Direct marketing creative chief Chris Catchpole is returning to the UK after nearly four years in the Far East as co-founder and creative boss of a new venture which offers traditional organic Vietnamese beauty products.
Launched in Vietnam in early January, Kim’s Organic Beauty uses only natural products – including matcha, coconut oil, turmeric starch and more – that are claimed to be so pure, consumers can eat and drink them as well as use them on their skin.
For the past 15 years, Catchpole’s business partner Nguyen Thi Kim Chi has developed the range of beauty products, as recommended by family and friends passed down through generations, which, the duo claim, will treat dry skin, oily skin, wrinkles, stretch marks, unwanted extra weight, and lack of energy.
Catchpole has been working full-time on the business for just over two months, creating the new brand and advertising. And for a man with such sartorial style, it is perhaps a natural progression.
He was previously executive creative director at both Phibious and Lowe Vietnam, having moved out to the region in 2012, following a spell as a freelance consultant.
Catchpole started his DM creative career at Lowe Direct in January 1997, joining Tullo Marshall Warren a year later. Freelance spells at Bates Dorland, 141 and Publicis Dialog followed, before he joined Harrison Troughton Wunderman in 2001. He left in 2005 to launch his own agency Catchpole & Friends, but decided to shut up shop in August 2008.
The Kim’s Organic Beauty launch strategy includes Facebook, Shopify and other responsive social media channels.
Catchpole said: “This is a great opportunity to be client and agency for products that I really believe in. After months of being Kim’s guinea pig, I can testify that I can directly see and feel the benefits of everything we sell. It’s a bit like real-life, 24/7 Photoshop – you look better all the time rather than just in touched-up pics.
“The feedback from our customers has been outstanding. To date, Kim’s is only in Vietnam and we have sold products all over the country.
“Check out what’s in your face cream, your body wash, your energy drink, your body lotion. The chances are there will be chemicals and additives you’ve never heard of and have no idea what they do and are doing to your skin and body. There are wholly natural ways to look after your skin and body, outside and inside.”
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