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A Meeting of Two Minds
The impetus for new ventures is often sparked by people with separate but complimentary skills seeing the same possibilities. In Kio Kio’s case, the people were Liz Young, a busy pharmacist with a penchant for natural therapies and Fiona Terry, a brand strategist with a background in design and export marketing and a passion for nature, flowers and fragrances.
In 2007, the twosome decided to put their collective skills and ideas into practice. Together, they formed Kio Kio and began the meticulous process of researching, experimenting and finally creating their very distinctive range of natural bodycare products.
Satisfying a Customer Need
As a pharmacist, Liz Young was continually asked by her customers who were aware of her understanding of natural therapies, to produce her own formulations. Many felt the traditional creams in the marketplace were heavy to use, irritating, contained petrochemicals and parabens, did not rinse off without using harsh detergents and worked more as a barrier to moisture than as a true moisturizer. She felt the natural products available also had their problems. In her words, they “lacked the pharmaceutical elegance that the more discerning modern world had come to expect.”
Liz Young believed that body-care products should only contain the highest quality natural ingredients, have an appealing fragrance, feel luxurious and certainly not separate out or go rancid as some other natural products were doing. She also wanted her products to have a large organic content and to replace synthetic chemicals with natural plant-based alternatives wherever possible.
For her part, Fiona Terry had been a keen observer of the emerging international consumer trend towards products with natural integrity. A long-time believer in nature’s cleverness, Fiona saw evidence all around her of nature’s effortless ability to answer the planet’s most complex questions. She viewed the genius of nature as offering the perfect guiding principles to skin-care.
Taking Nature’s Inspiration
The partners were in no doubt that the world’s new ‘green goddesses’ would respond to a range of skin-care products from New Zealand that captured our natural chemistry and embodied beautiful fragrances, textures and efficacy.
Kio Kio’s product research into New Zealand’s rich store of native botanicals revealed numerous exciting possibilities for some of the planet’s most ancient plants and trees. A small number of the most beneficial have been selected and blended with the purest organic water in the world.
Since the largest single component of skin-care is often water, Kio Kio believes that water should be of the best possible quality and contain natural beneficial trace elements such as silica and calcium. The natural formulations finally devised for Kio Kio’s products are safe for user’s skin to ‘consume’ and safe for the environment to process.
Kio Kio has been positioned at the premium end of the market and thoughtfully designed for multi-sensory appeal by the skilled design team at Brian R Richards Ltd. The name itself, with its primitive, repetitive rhythm, echoes the birdsong heard in pristine New Zealand forests. The design of the logo captures many different plant references - native flowers, water crystals, the pattern of the cut stem of a plant. The colours of the range reflect Kio Kio’s South Pacific origin and the richness of our botanical heritage. For busy, urban dwellers around the globe, Kio Kio products are intended to be evocative of life in New Zealand with its inherent lushness, clear waters, fresh air and magical botanicals.
Our Guiding Philosophy and Vision
In a broad sense, Kio Kio aims to play an active role in convincing the worlds ‘green–resistant’ consumers of the merits of natural, ethical skin-care.
Kio Kio is also keen to bring to the world’s attention the extraordinary habitat that is New Zealand - a natural home for fresh skin-care thinking.
The company’s clear objective is to pleasantly surprise its customers by creating a carefully researched, sustainably manufactured, natural body-care range using the purest and most beneficial natural New Zealand ingredients, evoking the most beautiful country in the world.
For Kio Kio, this is just the beginning of a long and very worthwhile journey.