This could be heaven for everyone
This world could be fed,
This world could be fun
This could be heaven for everyone
This world could be free,
This world could be one
– Queen, Heaven for Everyone
Introduction: A decade ago in 2013, Sarajevo-born Filip Sedic invented a single sonic skincare device he dubbed Luna. Its desired universality of use and Sedic’s partiality for the music of British rock group Queen inspired the company name, Foreo – ‘For everyone’ abbreviated.
Over the ensuing decade Sedic and Foreo have rolled out a flurry of ever more creative beauty tech and wellbeing innovations, ranging from electric toothbrushes to eye massagers, microcurrent devices to sonic mask activators.
Now the company has launched what Sedic describes as its most exciting concept and campaign yet – themed Swedish Beauty in 3½ steps. Martin Moodie caught up with Sedic at Foreo headquarters in Hong Kong to discover what it’s all about.
“This past year has been very big for us – a Bob the Builder year,” says Filip Sedic, the ebullient and charismatic Founder of Foreo, as he looks back on a period of especially rapid evolution even by the standards of a company which counts constant transformation as part of its DNA.
Bob the Builder is an allusion to the British animated children’s series of the same name, most famous for its eponymous hero’s catchline “Can we fix it?”, to which the other characters always respond with a joyous “Yes we can!”
That neatly sums up the spirit of Foreo, the enterprise founded by Sedic just a decade ago that has grown into one of the wellbeing and beauty-tech sector success stories of our times, especially in travel retail. Although if Sedic was cast as Bob, perhaps the shout line would be “Can we create it?”, to which the consistent answer over a decade has been resoundingly affirmative.
We’re chatting at Foreo’s Hong Kong base – surely the most distinctive headquarters of any company in our industry – which occupies two floors of a converted industrial building in Wong Chuk Hang. It’s the third interview I have conducted with the Sarajevo-born entrepreneur, inventor, serial disrupter and maverick businessman in as many years, and this one quickly proves as quirky, compelling and unpredictable as the first two.
We’ve met to discuss one of the company’s biggest initiatives yet, an ambitious concept dubbed Swedish Beauty in 3 ½ steps. Described as a fresh approach to beauty, it involves as the name suggests a three and a half step programme (I will explain the half later) that deploys four of Foreo’s most renowned products – all designed to be used in harmony (see panel). The company claims that in a matter of six minutes, one can cleanse, lift, hydrate and produce a dazzling smile in the convenience of one’s home, office or even during travel.
In coming months an expanded Swedish Beauty skincare line – including face and eye products – will be rolled out. These will further complement the use of any Foreo device, which are designed to assist creams and serums with penetrating deeper into the skin as compared to using one’s hands.
What drove this latest project? And does it represent a redefining of Foreo as a company, moving away from beauty-tech and into the natural beauty segment? “We are a little bit of both,” Sedic replies. “Most people see beauty tech as needing to be electronic and with a plug or a battery involved.
“But beauty tech is much more than that. For us, it is about the whole set of tools, both the electronically supported device and the treatment itself. Because one thing does not exclude the other. And if you use both things together, they will support each other. So cleansing is good. But cleansing, supported by our Luna, is definitely better.
“It is the same thing with a serum. It is good, but you get very little of the active ingredients into your skin if it is not supported by something like Foreo Bear. We are trying to apply multiple technologies and multiple ways of working at the same time. Why is ‘at the same time’ so important? Because we know that Swedish beauty in terms of living is not just about being natural but also about being efficient. So it is very important to be able to combine things in terms of beauty in just a couple of minutes.”
Maximum efficiency with utmost effectiveness and efficacy. An ultra-contemporary and holistic view of beauty. “I know that this approach is not for all as many people love their rituals, and they have enough time to do every step separately in front of the mirror,” Sedic admits. “But many others don’t have time for that. And to be honest, even if you do have time, I believe that time would be better spent learning something, reading a book, getting out into nature or doing something else.
“It depends on the individual but generally it’s about six or seven minutes in terms of basic care,” Sedic says of the routine’s time-efficiency. “Anything more is by ‘need states’ – for example if you have acne or want to do hair removal and so on. But in terms of normal daily care that everyone needs, this is all it takes.”
The timing of the launch, coinciding with the rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, is pertinent. Given the enhanced focus on health and wellbeing that the crisis prompted, I ask Sedic whether it actually turned out to be a positive for Foreo. Both, that is, in terms of the company’s own internal mission and consumer acceptance of the company’s products.
