Just walk into the Soeder soap factory in the Swiss village of Schwerzenbach and you’re greeted with a wonderful aroma. It’s a pleasant blend of fields of blooming lavender and the winter sauna infusion that SWISS travellers may well find familiar: for more than four years now, the Swiss-based company’s care products have been helping in Economy Class on SWISS long-haul services and in Business Class systemwide to keep hands smooth and faces fresh. With their new ‘Foerst’ product – a concoction of ‘Soeder’ and ‘First’ – the company will be featured in the SWISS First Class cabin, too. But more on that later… 

First, let’s follow the fragrance up to the first floor. Here we’re welcomed by Soeder’s two founders, Hanna and Johan Olzon Åkerström, their little ‘office dog’ and a handful of their staff. The surroundings suggest that the start-up vibe is still very strong, for all of the swift success. They’ll be moving to new premises in Zurich’s Altstetten district soon, though, Hanna later tells us as we tour the factory. Before that the good-humoured duo gives us a deeper insight into the rapid rise of this new Swiss firm over an organic coffee:

It all began some 15 years ago. Even back then, these two Swedish natives knew that they wanted to found a company. They just didn’t know yet what they intended to sell. They had the firm’s name, though: Soeder, inspired by the Södermalm quarter of Stockholm, and a name they had already used as a working title on previous such projects. The product criteria were clearly defined, too. “We wanted to provide a sustainable and accountable everyday product,” Hanna recalls.

To these ends, they set about designing and trialling various candidate items, from pullovers to furniture. In the end it was in personal care products that they found their niche. “It was a field where, at the time, there were few high-quality products made from natural ingredients on the market,” Hanna explains. And so, in 2013, they founded Soeder, and started producing their first liquid soaps made from vegetable essential oils within their own four walls. “Our very first sales were at a Christmas Market in 2015,” Johan recalls. “A whole fifty bottles!” The move to Schwerzenbach followed a year later.

“The market came to us”

Things really took off after that first success. “The market kind of came to us,” says Johan, “and we just responded to the demand.” The first major SWISS order came in 2018: over half a million face creams for SWISS Economy and SWISS Business, to a new specification that met the airline’s needs, and all within six months, please. It seemed an almost impossible task for the still-small team.

“SWISS really helped us in the early stages,” Hanna recalls. “We’d never handled such a huge order before.” But the new care items proved a clear success. “Even people with skin problems told us their skin really felt better,” says Hanna. That’s just the kind of reaction the Soeder team seek. “We want our products to sell not because of the brand, but because of what they can do for the customer,” she stresses. That’s why, even today, they still set far more store by word of mouth than by marketing campaigns.

It seems to work, too. Soeder products can be found in many Swiss restaurants, hotels and businesses. And they’re being increasingly offered in Germany, France and the USA, too. “And don’t forget Sweden!” Johan adds. There’s also been a strong move towards sustainability in the last few years, of course. “When we started up, people didn’t really get our values,” says Hanna. “We had to do a lot of explaining back then.”

A factory tour

So how are these ecofriendly products made? The owners offered us an exclusive factory tour.

The first stop, the warehouse, tellingly illustrates the hands-on mentality that prevails here. Organic ingredients such as coconut oil, almond oil and shea butter stand stored in colourful barrels, while opposite them sit stainless steel canisters of pre-produced soaps and creams. Weights, product names, dates and pH values are all felt-tipped on. New batches of the popular SWISS face cream were also recently pre-produced. “You never know when the customer might need some urgent resupplies,” says Johan. Behind the canisters are stacks of boxes of the familiar mocha-brown refillable Soeder glass bottles. Hanna – who is both CEO and Creative Director – came up with the elegant design, together with her creative team.

The next stop is packaging, followed by finished-item warehouse and then the small workshop. “All our equipment is second-hand,” says Hanna. “A lot of it from the Swiss pharmaceutical sector. And we have our own technician who keeps it all in top order.”

The next room – production – is a realm of strict hygiene regulations. So it’s on with the haircaps, the facemasks and the XL green overalls before we can set foot in the small production area. Here we meet Muhi and his two colleagues. While Muhi energetically shovels blocks of shea butter into his machine, his colleagues are busy at a separate station making the small Foerst face creams for the new SWISS First amenity kits.

A world of scents

The top floor is home to the lab and perfumery – perhaps the most intriguing part of the whole operation. “It’s really pretty special to have a chemical engineer, a perfumer and our production all in the same building,” Hanna points out. It gives them a clear edge over their competitors, she feels: “We can try out so much more.”

It’s in the in-house chemistry lab that the pioneering spirit of this still-young company is especially apparent: a test tube here, a pipette there, and in the midst of it all stands Fran, a native of Spain, in his lab coat, telling us with a gleam in his eye about the work he does. “At the moment I’m trying to find a way to improve the natural formula for our shampoos,” he explains. “It’s not exactly easy – but I just love this kind of challenge.”

Behind Fran is the perfumery, a world of shelves and small scent bottles. Here we can appreciate for ourselves the difference between a synthesized jasmine fragrance and the natural product. “There’s so much emotion in this one for me,” says Fran. “It takes me right back to my vacations.” It’s sentiments like this that spur Hanna and Johan on to create their natural products. “We’ve forgotten what real vanilla smells like,” says Johan. “We’ve grown so used to synthetic fragrances, because natural scents are so complex and so hard to reproduce.”

Alps aboard

The tour over, it’s time for some practical advice: how can we best look after our skin when we fly? After all, our body loses a lot of fluids aloft. Fran, our chemist, shows us the correct way to apply the new Foerst line skincare product.

When Foerst comes aboard SWISS flights in mid-February, it will mark the first entry of Soeder and its natural products into the high-end personal care segment. Enriched with natural ingredients from stone pine and moss along with blueberry oil upcycled from juice production processes, the new product will transport its user straight to the Swiss Alps. “So it helps you take a little bit of your home country with you wherever you go,” says Hanna with a smile.

And the correct application? Gently apply first the face serum and then the face cream, preferably mornings and evenings. “The most important thing is to keep the skin moist and supple,” stresses Fran. “It’s when it gets dry that it will tend to break up.” Which is, of course, how best to stave off those wrinkles, too…

So what’s up next for this young company? “First we need to get the move over and done with,” says Johan. “After that, we’ve got a number of projects planned. We’ll also need to celebrate our tenth anniversary, of course. And open our new flagship store in Zurich’s Main Station, which will also feature its own refill station for our customers – one of almost 130 all over Switzerland.”

One thing is clear: if this friendly young team set their mind to something, they’re pretty sure to get it done. With a healthy dash of Swedish pragmatism, too. Which should keep them both well grounded as their products fly even further – to Miami, Johannesburg and the farthermost reaches of the SWISS long-haul network.