Interview with Ada Polla, CEO of Alchimie Forever

We caught up with Ada Polla, co-creator of the Swiss antiox­i­dant skin­care line Alchimie Forever, fea­tured on QVC.

Ada Polla Tray, CEO of Alchimie Forever

The Alchimie Forever Story

Ada is the pres­i­dent and CEO of the family-operated busi­ness spawned from her father, Luigi Polla’s legacy in Switzerland as a MD in der­ma­tol­ogy and her mother, Barbara’s expert research in oxy­gen free rad­i­cals.    The fam­ily owned three busi­nesses – Forever Laser Institut, which is a med­ical spa, Geneva’s Analix Forever Art Gallery and a prod­uct line of nat­ural Swiss skin­care.  Ada worked in all three fam­ily busi­ness until she finds the one busi­ness that fits, Alchimie Forever.   She launched the Company in 2000 and the prod­ucts are a per­fect evo­lu­tion for her family’s tal­ent in offer­ing their foun­tain of youth or at least, great skin.

How is Alchimie Forever Different?

The skin­care line now sells at Henri Bendel and on QVC in the US, Sephora in France and Singapore.   Its effi­cacy is the key ingre­di­ents based on nat­ural plant extracts such as blue­berry, rose­mary, tomato, and grape, rather than retinoid or syn­thetic acids.  The com­bi­na­tion of gen­tle and nat­ural ingre­di­ents are per­fect for all skin types, includ­ing sen­si­tive.  Blueberry is one of the line’s sig­na­ture ingredients.

The prod­ucts are an effec­tive mix of sci­ence and nat­ural botan­i­cal (hence the name “Alchimie”,  which is Alchemy in French).  They do use syn­thetic ingre­di­ents but keep it to a minimum.

• 100% made in Switzerland
• Ingredients sourced in Switzerland
• Free of unnec­es­sary chemicals
• 95% nat­ural

Blueberries are one of the key ingre­di­ents in Alchimie Forever products

Q: What is new for Skincare for Fall 2009 and in 2010?

A:For Fall, we rec­om­mend heav­ier mois­tur­izer, espe­cially for dryer skin start­ing in November. For us, hand and foot cream sales pick up also in the Fall. Next year, we are launch­ing a creamy and nour­ish­ing foam­ing cleanser with rose extract, designed to used on the European way.

Q:  How is the cos­met­ics indus­try embrac­ing organic or nat­ural skin care lines?

A: There is a lot of mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion that is going on regard­ing organic or nat­ural skin care.  This is con­fus­ing the indus­try.  I highly respect the organic lines, but our cus­tomers want effi­cacy and sci­ence over prod­ucts that are 100% organic.

Alchimie Forever

Q: Is Alchimie Forever a green company?

A: The Company wants to be more green and this is incor­po­rated in many ways:

1. All of the Alchimie Forever offices — Geneva, Switzerland and Washington D.C. — have encour­aged employ­ees to walk to work
2. The Company focuses on pack­ing that is more envi­ron­men­tal con­scious with biodegrad­able boxes and min­i­mal mar­ket­ing infor­ma­tion in printed form.

Q: What is it like to head up a women-owned and oper­ated com­pany in an indus­try where many of the CEOs are men?

A: I have three younger sis­ters, and have worked with a lot of women. My fam­ily is a female-dominated house­hold and are pro female entre­pre­neurs.  I cre­ated the group NEW (Network of Entrepreneurial Women)  to bring these women entre­pre­neurs together in the Washington D.C. region.

Q: What are the chal­lenges of run­ning a busi­ness for women?

A: The chal­lenges of run­ning a smaller beauty com­pany is the lack of fund­ing and credit as well as the chang­ing con­sumer spend­ing habits, these are sim­i­lar for all small busi­nesses, men or women.

For women, bal­ance is a myth and this is stress­ing women out.  Who said bal­ance was nec­es­sary? I believe that what mat­ters is to give what you want to give to your efforts. Sometimes it is a lot and other times, it is a lit­tle, depend­ing on where you are in your life.  It is not about bal­ance but more of a judg­ing act to give atten­tion to what needs atten­tion at the moment.

Q: How is tech­nol­ogy affect­ing the beauty industry?

A: Everything technology-wise is impact­ing the beauty world.   Social media has the most impact in beauty brands.   Technology has increased all those ways that con­sumers have to inter­act with beauty brands and offered more options to have an one-to-one rela­tion­ship with the brand.  There are sev­eral key mar­ket­ing and con­sumer trends affect­ing beauty companies:

1. Consumers are keen to hear from ran­dom peo­ple about prod­ucts.  These online users have have a way of relat­ing to con­sumer rather than the brand directly.  [Watch our Shimmer Network ]
2. There is a dif­fer­ent psy­chol­ogy of the online con­sumer so mar­ket­ing pro­grams have to be dif­fer­ent than offline.
3. As a brand, as part of this new tech­nol­ogy, there is a way to have a con­ver­sa­tion with con­sumers which was not avail­able previously.

We enjoyed talk­ing to Ada. She has an incred­i­ble fam­ily legacy in beauty, is smart, young, beau­ti­ful and still such a plea­sure to talk with.

Here is her video inter­view from a local tele­vi­sion pro­gram called the District Dish so you can see how easy-going she is.

Ada Polla’s Interview on the District Dish