By Sarah Morgan
Made4Baby Natural Skincare produces natural skin care sourced and made in New Zealand. In ten years, the company has built a reputation for providing safe, chemical-free skincare for babies and is exported around the world. Made4Baby Natural Skincare Co-founder, James McLeod shares how the New Zealand Story services have provided international credibility and validation for their products.
Imagine this, you’re handed a baby, there is no instruction manual, there are so many choices and so many decisions.
But don’t panic, there is a safe choice – created by a company that knows first-hand the impacts of chemicals in skincare and made right here in New Zealand.
A global interest in health and a growing appetite for more natural skincare, combined with natural New Zealand ingredients, are part of the successful brand story behind Kiwi skincare company Made4Baby.
Pregnancy and the birth of their first son made James McLeod and his wife, and co-founder, Rebecca McLeod really consider what was going on their child’s skins. This provided the motivation to create a range of skincare products that use natural New Zealand ingredients to support the health of kids around the world; embodying the New Zealand story values, in particular Kaitiaki, the care of people and place.
The support of NZ Story has enabled Made4Baby to effectively tell their brand story around the world.
“We are a small business, with an even smaller marketing budget. The resources allow us to polish our story and create an image of an established and credible business when pitching to the international market,” says Made4Baby co-founder James McLeod.
The company uses the New Zealand Story workshop to build their story, the toolkit to tell their story and the FernMark Licence programme to validate their story.
McLeod says when they are entering an international market Made4Baby could be one of hundreds of brands pitching for business. To be successful requires a point of difference greater than the product alone.
An example of this is when “We were pitching for the business of the second largest distributor of baby products in Asia. To win the contract, offering our product alone was not the deal breaker but leveraging the reputation of New Zealand underpinned who we are as a business and gave us a competitive edge to secure the contract.
Made4Baby packaging also carries the silver FernMark. The mark provides official government recognition of the range, providing proof that it is a genuine New Zealand made product, he says.
“In a world of fakes and knockoffs it gives us credibility. Our Asian distributor has demanded we include the FernMark on our packaging as it allows them to point to authenticity of the range coming from New Zealand.”
Made4Baby is one of more than 8,500 New Zealand businesses that use the New Zealand Story framework and services to help them on their export journey. The toolkit, workshops and the FernMark Licence Programme are all services available to exporting businesses to help craft and shape their own NZ story, and leverage this on a world stage. Visit nzstory.govt.nz to find out how your business can help make New Zealand famous for more good things.