Kopari Beauty, the San Diego-based beauty brand, is known for its coconut-based high-performance actives. Kopari's skincare, body and personal care SKUs are sold in nearly 2,000 doors across the globe.

Gigi Goldman co-founded Kopari Beauty in 2015. The brand's efficacious, luxurious products are cruelty-free, vegan, phthalate-free, paraben-free, sulfate-free.

The brand uses 'Kopari coconuts,' which are 100% organic and sustainably sourced. They are farmed in small batches on the Philippine Islands, and cold-pressed. 

Ramping up its commitment to sustainable beauty with its rebranding initiative, Kopari intends to set the pace for the industry on what it means to be a clean and sustainable beauty brand, including:

• sustainably source coconuts from small family farms 
• keep entire packaging supply chain to blue bin recyclable materials 
• use PCR wherever possible 
• sustainably manufacture in Southern California in solar-powered plants 
• introduce a refillable program to minimize packaging impact 
• explore options to offset carbon footprint

Gigi Goldman, Kopari’s co-founder, talks about the brand's redesign & its sustainable packaging

Jamie Matusow: What prompted Kopari’s decision to switch to sustainable packaging?

Gigi Goldman: Clean and sustainable have been key pillars for Kopari since day one. The brand was founded on the beach in San Diego, CA. We spend a ton of time outdoors and are passionate about the environment around us. 

This passion extends to our products and packaging and it’s important that we are doing our part to ensure we’re bringing products to market that are as sustainable as possible. 

We currently have a recyclable program in place with Terracycle, where our products are recyclable via their envelope program, but we wanted to expand our efforts and make them more consumer friendly allowing them to recycle curbside in their blue bin.

JM: What about the formulations? Were those revised as well?

GG: No, because all of our products are vegan, cruelty-free, phthalate-free, paraben- and silicone-free. We also have a no-no list of more than 200 ingredients and align with Sephora’s Clean Beauty and Ulta’s conscious beauty initiatives. We are always looking to be ahead of the curve when it comes to bringing super-efficacious products to market while using ingredients that minimize our customers’ exposure to potentially harmful ingredients.

JM: What were the challenges the brand faced in finding suppliers, materials?

GG: One of the biggest challenges for us was marrying our repackaging designs with recyclable and sustainable materials. We had to go back to the design drawing board a few times in order to achieve the outcomes and designs we created while working closely with our network of partners to reach our sustainability goals. 

This requires a company-wide keen focus on achieving goals on all fronts. We’ve been able to expand our supplier networks, both international and domestic partners, to include some great vendors who have sustainable options—both upstream and downstream.

JM: Did this all get done during the pandemic—and what were the additional challenges involved?

GG: Yes, the majority of the development work was done in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. The recent issues we’ve faced have been related more to the global supply chain issues we’ve all collectively had recently. 

The majority of our goods that we source overseas come through the port of LA which, as everyone knows, has been incredibly congested over the past 10-12 months causing a lot of delays. Our operations team [went] above and beyond to get everything here in time for the repack launch in January. 

JM: Please describe the packaging that was created, as to jars, bottles, etc., and materials and their recyclability.

GG: We have put a lot of time and effort into making all of our packaging components easily recyclable via blue bin and Terracycle. Our new Skincare and Bodycare jars are made of two different types of recyclable plastic—PP and PET.

We engineered the inner jar which is made of PP material to be easily removed from the outer jar so that it can be recycled separately and to allow for reuse of the outer jar via our refill/reuse program we’re working on. 

All of our tubes and caps are blue bin recyclable and are made with HDPE/LDPE and PP materials. We are also utilizing Post-Consumer Recycled plastic in some of our tubes. For our kits and bundle packs, we have removed all non-recyclable components such as plastic films and vac forms.

We are now simply using SBS papers that are biodegradable, eco-friendly and easily recycled. More challenging components such as pumps and sprayers that contain metal springs, can be recycled with our longstanding partner, Terracycle, through their simple envelope mailing program obtainable on our website.

JM: Are the products still color-coded?

GG: From our consumers, we know that the individual products are the hero, and thus, we’ve decided to let each product stand on its own so we have moved away from category color coding.

JM: What are you most proud of about the new packaging?

GG: Beyond the work we’ve done to create more ecological packaging, we couldn’t be more excited about Kopari’s new look.

It still incorporates our signature wave and flowing logo, which has been a hallmark of our brand, but provides some cues for the clean beauty category language, such as the clean lines and elevated feel. At the same time, I think that we’ve been able to still keep that shelfie-appeal. The response from our customers has been amazing. They are loving it!

JM: Why is it now so important for beauty brands to tell a sustainability story?

GG: Today, more than ever, we believe that brands have an onus of responsibility to our stakeholders, including our customers and our environment. It’s always been important to Kopari because we care about what people put on their skin and how we impact the environment.

We are a conscious business in everything we do. With sourcing, we sustainably-source our coconuts on small family farms in the Philippines. With manufacturing, we manufacture the majority of our products in a solar-powered facility in Southern California.

And with packaging, we want to provide consumers with sustainable ways to limit downstream impact, making our packaging recyclable. We are looking at every step of the process and we are always looking to improve.