“I believe it did because a lot of people had time to rethink their existing routines,” he replies. “If life goes by normally day by day, you don’t tend to question the routines that you have been doing for years. The pandemic has shaken some people up and given them an opportunity to rethink their routines, look around and ask if there is a better way.”
Moving into higher education
Creating that new routine is one thing. Convincing the consumer about it – as with all Foreo products, education is an essential element of communication – is another. “It is a challenge to communicate anything new,” Sedic acknowledges. “People accept change in small doses but I think this concept is bigger than that. We hope that we can make our communication subtle enough and do things step by step.
“From this year, we are teaching rather than advertising,” he continues. “Our products are not just another perfume or another cream where people already know what it is and how to use it. Or that we need to persuade them that ours smells better than the others. Instead, it’s a new philosophy and way of thinking that is not possible to explain with a one-banner picture and three sweet words.
“We are not alone in this kind of challenge to educate people and give them choices to make their own informed decisions,” he continues. “So we have expanded our communication to sponsor a lot of other educational channels, for example on YouTube and Instagram Stories, around education in politics, science, cooking and home improvements. These things are not directly related to skincare or wellness but we believe they share the same challenge as we do of educating people.”
Sedic’s views on the role of education – and educators – in modern society are typically forthright. “Today, nobody pays people well to educate others. Just look at how much teachers are paid compared to other people in society. Unfortunately the price for good educators is really low. So with us, it is more about sponsorships to produce that sort of content. We are more than willing to support that environment because we need to empower people to make educated decisions.”
Although he accepts that for Foreo’s products, a certain degree of B2B retailer education is also required, Sedic says that ultimately what the consumer demands will drive trade response.
“Of course, the trade is a challenge, because they have been working in a certain way for so many years,” he comments. “So their set-ups and processes have been based on a totally different philosophy. We don’t expect that this is going to happen overnight. And, like always, especially over the last few years, how the trade works will in the end be decided by what the customers want. So by educating customers that they demand more from the trade, I’m pretty sure the trade will follow.
“Consumer power is growing thanks to the technology of the social network and the availability of products from all over the world. This whole environment is empowering consumers more and more to be in charge. In the past you had to go to your shop and purchase from the choice they offered. Now people can buy what they want to buy, not what they have to buy. And this is steering the trade in the right direction.”
As we talk, my attention is drawn to a silicone mask lying on the table in front of us along with the latest mock-ups of the Swedish Beauty in 3.5 steps packaging. In truth it would be impossible to miss the bright silicone apparatus with a red button attached to the head grip, which holds the mask in place.
This mask, I learn, fits every face shape. Called the FAQ 200 Collection (Foreo launched the sister FAQ brand – dubbed ‘the world’s most coveted anti-aging device’ in late 2020), it is made with flexi-fit silicone. The wireless LED mask features eight different wavelengths, including NIR (Near-infrared spectroscopy) to tackle signs of aging and other skin concerns. And in keeping with Sedic’s obsession with convenience and efficiency, the user can move around freely while enjoying spa-level LED facial treatments at the push of a button.
“This is super exciting, it’s amazing,” says Sedic. “It looks so simple but you have no idea how many thousands of faces we had to scan to figure out what the average face looks like. And how to use the flexibility of silicon to be able to create a one size fits all mask. It was an enormous challenge to create something suitable for, say, the very small and narrow faces that we have in parts of Asia to very round and big faces.”
Not only does the mask have to fit all sizes but it must look good, otherwise people will be hesitant to use it, Sedic emphasises. “I believe that this is going to be one of the best products we have made,” he comments. “Because it has a huge advantage in that it spreads the light evenly around the face. For us that is critical.”
Creating the tool kit
It’s another example of the company’s different approach to anti-aging than most traditional cosmetics houses, Sedic points out. With most skincare, for example, the ‘anti-aging’ aspect is driven by empowering cell rejuvenation. “The easiest way of doing that is simply by damaging the existing cells to force your skin to build new cells,” Sedic observes. “There are lots of different methods, some better, some worse, but the end result is the same. It is about damaging the cells to produce the new cells.”
By contrast, the Foreo and FAQ approach is all about helping the skin’s healing process, with devices such as the FAQ 200 mask used directly after any procedure such as a facial scrub. Sedic – back to the Bob the Builder reference – believes in “providing a set of tools”, embracing cosmetics, devices and procedures, which together tackle signs of aging.
“Aging symptoms are very complex,” he explains. “It could be the drying of the skin, wrinkles, hair loss – it manifests in many different ways. The ambition here is to provide a set of heavy duty professional tools to tackle those challenges.”
