When it comes to the science of sleep, few brands are surely as knowledgeable as This Works. Led by CEO Dr. Anna Persaud, This Works is committed to providing easy-to-use solutions to help its customers improve their sleep and wellbeing.
This Works is available in more than 50 countries. Pre-COVID, the brand was already onboard ten airlines. Today the brand is rebuilding inflight listings and expanding into duty free with a growing partnership base including DFS Group and Dufry and upcoming listings with Aer Rianta International and Harding. According to Persaud, the brand is now ready to step up its travel retail focus and become more dominant on a global stage.
This Works has partnered with Vincent McDermott and his Irish company TR Partners for its travel retail expansion. The alliance aims to leverage travel recovery and the wellbeing category’s growing trend to expand This Work’s footprint in the channel.
“Our goal is to get the right balance of partners and provide the right products for consumers as their demands evolve,” she says. “It’s not just about being everywhere but being where we are and doing it well. We want to represent the brand and offer the best product mix with the right packaging and minimal environmental impact. I don’t think in terms of how many doors or how big we can be, but rather we want to be aligned with our business ambition.”
In this exclusive Q&A, Hannah Tan-Gillies catches up with Persaud who talks about This Works’ ‘Everything starts with a good night’s sleep’ mantra; its commitment to backing up brand claims with scientific data; the company’s agile response to the pandemic and why she believes This Works has a special appeal in the travel retail channel.
What is your overall vision for the This Works in the travel retail channel?
Our purpose is to provide easy-to-understand and easy-to-use solutions for improved wellbeing. Travel retail is a natural channel for us because our community is constantly travelling and their wellbeing becomes compromised when they are on the move.
For us, it’s a natural extension to offer our customers an easy tool to improve their travelling experience both in transit and at their destination. Our products can help them adapt quickly to the abrupt change in their environment and I think that’s important. We want to be woven into people’s travel lifestyles in an easy and seamless way.
Travel retail is also a recruitment channel. Even as a small brand, we’ve always had an international footprint. Thanks to our amazing team, we’ve already got strong experience in the channel. We have a growing partnership with DFS Group and are growing our footprint in Asia. We are establishing a partnership with Dufry, even if the pandemic has stalled that expansion. We’re also launching with Aer Rianta International and plan to launch with Harding in a few months. We’re one of the top sleep and stress products onboard airlines.
In terms of prospects, we’re targeting an expansion in all regions with Dufry. Geographically, Asia is on the target list in terms of growing our footprint. We will also be present in Cannes to further our visibility in the channel.
What would you like your travel retail presence to look like in, say, five years’ time?
Travel retail is an important channel for us. It’s worth saying that it has given our brand a global appeal. We sell in 50 different countries globally, including the UK, US and China and other top markets in Asia. Our goal is to get the right balance of partners and provide the right products for consumers as their demands evolve.
It’s not just about being everywhere but being where we are and doing it well. We want to represent the brand and offer the best product mix with the right packaging and minimal environmental impact. I don’t think in terms of how many doors or how big we can be, but rather we want to be aligned with our business ambition.
How important is sustainability to This Works? And what sustainable practices are you implementing in terms of production, packaging and distribution?
We have a roadmap like all brands. Since our launch in 2004, the ambition of our founder, Kathy Phillips was to avoid unnecessary chemicals and packaging. We are proud to be consistently making improvements on our sustainability journey. We’re on this sustainability journey because it’s the right thing to do. We have always minimised the non-natural ingredients in our formulas. Our target is to have 98% natural ingredients. That gives our positioning as a natural brand authenticity.
Our packaging is recyclable and we avoid using plastic wrapping. We aim to transition to 100% post-consumer recycled plastics by 2025. We are balancing maintaining the way things have always been done with pushing the bar in terms of primary and secondary recyclables. We’re also in the B Corp process.
How is This Works leveraging the rise in demand for wellbeing?
Our DNA is grounded in wellbeing. At the heart of our brand is the use of functional fragrances to bring about a change to the mind and to the body.
We are going as far as we can in terms of the science and neuroscience behind aromas and evidencing that with hard scientific data. While there is a growing wellbeing trend, there is also a demand for evidence and reason to believe. Our challenge is to give our customers a reason to believe that our products work.
