Golden touch

Midas touch

Australian top self-tanning brand Bondi Sands is branching out, casting its golden glow over a new facial skincare range

WORDS CATHERINE LAMBERT

Bronzed Aussies are as loved around the world as koalas, kangaroos and the Sydney Opera House.

Shaun Wilson has always known Australians are famous for their great outdoors lifestyle and healthy, glowing skin.

It is just part of what has made Bondi Sands, the company he co-founded, become the No.1 self-tanning brand in the US, Europe and the UK, not to mention Australia.

“When we started our company 11 years ago, we thought we could position Australia as an iconic place and even though we’re based in Melbourne, we couldn’t really call our product Port Melbourne Tan,” Shaun says.

“Bondi has a much more international feel, and whenever we walk into meetings to talk about our brand around the world, everyone gets what the Australian lifestyle is about.”

Shaun, now Bondi Sands’ chief executive, a nd business partner Blair James launched the company in an industry dominated by women, but that was never a deterrent.

Shaun, who grew up on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, was working in corporate lifestyle general management and Blair owned a spray tanning salon in Melbourne.

They were good friends and the more Blair talked about the uplift in a self-tanning craze, the more serious they became about launching their own DIY product range. “We were determined to produce a high-quality selftanning product at an aff ordable price, so we started with three products,’’ Shaun says.

“We believed a lot of the products available had an orange undertone and we wanted to produce a golden tan, so we came up with a new base tone and added more active ingredients to hydrate the skin.’’

“We were determined to produce a highquality selftanning product at an affordable price.”

The brand, which has a core staff of 90, now supports more than 500 manufacturing jobs in Melbourne. It included an SPF range in 2017 and has just launched a facial skincare range comprising 12 products — such as moisturisers, serums and masks — at Chemist Warehouse. “We’re really proud to still be made in Melbourne and stocked in 32,000 stores around the world,’’ Shaun says.

“We have teams in London, LA and New York, are stocked in 30 countries, selling online in more than 100 countries and have just entered China.’’

The self-tanning process has improved greatly over the years. Bondi Sands has a famous, pleasing, coconut scent and no risk of tan-stained sheets. The company was also the fi rst to introduce tan eraser.

The original dark foam is still the top-selling product, followed by the recent Pure range, which contains no dye and is sold in 100 per cent recycled packaging; the facial mist that gives a soft tan in just an hour is particularly popular.

“When we entered the market in 2012, tanning was more seasonal, but it’s now all year round, though our peak sales in the UK and Australia are in summer,’’ Shaun says.

Shaun Wilson (left) and Blair James are the founders of Bondi Sands, a Melbourne-based company popular around the world.