Ron Guba, one of Australia's leading 'aromatic medicine' practitioners and the late Donna Arthur, founder of the Australian School of Clinical Aromatherapy. Chantal admits that transforming what she had learned into the skin care range she envisaged was a long journey. "There were so many choices and possibilities that I overwhelmed myself at first." She realised then, that she had to go back to basics. "I decided to write down the benefits of each oil and which skin they were suited to, and then I developed the formulations from there using the basic formula from Ron Guba." With these in hand, she was ready to move to the next stage and engaged cosmetic scientist, Jeanette Kemert, to assist with developing the product further. Franc is born On the recommendation of Ron Guba, Chantal and Jeanette approached Biocare Holdings Pty Ltd, a Melbourne-based company, to produce the Franc line. Established in 1992, Biocare is a boutique company that develops, manufactures and packages natural and organic cosmetic and personal care products. With Biocare on board, Chantal was able to create the products she wanted and also ensure she met stringent health and safety requirements. But Biocare offered not only the technical expertise Chantal required, but also a level of understanding about the nature of her business. As a small business themselves, Biocare understood what it meant to be starting out and was prepared to work with her on smaller quantities, thus allowing her the space to grow her business. Linking with Biocare also afforded Chantal access to contacts and suppliers that she would not have had access to on her own and allowed her to leverage their positioning in the market in order to gain better bargaining power. At the time the companyodziez