01
Name everything
Full INCI on the front, with proportions for the actives that matter. No "fragrance", no "complex", no hiding behind a trademark.
Aralia began with a frustration: a shelf of expensive bottles, and not one of them willing to say plainly what was inside.
We are a small house in Collingwood, in Naarm Melbourne. We make six things and we make them in batches of a few hundred, by hand, in a room that smells of cypress and warm oil. A chemist and two of us who used to work in publishing.
The publishing part matters, because Aralia is built on a publishing idea: that the ingredient list is not the fine print, it is the article. Beauty marketing has spent decades teaching people to distrust it. "Advanced complex." "Clinically proven." "Up to 90%." The words are designed to sound like information and contain none.
So we did the opposite. Every Aralia product prints its complete formula on the front of the carton, with the proportion of each active, the country each oil was pressed in, and a plain line on what it does. The product page online goes further: an honesty box on what the formula will not do, because the most trustworthy thing a brand can tell you is the limit of its own claim.
Four rules we will not break.
02
Hold actives at the trial dose
Where a clinical trial set a proportion, we use that proportion, not a bigger number that looks better on a label.
03
Say what it will not do
Every product page carries an honesty box. A claim is only worth as much as the limit you put on it.
04
Small batches, dated
A few hundred units at a time, each batch dated and numbered, so freshness is a fact and not a promise.
Made by two people and a chemist.
Edith Marlow
Cosmetic chemist, fifteen years; came to Aralia from contract manufacturing, tired of formulating to a marketing claim.
Joon Park
Spent a decade in magazine publishing. Writes every label as if it were a standfirst.