LABORATOIRES EXPANSCIENCE Supporting the transition of a French family business

CONTEXT

If there is one market in which great power confers great responsibility, it is the health market in which Laboratoires Expanscience operates, and even more so the market for children’s and family dermo-cosmetics under its Mustela brand.

Mustela is the flagship brand of the French family business Expanscience, and has been constantly evolving over the years to offer an ever more natural range of skincare products.

Since the early 2000s, this company, which also has a rheumatology division and an active cosmetics division, and whose products are all derived from the plant world, has been working with the support of UTOPIES to structure its CSR strategy.

Through product design, stakeholder dialogue, HR policy and a ‘positive’ factory, CSR has gradually become an integral part of the company’s strategy, influencing the production site, innovation, brands, organisation and business models as a whole.

MISSION

Over the course of almost 20 years of collaboration, UTOPIES’ support has successively involved :

• Setting up a stakeholder dialogue
• Materiality analysis and updating
• Formalising the ‘Better Living Program’, the commitment to 2020 in terms of corporate responsibility, followed by the emergence of the ‘Impact Plan’ and the 2030 strategy
• Co-construction of a naturalness charter for the group’s factory in Epernon, Eure-et-Loir.
• Carrying out CSR diagnostics based on the Positive Brand® UTOPIES guidelines
• Leading several forward-looking committees bringing together the CoDir and external stakeholders to discuss key issues for the brands and the company
• Occasional assistance with the design of positive innovations: from the gift items policy of the 2010s to the Mustela Organic range launched in 2019
• Support for the transition to a Mission Company in 2021

RESULTS

The Mustela example is an interesting one to consider in terms of the history linking UTOPIES to Expanscience.

This support has led to a deliberate and progressive repositioning of the brand. As a hygiene and care brand for the family, Mustela has chosen to accelerate the integration of CSR into its offering to position itself as one of the most responsible and committed players on the market.

A clear sign of this transition process is the B Corp certification obtained by Laboratoires Expanscience in 2018 and since renewed.

In 2019, Mustela will market its first Cosmébio-labelled organic products, with minimalist formulas that can be used by the whole family.

In 2020, the brand made a commitment, along with a number of other B Corp, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, 20 years earlier than envisaged in the Paris Agreements.

In 2021, the entire group will continue its demanding approach by changing its articles of association and becoming a Mission Company.