Davines' Davide Bollati Talks Sustainability and Beauty

Life should be like a tree where you have roots and you grow your arms and then you bear fruits. You realize yourself through the expansion of the arms and through the strengthening of your roots. So this is eudaimonia, it's this type of happiness. Through that it means that we need to have this certain type of beauty, not just Cover Girl beauty.

Yeah, but Davines Group is a company that at this 40th year anniversary works with around 850 people in 90 countries and is a beauty company that focuses on professional hair and skin care with Davines hair care and Comfort Zone skincare. We work with around 50,000 of the best salons in the world, and through these 50,000 salons we touch millions of consumers that are in line with our values, our principles, and also the quality of our products. I think one of the reasons why Davines is doing okay at the moment is that we have a good balance between the performance of the product and the sustainability footprint of it. We are not interested in just coming out with a formula that is super performant but with a bad footprint, or vice versa. When we come out with an incredibly sustainable formula but they don't perform, the market doesn't reward it. So we have to work on both aspects at the same time. Our lab knows that we have around 50 chemists, we have seven different labs, and we also created a green chemistry lab with PhDs, pharmacologists, cosmetologists in there.

It's a Davines Village that also has a European Regenerative Organic Center from Rodale Institute, a US institute that has 80 years of experience in regenerative organic agricultural practices. For us, to go to the next level of sustainability, it's all about supply chain bottlenecks. We have to work on these bottlenecks and basically recreate a supply chain from raw materials perspective but also from a packaging perspective. So that's our next challenge, and that's the excitement of it. My story is very different, but I think that my passion for sustainability started from an aesthetic angle first. Through my infancy, when I was a child I was going to visit my parents' grandfathers in the countryside because they were farmers. My memories in Parma, close to Sabbiona, in a farming house shaped a certain sensibility. My passion for design and architecture also allowed me to enter more into this world. Then of course as a chemist I started to embrace that sensibility and make it the purpose of the company.

Davines. Yes, Davines. Yes. I think it's gotten, it's become one of those brands that has really a cult following. It started from the very beginning with such a sustainable approach. Yeah, it started well, this is a special year for the company, 40 years. My parents started in March '83, so now we are in '23, that makes it 40. The first 10 years was contract packaging. We were manufacturing products for different companies, especially in the salon industry and the spa business. Then when I joined in the '90s, I started immediately. First of all, I made the decision to stop contract packaging and to work on the brand because I thought to have the possibility to build a brand gave me a little bit more sense of perspective and long term. And then that's what we did. This idea at the beginning was instinctive, not very structural, and then more and more in 2005 we added sustainable beauty under the brand Davines, and then it became a big thing. In 2016 we started to bring the culture of measurement in the company. Now we measure everything we do. We became kind of passionate and dedicated to sustainability. Now we enjoy very much every three years to gain more points on the B Corp because we are World Honoree for the environment. It's already difficult to become a B Corp, and the word honoree means you are the top 5% of all B Corps. So it became really our reason to be in the company, with these three words: beauty, ethics, and sustainability all together, creating a way of doing things that is our mission.

Yeah. It was contract packaging the first 10 years, we were manufacturing products for other people. Then in 2005, sorry, 2005 we became the sustainable beauty company, that was our claim. Then years after years we learned what it takes to become more sustainable, and we got to the point that now being part of a B Corp, actually we are one of the founders of the B Corp Beauty Coalition that now has 72 beauty companies, all B Corps, that work on different topics like green logistics, sustainable supply chain of raw material, also packaging.

International, of course. International. Yeah, B Corps are in more than 150 countries.

Well, there are different reasons. First of all, don't forget Italy lost the Second World War and somebody else won it. I'm saying this because in the '40s and '50s, 99% of Italians were poor. My parents were very humble, so this scarcity was there. We came out in pretty bad shape after the Second World War, so people were very careful not to waste food because there was not much. People living in the countryside had more food than people in the cities, but definitely it was a world where saving or not wasting was really a culture. It was not because of sustainability principle, it was because of scarcity principle. When you have a scarcity mentality, you don't waste. Now after 50 years, maybe we have a better bank account, the average Italian has a better bank account than 50 years ago, but now we are in a different world, a different type of scarcity: scarcity of natural resources. So there are other reasons. Thank God for the moment we've been already 70 years without war, hopefully we want to continue like that even though it seems more complicated considering how the world is going. So sustainability comes from this, and also because Italy as a country doesn't have much natural resources. We are a small country, quite populated, so we like to transform. And because of that and also lots of biodiversity, it's a matter of quantities of things, it's a matter of biodiversity. So that's why I think Italians have that type of approach with food and with sustainability in general.

