Twelve years after its inception, British beauty and fragrance brand Haeckels is relaunching without an official name. It’s an extraordinary move, but one its founders felt compelled to make to distance itself from the German zoologist and naturalist that inspired the name, Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel promoted and embraced scientific racism and social Darwinism — a thinking that was later affiliated with the rise of Nazism.
“You only have to Google Ernst Haeckel to see the racial controversy,” says CEO Ann-Margret Kearney, who joined the company in June this year, over a Zoom call a week ahead of the relaunch.
Why has it taken this long to rebrand? Founder Dom Bridges says he wasn’t aware of the connection when he established the Margate-based natural skincare and wild fragrance company in 2012; instead, he was inspired by Haeckel’s published illustrations of the natural world. Over time, customers began to comment on the darker side of Haeckel’s past. “However, we didn’t have the structure to undergo such a radical change while trying to survive post-pandemic and the shifting retail landscape,” explains Bridges.
Pressure grew and, when an employee shared research at the start of the year into Haeckel’s link to Nazism, Bridges knew the time had come to make the change. “We couldn’t overlook it anymore,” he says. “You can’t ignore how it makes your team feel. I also didn’t want people to think that this is what we stand for or that we’re associated with the history.”
On 7 November, the brand will relaunch with a temporary name: Formerly Known As Haeckels (FKAH). It will reveal new packaging and a new visual identity, alongside a refined product offering and an online transparency initiative that shares how much every product costs. It will then give its community 12 months to decide on a permanent name.
Both Bridges and Kearney say the rebrand and the next 12 months are critical to the brand’s survival. “It’s a scary time but it’s necessary,” says Bridges of the move. Kearney agrees: “I’m like, shit. There’s no case study for this, you know?”
It’s not just about the name: despite turning over £10 million in sales, Haeckels has been struggling with costly overheads and was making a loss.
To finance the relaunch, Haeckels had to court investors. It kicked off a funding round in June 2024 that saw it receive a fresh injection of financing from Estée Lauder Companies’s investment arm NIV (which invested in the brand in 2021 and 2023). The brand is seeking further investment, and hopes to close the round in the next few months at £6 million. ELC declined to comment on the relaunch but referred back to its initial investment, when it said the funding would help the brand to “continue doing what it does best: championing sustainability, creating game-changing products and fighting for greater transparency in beauty."
It was not an easy subject to broach with potential investors. “We’re in a new climate where brands have to put everything on the table,” says Kearney. “We were presenting our five-year plan and we knew we had to tell the cap table about the pivotal changes we would make. There was no way we would present a plan, ask for money and then further down the line surprise them. So it was absolutely nerve-racking,” she recalls. The reception was positive, she says; investors agreed that the change needs to happen now.
A total overhaul
The investment was used for key new hires, including a global head of commercial, head of e-commerce and chief financial officer, and will be used to spur acceleration into new markets, with sights set on the US and Europe. Bridges, who had stepped back from a daily, active role to focus on conservation in Cornwall, has returned to the business as innovation lead, using his conservation learnings to overhaul the packaging.
All skin, bath and body products are now packaged in vivomer (a compostable plastic alternative made from microbes that biodegrade within one year in a healthy home compost). All secondary packaging has been removed from products except for fragrances and candles, as they have a glass outer and use mushroom (mycelium) packaging, which is already biodegradable. “We’re making headway and looking to launch refillable candles for December and perfumes to follow,” says Kearney. The brand is also planning to bring to market a limited-edition set of ceramics made from leftover seaweed and ash from pizza ovens. “We want to create objects and vessels that customers can refill and reuse,” she adds.
The intention, says Bridges, is to create circular packaging that can be composted, reused or recycled. “It [vivomer packaging] can be safely placed in your dishwasher for reuse or sent back to us via pre-paid postage that we’ll then compose on our farm and community gardens to help grow food back for our Margate community,” he explains.
Any leftover secondary packaging has been mulched down and mixed with leftover seaweed to make wrapping paper for gifting from December onwards, while the glass bottles and pumps are being collected and recycled. The brand will continue to sell through old products.
FKAH’s visual identity is also transforming. “In our photography, you’ll see our new packaging in a state of decay. It’s the anti-adornment of packaging,” says Bridges, who wants to break the traditional marketing codes of visual elegance and perfection. “We need to be brave about everything, even how we visually communicate our product. Packaging is so coveted in this industry but let’s get past it, sustainably, and get to some really good products customers want to invest in,” he adds.
To improve its margins, the brand is reducing its product offering from 64 to 44, discontinuing loss-making products like its Spiralglow Cleanser and Biome Balance Serum, while developing new innovations such as a waterless body powder cleanser. Prices will be raised by an average of 8 per cent across the portfolio — a necessary move, says Kearney, to give the brand a chance to break even. It has also discontinued its subscription boxes. “I thought we would get absolutely hammered but we explained to the customers that this is not a sustainable business for us — we’re losing money every time we ship these boxes — and they understood,” she says.
Wholesale was proving expensive with low margins, so the company pulled out of 75 per cent of its stockists. FKAH is instead focused on its direct-to-consumer channels and key partners such as Big Beauty, Goodhood and Seven Stores until it’s stable enough to expand again. It will continue to operate from its own London and Margate stores, and the website post-facelift. “The new site is more beautifully revealing and complex, right down to telling customers how much it costs to make our product, the electricity bill, the rent, everything,” says Bridges.
To relaunch without a permanent name was Bridges’s idea, but Kearney was on board. “We didn’t feel right to make this [naming the brand] kind of change without the community, given it’s them that has kept us afloat and been so involved in the brand’s journey,” she says. “Some of the team were like, ‘Say what? How’s that going to work? What about the [social media] handles? The URL?’” she adds. “And, look, from a SEO point of view, we’ll still have Haeckels for SEO, SEM and our domain name, but otherwise, we’re removing the name from our packaging and stores and going by ‘Formerly Known As Haeckels’ on social media.”
Looking forward, new markets are on the cards and alongside that FKAH will aim to re-establish a retail and pop-up strategy in the UK. It will be executed gradually, says Kearney. “The most important thing right now is a successful relaunch to stabilise the business in the next six to 12 months and make sure that we’re safe, and then, as and when, we’ll start to expand — slowly and steadily.”
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