Organic ingredients might only be .02 percent of an “organic” product.

Question:rn How has beauty technology changed since you went into business? 

Andrewrnrn Goetz: Like everything else, technology keeps on rolling on. rnSometimes there are benefits to new technology and sometimes there are rnthings that don’t work out so well. So for instance what we try to do isrn we always try to take the best of Mother Nature and combine it with thern best of technology. We find that union works really, really well and wern try to stay away from anything experimental or unproven and go back to rnbasics. Technology also is unfortunately faddish in the same way that rnsometimes we see this with food: no fat, low fat, high carbs, high rnprotein. You know it’s "What are you supposed to eat?" and people tend rnto jump on a bandwagon that is generated by the press, so one day an rningredient, whether it could be a very efficacious good ingredient, but rnif it’s fallen out of favor out it goes and then the technology has to rnchange to compensate for that. But on the other hand you know technologyrn does bring advances. You know there are advances in anti-aging and sun rnprotection, so things that are very legitimate, but the knife cuts both rnways, I guess. 

Matthew Malin: Yeah, I can’t think of any rnreal specific technologies, like dramatically different technologies rnthat have come into play, maybe sunscreen since we’ve started our rnbusiness. 

Andrew Goetz: Yeah, I mean the biggest thing rnwould be oil-free moisturizing, which would probably have been in the rnlast 20 years or something. 

Matthew Malin: Well I think rnthere would be more fads like what you’re saying. "Organic" had become a rnreal big thing over the past few years and it’s sort of died down a lot rnlately. That was never a bandwagon we jumped on and as Andrew was rnsaying, we utilize gentle technologies that are tried, true and trusted rnalong with those natural ingredients, similarly tried, true and trusted rnin the most gentle, efficacious manner, so that you’re never finding rnirritation and hopefully getting the very best performance. So we’re notrn necessarily looking for what the newest technology is. If we can rnincorporate something that is trustful into the brand, it’s better. 

Andrewrnrn Goetz: We don’t need to reinvent the wheel every single season and rnthen again we’re not against organic ingredients and the problem is thatrn they’ve been so misrepresented to the customer saying "This is rnorganic," But you look and then you read the ingredients and it’s one rningredient, which is .02 percent of the product and then the customer rnfinally figures this out and is disappointed and then they have to ship rnthis organic ingredient halfway from around the world, so the carbon rnfootprint that it produces is so bad for the planet, so… 

Matthewrnrn Malin: And was it really organic? Was it grown indoors? Was there rnacid rain? 

Andrew Goetz: Right, so organic isn’t rnnecessarily better always. I mean what we try to do is always … 

Matthewrnrn Malin: Or possible in many cases. 

Andrew Goetz: … rnlocally and use natural when we can and organic if it’s available, but rnwe don’t use that as the litmus test because there are many more rnimportant things that go into the full formula.