Crabtree & Evelyn’s New Skin Care Line Is A ‘Natural’ Beauty

By Leah Genuario

Crabtree & Evelyn, marketers of botanically based products for over 30 years, has extended its reach into facial skin care with the launch of Skin Care Remedy and Routine. The products fuse plant essences with modern technologies. The packaging harmonizes its use of classic and modern ingredients.

The Remedy and Routine lines are based on a white/pink color palette. Graphics depict various botanicals that have played a part in the line. For example, one of the packages features alpine flower Edelweiss, whose extracts are used in the formulations due to its anti-oxidant properties.  

“We are trying to convey that these products are really good for you, but we didn’t want packaging that looked medicinal, cold and lab-like,” says Tracy Van Hoven, director of marketing for Crabtree & Evelyn, headquartered in Woodstock, CT. “You want to do good things for your skin but you don’t want it to feel like you are eating your peas. You want to look at a package on your bureau that makes it feel like you are investing in yourself.”

The Routine line offers regular cleansing and moisturizing regiments. The Remedy line targets problem areas, such as tired eyes and uneven skin tones.

Although Crabtree & Evelyn is based in Connecticut, its heart is in England. The company is named after 17th century conservationist John Evelyn, an Englishman known for his writings on conservation and for his gardens. The Crabtree — native to Britain — is the plant that cultivated apple trees are derived from.

The pursuit of “Englishness” and the natural world have also led Crabtree & Evelyn to pick up on themes of exploration within its lines. “We have this love for everything English,” says Van Hoven. “The English have this great history of leaving the islands and going out and exploring. That gives us a license to build on the English tradition of traveling and exploration.”

Van Hoven says that each Crabtree & Evelyn line tells a story, a story they hope resonates with its target audience — women between the ages of 20 and 45. Taking into account the English tradition of traveling, many of the collections are connected to places. For Remedy and Routine, however, the inspiration is the ingredients.

“As we look at our product assortments and how we are going to package them, we build a line as if they are miniature collections,” says Van Hoven. “If you move into skin Remedy and Routine, it is not inspired by a place. It is inspired by formulation. All of the formulations between Routine and Remedy are taking technological ingredients and fusing them with plant essences.”