Our brand is rooted in science. To show consumers that we understand the impact of stress on your wellbeing, sleep and ability to focus, we’ve been investing in research to better understand the circadian rhythm and create these practical solutions that consumers can quickly learn to use.
Customers want to know why they should trust you. Thanks to backing up our products with evidence, we’ve sold nine million pillow sprays and have top rankings with all the retailers and airlines on our sleep products. We’re in the first class lounge for British Airways.
Tell us more about the ‘This Works Panel’?
I come from a science background. Since I joined the business, my goal has been to back our brand claims with studies that have enough people in them. This is crucial to my vision of building trust and to really earn our brand name ‘This Works’.
We have over 1,000 people on our This Works panel. All anonymous. Our panel is diverse, with people of all ages, cultures and skin types. When we create a product, we ask the panel to judge it in terms of performance. We ask them to evaluate the products against specific claims. We always ask, ‘does this work?’. The assessment is outsourced and done independently. Through this, we gain a deep understanding of how our products perform and it gives us huge insight into each claim. The panels are tough and they help us create products that won’t disappoint our customers.
Tell us more about the ‘super blend’ that powers your formulas – and how it leverages the body’s circadian rhythm to boost overall health?
Each product plays a role in the 24-hour circadian rhythm. Everything starts with a good night’s sleep. First is the wake-up phase, which is where certain things happen in the skin and brain to establish the circadian rhythm to anchor the 24 hours. Afterwards, it is the main body of the day, where you work, exercise and experience stress. In the evening, your body begins to prepare for restoration and finally the sleep phase.
Each product must be assigned to a segment of this 24 hour day. Our products have three main elements. The first is functional fragrance, which was been developed and proven through fMRI brain imaging to demonstrate a change to the brain. Our products are created to smell nice but to do a specific task.
The second element is the active ingredient that brings about the change. That might be a skincare item, or sleep fragrance – with an aroma that helps calm the mind. The third element is botanical oils.
This is important because we’re a natural brand. Other brands might use silicones or a chemical moisturiser, but we use botanical oils which allow us to create a sophisticated experience and the right level of lubricity. We pay a lot of attention to this botanical oil phase to create a system that holds both functional fragrances and natural actives.
Could you give some insight into the impact of COVID-19 on your business – how are you adapting to the new normal?
Unlike other brands, we thrived in COVID. That’s because we had the right range of products, not just one. We adapted and created several products that would help people in the age of COVID. Our sleep range did incredibly well throughout the pandemic. We also launched the Stress Check Collection to help people manage their stress-related issues and anxiety. In that collection, we created skin products that were designed to mitigate the impacts of COVID life on the skin, such as the use of face masks which leads to sensitivity, irritability and acne.
We were the first to market with our Stress Check Clean Hands sanitising gel which comes in a variety of formats. This brought in a huge new audience for us. There was also a great upturn in our body care and home fragrance businesses as people turned to self-care during this challenging time. All this wasn’t by chance, we had to move very fast. We launched 14 new products and we were making them in our bedrooms.
We made early and good choices in terms of investment channels. We invested in the first six months of COVID while other brands reduced investment. We kept talking to the market about the benefits of sleep, stress management and sanitisers. We supported digital channels, drove our direct-to-consumer business and shifted our customer profile to much younger consumers. Obviously, it was a very challenging period, but our team was resilient. While we lost all our travel retail business during that time, we managed to offset it.
We are aiming to reach +25% growth in five years from 2022.We are part of Canopy Growth, which is a much bigger parent company but we still have the mindset of a small and agile business unit. That attitude means we can’t take things for granted and we are very much looking forward to what is next.
What led to your renewed focus on travel retail in 2022?
We know there is a demand for our brand in travel retail. We were approached by major retailers who saw the same opportunity that we do in meeting travellers’ sleep and stress needs.
We believe travel retail is the right channel to really maximise our brand potential because the need for sleep is universal and without exception. In all markets, the need for sleep products remains a very significant need.
Helping travellers manage their sleep and stress is pretty much an incremental revenue stream rather than replacing an existing revenue stream. Our brand’s early inflight performance pre-covid in consumers’ changing attitudes to sleep and sleep products give me the confidence to invest in this channel.
This Works will be exhibiting in Yellow Village G45. For enquiries please reach out to; Vincent McDermott, Managing Director, TR Partners vmcdermott@trpartners.net +353858630545 www.trpartners.net