A never-ending story
Foreo has come a long way since the original Luna device in 2013. But given Sedic’s relentless search for innovation, one suspects the journey still has a long way to go. “As a group, we are always at the beginning, always just starting,” he says. “The more you do, the more things you discover still to do. So the tasks are always growing exponentially, never going down. Education is and should always be a never-ending story.”
Does his mind ever turn off, even at night, while sleeping? “To be honest, no it doesn’t,” Sedic replies. “But I’m kind of like that. I like to wake up with five fresh new ideas and start the day by working on them. I figure I would not be able to live a life when I wake up and don’t know what to do today.”
There seems little chance of that. So when an idea comes to him in the night, or when he wakes up, what happens next? How does this swirling dervish of creative wizardry choose what to run with and what to discard?
“It’s a good question. In the beginning I would have hundreds of ideas during the night and they would all be entangled and jumping from one to another. When I woke up, I might remember one or none of them. Or sometimes I would wake up and put notes on my phone about what I was thinking.
“But with age, somehow I trained myself to try to stick to one idea. Many people think it’s impossible to steer your dreams but it’s definitely possible. I believe I have trained myself pretty well now to stick to one idea – at least until in a dream I disqualify it as a bad idea and want to go to another one.
“So, as strange as it sounds, I think I’m pretty good at actively steering what my dreams are about and finding a solution in my sleep. That’s kind of an interesting model!” he says, laughing. “Not that it works every time. Sometimes you wake up and you are sure that you have found the genius solution. And then when you think about it without dreaming, you figure out that you forgot that gravitational force exists and the idea is totally useless.”
So the Swedish Beauty in 3½ steps concept has gone from dream to fulfilment. As we speak, the product, packaging and branding is almost ready for launch (and subsequently has been). What happens next with Sedic? Does he return to his dream factory or does he also play a lead role in the commercialisation of the product?
“I used to be involved in commercialising products at the beginning,” he responds. “But as the organisation grew and my 24 hours per day didn’t, I had to step back from that for the last four or five years. Because I had to prioritise either product development or commercialism.
“But this year I am going to be more present in commercialising our products as well. Because the fact remains that it is not enough to make a great product if the message about that product isn’t right. And in most organisations, the product development department and the marketing department don’t have a clue about each other.
“And even when the product development department informs the marketing department at the last minute about what this product does, they don’t inform them how it got there. Why is the product like that? What was the thinking behind it?
“Many things get lost in communication. It’s very important that someone who made the product also gets the chance to tell the story of why and how it’s made. So from the middle of this year, I’m planning to personally take on more of the storytelling aspect. That’s because we have made some great achievements in creating these new products – the ones that are already here and some that will come during the year.
“At the moment it feels like we have made more great products than we have capability to properly educate customers about why and how we have created them and what the benefits are for our users.
“So I feel the best way for me personally is to switch between a full commitment to the product development for a year or two and then be fully committed to the communication and education of this. You can’t do both well if you’re just splitting your time between them.”
Nobody knows more about a product than its creator, in Sedic’s case not only its usage and qualities but also its genesis. “I meet marketing people who actually can form the message far better than me,” he comments. “But while they might be better at how to sell the product, it will not be the genuine story of how and why this product is like that.
“Why is the shape like that? What were we thinking? What were the challenges in making this? Now that is not necessarily always a good story in terms of selling. But it’s definitely a good story for a consumer out there if they want to do something themselves or find a better way of using this product more efficiently.
“This is not the end of this story. It doesn’t have an end,” Sedic continues, warming to the theme. “There is always room for improvement. You want people to see it, use it, and also find their own way of how to use the product. And that’s much easier if you are well-informed about what we were thinking when we were creating the product.
“When, say, 20 of us in a team are making the product, that’s 20 different brains and 40 different eyes. But once it comes to the users, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of brains and then things can happen that are far beyond what 20 of us could come up with.”
To underline the point, Sedic asked all the women at Foreo headquarters to describe their Swedish Beauty routines. Most replied simply that theirs were presumably like everyone else’s. So he asked them to write down the routines in detail. The findings were startling.
“I couldn’t find one that was even similar,” Sedic reveals. “Maybe they talk a lot about one particular product or routine but it seems the knowledge of the whole process and how this product particularly filled the gap in delivering the right beauty routine for them had not been communicated well enough. So when they talked together, they suddenly realised that they were doing things very differently – even from their best friends. So these individual earnings are lost because nobody’s sharing the information.”