Yeah. Five years ago, after 10 years of thinking, visiting I don't know how many beauty companies, how many gardens in the world, I discovered so many beautiful places. After all this research, because I like to research, love to explore, I like to learn every day and I think this is a good engine, curiosity is a good engine for all of us. Then at one point I said, okay, now I think I have it clear enough. We asked many architects to propose maybe 10 different projects, and then after we received all those projects, we appointed Matteo Thun as the architect to do it. We had a very good interaction, we had plenty of ideas, Matteo as well because he's a great architect and he has that sensibility for sustainable architecture and beautiful architecture. So we started this interaction and we came out with this Davines Village. I have to say that I feel quite proud about this achievement. Proud is a big word, but we love to come to work in the Davines Village. It's a great house of sustainable beauty, surrounded by green. Every single person that works at the village is surrounded by nature and green, and there are squares, the sense of community. Community sense and aesthetic sensibility are announced. We have a botanical garden in front of the lab, so our chemists are reminded every day what we want them to do. So it's a great place for learning, great place for inspiration. Of course, the center of the village is the bistro, our restaurant. In the middle of the day, from 12 to 2, everybody meets to have a nice meal together like a big family, big community. Before and after, it becomes a co-working space, a space to meet colleagues and to do meetings. Every day you have people coming from different worlds. Today I have a guest from Chicago and from Indianapolis. Last week we had people from Istanbul, people from São Paulo, Brazil.

Yeah, in the middle of the day, of course from 12 to 2, everybody meets to have a nice meal together like a big family, big community. And then before and after, it becomes a co-working space, a space to meet colleagues and to do meetings. Every day you have people coming from different worlds. Today I have a guest from Chicago and from Indianapolis. Last week we had people from Istanbul, people from São Paulo, Brazil.

No, we have many occasions also for visits of people that are not from the industry. We call it open door policy or open door initiatives. We have a hospitality department that receives guests since the beginning. Also we do education, we have academies, a training center here. Since the beginning of the opening of this village, if you take away of course the COVID period, we have around a thousand visitors a month. In fact, we have this flow. The majority are from the beauty industry, but we also have the club of engineers, of architects, maybe the Rotary Club, maybe some students from university, or the housewives club, different entrepreneurs, different groups coming. And this open door policy is very, very important.

The future of Davines depends on a certain way to look at the world that we have, and this is our contribution to the beauty industry. This is a sustainable growth. Davines is a company that is 100% family business. We are not in the stock exchange, we don't have other investors. So we are a stakeholder-driven company, we are not a shareholder-driven company. Stakeholder-driven means that 50 years ago, Milton Friedman, an economist, came up with a statement saying that the business of business is business, so the only purpose of a company is to maximize return for the shareholder. As long as you follow the laws, the purpose of an organization is to make as much profit as possible for the shareholder. That was Milton Friedman 50 years ago. I think he even got a Nobel Prize in economics for that. After 50 years, the world has totally changed. At that time, it was Happy Days, Saturday Night Fever, the American Dream. Amazing. I still had the dream of America. Now, 50 years after, the world has changed a lot. I'm not saying that there are not any more happy days, but let's say there are a little bit more complicated days at the moment because humans are inhabiting the planet, we are becoming a lot, and the more we grow as a population, the more our little blue planet is challenged. So now economy has to change. Davines in the beauty industry wants to represent a new breed of companies that are stakeholder-driven, that have the purpose to do the best for the world like any other B Corp. In our beauty industry, we want to present a type of beauty that is not superficial beauty, but a type of beauty that is beauty from the inside out. In Davines, we have also ethics as part of our purpose: beauty, ethics, and sustainability. In ethics, there was an Aristotelian principle called eudaimonia, which is to live a life that is worth being lived through self-realization, through flourishing. Life should be like a tree where you have roots and you grow your arms and then you bear fruits. You realize yourself through the expansion of the arms and through the strengthening of your roots. So this is eudaimonia, this type of happiness that we are looking for. Through that, it means that we need to have this certain type of beauty, not just Cover Girl beauty, but beauty from the inside out. It's a beauty that comes also from the how, not only the end result. There are different types of beauty even in the beauty industry, we know it well. So we want to represent a certain way of accepting our journey, accepting our condition. That's the role that we want to play, without extraordinary finance, without shortcuts, without acceleration. Beauty salon first, strengthening our community.

