The Botanist co-founders talk about the inspiration behind the brand, their contribution towards a greener environment, and the products they bring to the market
For this edition of our In conversation with Successful Women Entrepreneurs series, we are in conversation with Simona Sotirovska and Ruby Giroux from The Botanist: plant-based home-care made in the UAE, made for the UAE.
Launched in 2019, The Botanist, is a plant-based, chemical-free and kind collection of home cleansing products, made the artisan way, with a carefully selected range of fresh and therapeutic essential oils. All packed together lovingly, right here in the UAE, in eco-friendly elegant glass bottles that you finally don’t have to hide away. Simona and Ruby, the co-founders, talk about the brand, its conception the, the journey and the products below.
Dubai Diaries: What was the inspiration behind the brand, The Botanist?
The Botanist (Ruby): I’ve always been quite health-minded and shortly after moving to Dubai I decided to take things a bit further and did a holistic nutrition course which was really eye opening.
As well as learning more about nutrition and the body, I started to learn about toxic load and how much we unknowingly expose ourselves to chemicals that harm our health. I also learned that home cleaning products are some of the worst for this and our constant exposure to them is doing damage to our health, and I for one hadn’t been careful with the cleaning products that I’d been choosing to use at home. I tried to find natural cleaning products but I was not happy with what was available so I started to make my own products at home.
At that time, I created the products mainly for myself and my family and I actually tried to have fun with the smell of the products, the bottles, the design. I wanted to make something that I will be happy to use and that was truly natural and effective. At first, I just used the products at home, then my friends tried them, and from there it grew! I received some good feedback and realized there is a real demand for something like this in many homes.
DD: How does The Botanist contribute towards greener environment?
TB (Simona): When we think about being more sustainable, we need to think about it from many angles – from packaging, to the type of ingredients used, sourcing, production process and so on.
We knew from day one of working together that we wanted The Botanist to be a brand that has a 360 approach to being environmentally conscious. Inside the bottles, we have a formula that is plant-based, natural and easily biodegradable – causing no harm to the environment as it washes down the drain, and no toxic chemicals that cause air pollution. Our products come in infinitely recyclable glass bottles with minimal use of plastics, and we have bulk or concentrated refills for almost all of our range, so the idea is that you continue to reuse and refill your original bottle, reducing the use of packaging materials and waste by 90%. We also have a recycling program where we collect our empty bottles and recycle them, which is a really popular program with our regular customers.
Ruby: Of course we are a home grown brand and all of our products are locally produced in Dubai, so the product hasn’t travelled for miles already by the time it reaches the homes of our UAE customers. In terms of production, we have a simple and natural process with minimal waste generated.
DD: Would you say that The Botanist is the ultimate solution and every household’s contribution to a greener planet?
TB (Simona): It’s definitely a great start – both in terms of the environment and our personal health. Our refill options help to reduce waste from our home care routines year round, it also helps people get into a ‘reuse and refill’ mindset in other ways too, because there are so many ways for us to go low waste in other areas of our lives.
Ruby: From a health perspective, we are exposed to so many environmental toxins on a daily basis which we cannot always control, but what we can control is what goes inside our homes and there is something really comforting about knowing that the products you use at home on a daily basis are natural and safe for the family, especially children, to be exposed to.
DD: How was the journey from conception of The Botanist to present? Were there any challenges? How about the market? Was the competition high?
TB (Ruby): Right at the inception of The Botanist I was mostly doing things on my own, trying to establish the brand. In 2020, when we started to work together as co-founders things started to scale fairly quickly particularly due to the Spinneys Local Business Incubator program that same year, which we were a finalist in, and we moved really fast as a team to make sure we got the product on the shelf, opening a manufacturing facility in DIP, scaling production dramatically from where we were – it was a crazy and exciting time with so many lessons for us! The local market for truly natural, eco-friendly home care locally was still really young with not many options to choose from, in fact that’s what gave me the idea to start The Botanist. But the response from the market has been amazing so far and we are also developing our lines to include more natural personal care items in the near future.
DD: What is The Botanist offering at the moment and what’s in store for its consumers?
(TB) Simona: One of the things we are really passionate about is listening to our customers and what their needs are – and what products they’d like to see from us that would help. Our mission is to eliminate toxins and single use plastics from our daily home care routines, and what has become clear is that that not only includes home surfaces, but also what we use on our own bodies. We have already launched a line of personal hygiene products like our popular Hand Soap and Hand Sanitizer, and we will be adding to this soon with more personal care products like a natural body wash and moisturizer. And again this is what so many of our customers are saying they’d like to see, so we’re really excited about expanding this line.