That principle of collective information sharing among consumers is key to the Foreo educational approach, Sedic says, a point that has been reinforced through regular customer surveys. “We now have a lot of information about what people are using and how they are using it. There are differences, of course, depending on your skin type, your age and, most of all, where you live – because it’s not the same routine if you are living in Singapore, where it’s always 32 degrees, to Sweden where in summer it is sometimes 25 and in the winter it is minus 20.
“We want people to tell us what they are using and how they are using it. Then we can show them what other people of the same age and skin type are using. I believe this can be a really great tool. It’s not necessarily that you need to change your routine because it’s so different from the majority but at least it gives you a lot of information about what other people similar to you are using. So you could rethink and research more and maybe take some of these learnings and adopt them. Should you stick to your way or is there anything that you can improve in your routine?”
That sense of ongoing educational journey – for consumers, the Foreo team, and for Sedic himself – is implicit in charting the company’s future. “As I told you last time we spoke, our industry has not clearly defined the role of personal care versus makeup and perfumes. They are not comparable yet at the moment they are in the same basket.
“One is about health – and beauty through health. The other is more about artistic interpretation of your social status; your ambitions; your nationality, religion, culture; and how you like to paint your face, and which smell you do or don’t like. But it’s not about health.”
Foreo avoids “introducing new species in the jungle”, as Sedic neatly puts it in describing how various cosmetics products introduce certain proteins and active ingredients. “Our Swedish Beauty philosophy is to empower our own skin to do the best job it can in the most natural way, and which will not backfire,” he concludes.
With Swedish Beauty unveiled, the Foreo founder could be forgiven for standing back and enjoying the fruits of all that labour for once. But that’s simply not going to happen. Bob the Builder has too much more exciting work ahead of him in the Sedic dream factory, creating things he hopes will be heaven for everyone. ✈
About Swedish Beauty in 3½ steps With a focus on functionality and results, the routine takes a holistic and simple approach to beauty. The steps include a strategic cleansing routine, toning, masking and oral care using the Luna 4, Bear, UFO 2 and Issa 3 (toothbrush) respectively. The three (and a half) Foreo devices all work together to create an even and glowing complexion and promote beauty from within. Foreo is promoting its revamped Swedish beauty routine with an omnichannel campaign in Asia Pacific travel retail. The campaign is running at the cdf Haikou International Duty Free Shopping Complex, the Hainan Tourism Duty Free Shopping Complex and on the Wangfujing Duty Free and cdf-Sunrise apps. It is also promoted on ecommerce platforms with The Shilla Duty Free, Hyundai Duty Free and Lotte Duty Free as well as with Naver.com in South Korea. Domestically, the campaign is running at several domestic locations in Asia Pacific, including Sogo, Broadway, Fortress, YOHO and Sephora in Hong Kong, New Yaohan in Macau and Takashimaya in Singapore.
Step 1: Cleansing with the Luna 4 creates the base for happy and healthy skin. The 2-in-1 facial cleansing and firming device is tailored to individual skincare needs and is made with ultra-hygienic silicone bristles that are quick drying and non-porous. Luna 4 delivers a deep and gentle massage that relaxes facial muscles, reduces puffiness and boosts radiance. To amplify the results, the Luna 4 is paired with the Micro-Foam Cleanser ,which helps enhance the efficacy of the device’s T-Sonic Activation technology. This in turn helps active ingredients penetrate deeper into the skin. Step 2: The Bear facial toning device combines micro-current and T-Sonic pulsations to firm and tone the skin, relax facial muscles and smooth the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Paired with the Serum, Serum, Serum, the Bear effectively infuses a potent combination of active ingredients into the skin, including hyaluronic acid and squalene. Step 3: The UFO 2 90-second masking device uses eight different LED lights to enhance the efficacy of any UFO Power Activated Masks. Each light has different skin-nourishing qualities that activate the different properties of each mask, offering a customised masking treatment. It also has a thermo-therapy function that helps the skin absorb active ingredients. The UFO masks are available in a wide range of varieties including Matte Maniac, H2Overdose and Glow Addict. Step 3.5: The Issa 3 toothbrush completes the routine, offering a holistic approach to beauty. The 4-in-1 oral care device uses a hybrid brush head made with bacteria-resistant silicone and PBT polymer bristles. The two work together to massage gums and break down plaque. The Issa toothbrush is claimed to be 10,000 times more hygienic than traditional toothbrushes.
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