Yeah, we have already a lot of thousands of education and learning moments. For example, here on the region, November is our Regeneration Month. We have five incredible appointments. I'm really looking forward to these five appointments. November 1st with the prime minister candidate of Bhutan, you know, Bhutan is the world of happiness, the country of Gross National Happiness. So I'm going to have a chat on November 1st with the candidate prime minister for the next elections on climate change and happiness. Then we have David Katz from Plastic Bank. We work with Plastic Bank, and we collect 100% of every single product that comes out from our factory. We collect it as beach plastic or social plastic from Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines. Last year we collected 750 tons of plastic from the environment in these three countries. So we are the only company that through Plastic Bank does 100% of our output. We have a dialogue with David Katz, Michael Spence, Nobel Prize in economics. We are going to talk about the age of ecological convergence because there is a big debate between emerging economies and already emerged economies on the transition to carbon neutrality.

Okay, there are, and this is for our community. We also open it to the B Corp community. It's on our intranet. Actually, I don't know if we are opening to all our community, but we should. I'm going to check.

It's been since 2021. Yeah, we calculated the plastic leakage of our company is between 10 and 15% because especially all our sales in Latin America and Southeast Asia, some countries don't have a proper end-of-life system for products. So when you go around Philippines or Brazil or even China or Indonesia, you realize that waste is a problem. In these countries, through social plastic collectors, $1 per kilo, we allow many families to make money and to come out from poverty, and in the same time we have a plastic positive impact on the environment.

10 times more, let's say. Last year, because plastic, sorry to say, but now we have a goal to go 100% virgin plastic free. At the moment we are 35% virgin plastic free, I mean we are 65% virgin plastic free, but we want to go in three years to 85, and then eventually we want to reach 100% virgin plastic free. So to go more circularity, because we have the pillars of our sustainability: decarbonization, circularity, biodiversity, and water. These are the four pillars. On top of this, we work on many different projects. At the moment we are becoming much more activist, we have more and more activation days because that is what makes the difference. When we are actively involved, for example, we were with our Latin American community in a mangrove farm two weeks ago. We were like 250 people. We even symbolically planted one mangrove each, but that was not the point. The point is to really learn about mangrove ecosystem, animals, humans, and nature living together in an ecosystem. It's a very, very much carbon sink opportunity. So the more we learn, the more we become naturally activist, and that's the stage we are in. Going back to plastic, last year 750 tons of plastic came out from this company in 90 countries. We made a calculation of plastic leakage is between 10 and 15%. So probably, unfortunately, maybe out of the 750 tons, let's say 100 tons went wrong. Okay, last year we collected 750 tons going wrong. So if every company does like we do, because the others plastic is recycling or incineration, in majority of developed economies at the end of life plastic goes where it has to go, either on recycling or on incineration to recreate energy. But in some economies, they go on rivers, they go on oceans. So we work on this one, and if other companies will do like us, you will not find a piece of plastic on a river or on an ocean.

By the way, the last one, the last speaker of Regeneration Month is a Harvard professor, Harvard Business School. Business Schools are the ones that are teaching economy, and he just wrote a book called 'Growth for Good'. So we are into growth, we like to grow as Davines, but we don't want to grow for the sake of growth, we want to grow for good. We want only sustainable growth. So when American Business Schools start to talk about this type of growth, it means that something is changing, because these are the ones that are shaping the thinking process 50 years after Milton Friedman.

It's a pleasure. I really appreciate your aesthetic eye. I'm an aesthetic person, and I think sustainable beauty can save the world, should save the world, let's say.