La Bottega, founded in 1981, is a family business with branches in key parts of the world – New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sao Paulo and UAE.
The company’s branch – LA COSMETICA BEAUTY – is a premium manufacturing factory where ideas formulated by the company itself come into fruition. Their whimsical tagline for this segment reads as “bottling liquid dreams.” Another branch deals with importing and producing premium hotel amenities.
We caught up with Imen Latrous, the Area Director of Middle East & India, about her view on organic products in the Middle East.
What natural/organic products do you import into the Middle East?
As La Bottega, we are known worldwide as premium solution providers for luxury hotel amenity programs. Within our services, right from cosmetics to textile, we import branded cosmetics, personalized textile and accessories according to the clients’ requests.
Within that scope, cosmetics with a natural source of materials and organic textiles are at the essence of our product ranges.
Can you tell me about the demand for organic products in the region? What is the latest trend that you see in organic products?
Customers of La Bottega are great listeners of hotel guests who travel and spend time in the Middle east. Indeed, today’s customers are always caring more about organic solutions that they can blend in with the environment and can also provide a unique touch when they use it. For us this means that we need to continuously research on new ideas. It naturally becomes the company’s added value and a reason why we work with so many great properties
Lately in terms of new products, we have seen lot of demand on specialized products for selected target audiences. This includes kids sets and special organic products for baby care as room treatment. We did a collaboration with CoBigelow, the oldest American apothecary branded chain in the US.
Why should people go organic according to you?
Lately new generations and largely open access to media and information regarding cosmetics in general have curated a new way to understand the generic cosmetic product needs in general. With this new concept, organic and natural became the only status quo that really matters to customers. Natural is a comfortable escape from shiny advertising to essential products with a value for the end user, a human centric approach to caring for yourself and your surrounding social circle of family and friends and the environment.
Where do you import your products from, and how much of a role does certification play in your decision? What are your main challenges in sourcing?
For our company, we have quite a structured system and procedures for imports and regulations between our productions in Italy and China. Of course certification is an important step of our business in general in accordance with more than 40 brand licenses agreements for our cosmetics collections registration and is fundamental to protect our clients products. By approaching that step we take lot of care and prior planning.
From where and/or what products would you like to source more?
Our factories are located in China and centre of Italy, Senigallia, where our company comes from. Our productions are constantly running for client’s deliveries, and in terms of raw materials they just come from everywhere in the world, based on clients’ requests. Recently we have experienced good cases from China and Middle East regions for new fragrances with local flavours.
Interviewed by Menaka Ramakrishnan, Buyer Manager
menaka@organicandnatural.com