Context
Nordic Cosmetics, which started off as a joint venture between the founders of Nordic Oil and Hubert Burda Media, is a CBD skincare brand founded at the end of 2019.
When I joined a few months after launch, Nordic Cosmetics was more of a product line than a brand itself. With no story and no real reason for a customer to connect to it, it was missing its brand soul. My challenge was to build Nordic Cosmetics into a desirable brand that converted.
Role and Scope
I joined as an employee, tasked to redesign the packaging, and ended up owning the brand end to end: positioning, brand narrative and tone of voice, visual identity and packaging, the new webshop, the reformulation of the full line with our supplier, and the relaunch campaign across print, TV, influencers and paid media.
At the end of the first year, I was appointed co-founder given the profound impact my work had on the brand. I led Nordic Cosmetics until one year after its acquisition in 2025.
Strategy
Finding the idea
When I started, Nordic Cosmetics had good products and no reason for anyone to care about them. I began with the question of what the brand should stand for. I interviewed women in the target group, audited competitors and ran workshops with the team from Hubert Burda Media, and the answer emerged from a tension in the category.
Skincare speaks to people in the language of problems and fixes, in a world that wants you younger, fitter and prettier. We took the opposite position: accepting yourself is the real revolution. Nordic Cosmetics exists to make you feel great in your own skin.
That sentence became the test for every later decision, and it told us what to leave out: no retouched pictures, real people instead of models and no products that make you feel you need to improve yourself. My one regret is not pushing harder to rename the Anti-Aging Cream to Slow Aging Cream because you can't not age, you can only work with it.
Bringing it to life
The idea started with the names. Each product got a name beyond its functional one: Happy, Flawless, Fierce, Proud, Spirited, Brave, Bold. Each stands for a state of mind, an emotion we hoped to awaken in the customers.
The same logic shaped the communication. We cast real people from our network, with different skin types and ages, so customers could see themselves in the brand. To keep the tone of voice consistent, I wrote guidelines that fit into the team's everyday work and wrote most of the copy myself before launch.
The visual identity had to feel natural and relatable. We chose warm, skin-toned colors instead of clinical white, and elegant but approachable typefaces.
The packaging carried the story into the customer's hands. It went from white and gold plastic to glass jars with embossed aluminium caps and premium, fully recyclable paper packaging. The secondary packaging features watercolor brushstrokes. No two brushstrokes are the same, and neither are two women, each with a story to tell. Each box also carries a short story connected to the product's name.
Keeping the promise
A brand has to deliver on what it says. Together with our supplier, I reformulated all seven products for a more premium experience and better performance: new scents, a more luxurious texture and more sustainable ingredients. Despite the reformulation and the redesign, prices stayed the same.
Then I developed sets. Customers had been left to work out alone which products belonged together, so I built the sets by skin type or concern to guide them toward a routine that suited their skin.
Outcome and Impact
The relaunch started in February 2021 with the new packaging and a social media campaign, followed by the new webshop in May. Prices stayed the same, and new sets gave customers more reasons to buy more than one product. Backed by a media budget that included printed advertising and a TV spot, the brand attracted more visitors and earned more from each one. Average order value rose 21% and revenue grew 43% on 27% more traffic.
+43%
YoY revenue
2x
revenue per visitor
+21%
average order value (AOV)