Inspired by the rich resources of the Amazon region, founders Chloé Vallée and Jeremy Slingerland have a mission: to provide innovative, sustainable and ethically sourced natural ingredients for the cosmetics industry. Their long-term approach and partnerships along the supply chain contribute to reshaping the industry and promoting sustainable growth. The editorial team at CosmeticBusiness has spoken with the founders of Primegreen to learn more about their innovative company.

1. What motivated you to found Primegreen?

We are Chloé Vallée, a French food scientist and pharmacist, and Jeremy Slingerland, a Dutch international business professional. Our goal, however, has been to work together with local talents in Latin America to bring forward the best possible products while strengthening local communities in terms of income, social conditions and sustainability practices. We found progress towards this goal was too slow while working for European companies and therefore we spent three months in Peru to discover new business opportunities with contacts we made in the year of preparation before.

In the Amazon rainforest, we found a farmer feeding dried Moringa leaves and seeds to his cows. Moringa is a highly versatile and sustainable superfood, although still little known in Europe and North America. We made it our mission to start promoting this product in Western markets through our social enterprise, meaning we reinvest part of our revenues in optimizing the social and sustainability aspects of our supply chain, mainly at the growers from who we source.

2. How are you changing the industry with your product?

We believe that natural ingredients can be a substitute for synthetical and less sustainable cosmetic ingredients. Our aim is to supply the industry with the most innovative, sustainable and ethically sourced natural ingredients the Amazon rainforest and other regions in LATAM have to offer. All our products are characterized by low water consumption and no deforestation. In addition, our philosophy is long term oriented. We believe more in long term collaboration across the supply chain than in short term deals in which you have to squeeze your suppliers harder than your clients squeeze you to secure a healthy margin as individual link in the chain.

Pricing is an important factor, but it can also be brought down by reducing switching costs and inefficiencies. When you make sure products are delivered up to standards, in time, with the right documentation and to a price that would allow everyone in the supply chain to invest in new technologies and decent income for employees, this will eventually provide healthy margins and more satisfaction from seed to shelf.

3. What advice would you give to start-ups?

Successful people want to work with successful people. Even if you are still small and insignificant on paper, you can already lead the way or be inspiring for others. Therefore, just reach out to whoever you see as a top performer and would only dare to dream of working with. The worst that can happen is that they don’t join you, but will still be impressed enough that they will recommend you to others. Just go for it!