The New Zealand beauty entrepreneur has her sights set on global expansion with an impending move to the UK.
Emma Lewisham has spent the past six years pioneering her line of high-performance, plant-powered products in a saturated market, spearheading a new era of luxury skincare.
After cementing her
reputation as the world’s first 100% circular-designed, climate-positive and B-Corp certified brand in New Zealand and Australia, Lewisham took her brand international three years ago.
Forging retail relationships in the US, UK and EU attracted the attention of retail juggernauts including Space NK, Harrods, Net-A-Porter and Liberty. Today, the brand is available from 230 retailers globally (including 16 luxury retailers) with warehousing and logistics established in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and US.
But as the success of the Emma Lewisham brand grew, Lewisham and husband Andrew decided to move to London, in time for daughter, Milla, to start school.
It’s not the first time the Lewisham family have based themselves in London; they relocated for three months when the brand first broke into the UK market. Nor is this a forever move.
“I’ve been travelling there two or three times a year for the last three years. It’s a second base for our growth in the UK and expansion into the rest of Europe and now America and more to come,” Lewisham says.
“We felt we had to flip the base for a period and give the brand a really good push alongside our team up there. Moving to London had been at the back of my mind for a while. The level of travel I was doing and being away from my family was gruelling, plus opportunities kept coming in and not being able to do them was tricky.”
With London just a 90-minute flight from Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium, it’s the perfect location for dialling up her brand presence in Europe.
Lewisham adds she’ll be back on home soil regularly, checking in with her teams and manufacturers in Australia and New Zealand every year for “good chunks of time”.
“New Zealand and Australia are such important markets for us, so I’ll still be very visible and active,” she says.
But in the interim, Lewisham says the move to London will be an anchor for her husband and daughter.
While it may not be a forever move, Lewisham says it will allow her to oversee the brand’s expansion into markets including the US and EU. Photo / Supplied
As involved as she is with her eponymous skincare line, the hallmark of a successful business is one that can be run remotely – relying on a senior team who can carry the torch while Lewisham is based offshore.
“Our team is solid, and we have an amazing relationship with our exclusive retail partner, Mecca, where the brand is doing so well. Things are flying for us. I decided okay, for a period, I don’t have to be here 24/7,” she says.
Conscious not to lose the small team agility established over the past six years, Lewisham says she feels “very connected” to her team despite operating in different markets and time zones.
“I think that comes down to having the right people on the bus … if they’re not, they have to get off. It is a business and you have to make hard calls on who’s in your team,” Lewisham says.
She calls expansion offshore “incredibly challenging”, which makes the victory of being sold in multiple UK retailers, including SpaceNK, Harrods and Liberty, all the sweeter.
“We’re not just established over there; we’re accelerating. [The UK] has been our fastest-growing market over the past 12 months. We’re in the top five luxury skincare brands at SpaceNK and our Vitale Elixir is the number two selling luxury serum behind Dr Barbara Sturm’s Hyaluronic Serum,” she says, quick to point out hers is the only New Zealand brand sold in the notoriously hard-to-get-into beauty department store.
“What’s helped us break into the UK has been the performance and the quality of the product. We’ve always made skincare with complete integrity, rooted in the belief that our high-quality formulations can stand the test of time and transcend trends,” she says.
“I’m passionate about having the most phenomenal products and point of view to break through, because it’s such a competitive and saturated market.”
The new Emma Lewisham Supernatural Creme Cleanser is priced at $84, or $77 for the refill. Photo / Supplied
Her approach – conscious and considered – has led Lewisham to introduce newness only when ready, not pressured to keep up with the level of churn typical of the beauty industry.
The new Supernatural Creme Cleanser is the next cab off the rank, launching on March 31. It’s the second cleanser to be added to Lewisham’s line after the introduction of her Illuminating Oil Cleanser in 2020.
The decision to formulate a creme-based cleanser came down to consumer preference (not everyone loves an oil), alongside groundbreaking research into formulations that can penetrate deeply into skin, despite only being in contact with it briefly before being washed off.
“That’s why it’s taken so long to bring out another cleanser, because we genuinely wanted to see something distinct we could do in a product, not just bring out something new for buzz,” Lewisham says.
“We don’t launch a lot of products. We haven’t launched a product in a while. We really take our time on them and not rush them through.”
The team of physiologists was challenged by flipping the concept of cleansing on its head. “Up to this point, cleansing has been about removal, but what if from the very first step, you’re giving to skin more than you take?” Lewisham says.
Calming, balancing and hydrating skin were Lewisham’s North Star during the formulation process, creating what she calls a “wash-on” product that supports the skin barrier and microbiome, alleviating inflammation and boosting hydration.
Lewisham says the cloud-like cleanser marries luxury skincare with clinical performance, while offering a spa-like experience from home.
It emulsifies upon contact with water, gently cleansing skin with key ingredients like white biotech hyaluronic acid, patchouli and lichen extract, and a targeted prebiotic to leave skin feeling hydrated (not stripped).
Photo / Babiche Martens
It’s this approach to innovation, never settling for the status quo, that earned her brand recognition from Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry, Peter Agre. The endorsement was supported by a two-year relationship that Lewisham has been building with the laureate during her frequent trips to America.
She calls him a “purist” of the science world and adds that his genuine recognition of her brand’s scientific robustness is one of her proudest moments in business so far.
“It shows what New Zealand businesses can do. At the moment, I feel like everyone’s so down and out in the country, but we have got so much to offer the world. We can achieve so much,” Lewisham says.
“Nothing is limitless – we just need to back ourselves again.”
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