Italy
Liz Anastasiadis        November 10, 2020
Chairman of the Davines Group, Davide Bollati is committed to the application of ethical and sustainable practices within his beauty company, and its potential to make a positive impact on people, planet, and community. Founded in Parma, Italy by the Bollati family in 1983, the Davines Group started as a research laboratory formulating high-end hair care for cosmetic companies worldwide.Â
Now owning their own certified B Corp beauty brand, Davines products are crafted using high-quality natural ingredients, science-backed research, and sustainable packaging and are 100% carbon neutral. Bollati says, “By creating beauty in a sustainable way, we encourage people to take care of themselves, the environment they live and work in, and everything they love. Our mission is ‘Being the best for the world, creators of good life for all, through beauty, ethics and sustainability.'”
Mood of Living : Where did you grow up?
Davide Bollati : I grew up in Parma, Italy, my hometown and the cradle of my family business.
MoL: Where did you go to school?
DB: In Parma as well!
MoL: What did you study?
DB: I have a degree in Pharmacy from Parma University. Right after, I moved to the US to complete a master-degree in Cosmetic Science at Farleigh Dickinson University. Then I went on to graduate from Harvard Business School.
MoL: What was your first job?
DB : In 1992, after an experience in international beauty companies, I joined the family group as product development chemist in the R&D lab.
Davide Bollati and the Bollati Family
MoL: What was your path to becoming the President and Owner of the Davines Group? Can you tell us about your company and what it does? What is the mission of the Davines Group? How is your organization committed to sustainability?
DB: The years spent to work on product development were key in developing my own vision about where the company should go. Today, what guides me in leading the Group, is mainly a strong commitment to ethics and sustainability, product innovation and international business growth. By creating beauty in a sustainable way, we encourage people to take care of themselves, the environment they live and work in, and everything they love. Our mission is ‘Being the best for the world, creators of good life for all, through beauty, ethics and sustainability’.
MoL: What products does the Davines Group create? Where are they sold?
DB: Founded in Parma, Italy in 1983 by the Bollati Family, Davines Group started as a research laboratory, formulating high-end hair care for cosmetic companies worldwide. After a decade of honing our expertise, we created our own brand – Davines. Today we have three brands in our portfolio: Davines, /skin regimen/ and [ comfort zone ] with distribution in more than 90 countries. All products are care-crafted in Parma using the highest-quality natural ingredients and scientific rigor and all product packaging is both carbon-neutral and produced with clean energy. As a certified B Corp, the Davines Group strives to place social and environmental sustainability at the core of its ethos.
MoL: How do you define conscious skin science and sustainable beauty?
DB: Beauty & Sustainability are the inspirational values of each of our projects — from formulation to design. Developing, packaging, and distributing sustainable beauty products means respecting sustainability principles at every step, along the whole value chain. Beauty is what inspires us every day, starting from Nature, whose beauty is infinite despite threatened by humans. Conscious skin care – which defines our Comfort Zone line – follows the same principles: the consumers we address are sensitive and aware of quality, safety, sustainability, and are not satisfied with products which do not respect the highest standards in all these 3 areas. The contemporary woman looks for beauty products which are respectful of people & planet, while coming from pure, clean, safe ingredients and technologically advanced: that’s why innovation and technology at Davines and CZ always go hand in hand with beauty and sustainability.
Davines Village
MoL: Are all the infrastructures of your businesses including your headquarters outside of Parma, Italy, the Carbon Neutral Village, and your other branches around the world designed with sustainability in mind?
DB: Yes, they are, including the new US Headquarter which we will inaugurate in 2021, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Stay tuned!
MoL: As the Founder of Comfort Zone and Chairman of The Davines Group, what keeps you motivated to continue scientific research developing sustainable products?
DB: I believe there is no other path. We have only 10 years to stop and revert the damages caused by the past century of a depletive economic model; unless we change the present paradigm, start to address the climate emergency through decarbonization and finally regenerate and replenish our resources, the damages will be permanent. Each of us needs to commit to pursue this goal and to collaborate to save our planet, and consequently our species.
MoL: How do you give back to your community in Italy and other communities around the world?
DB: As a B Corp, our whole business model entails generating a positive impact on people, planet, and community. We commit every day to use business as a force of good, creating value for all our stakeholders (including the local and global communities where we operate) and not just profit for the shareholders. We also act as advocates of these principles within our stakeholder community. To give an example, a project like I Sustain Beauty involves our clients in acting for the common good at local levels, multiplying the efforts we make every day at the global level.
Beauty from the Ground Up – A Davines North America CSA Project
MoL: What are the challenges of being a Certified B Corporation and following the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals? With such a large international company, how difficult is it to deliver the promise of beauty, ethics, and sustainability?
DB: We have rewritten our way of doing business, looking at business as a positive force capable of generating a profit and at the same time creating a virtuous impact on people and the environment. This is the B-Corp spirit and challenge.
After the certification obtained in 2016, we decided to align our objectives with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), defined in the UN Agenda 2030, projecting them into our corporate strategy. This gave us a goal for continuous improvement that is expressed in the activation of new projects, and in defining objectives and monitoring results that have been presented in our annual Sustainability Report. In 2019, at the time of the update and renewal of the B-Corp certification, we obtained a much higher score than the one we obtained in 2016. This the real goal of this certification – stimulating the company and its community to always improve, to always tackle the next challenge. Being an international company entails an even higher responsibility: we apply our ethics and sustainable beauty principles to everything we do, wherever we do it.
MoL: Where are your products manufactured? Do your sustainable goals translate to your entire organization including manufacturing?
DB: All our products are manufactured at our headquarter in Parma, at the Davines Village, which represents our values and our commitment in all its parts and in its spirit.
MoL: What natural ingredients do you use in your products and where do you source them? How are you preserving the Italian slow food farmers?
DB: Our formulations – both for Davines and Comfort Zone products – always favor the use of ingredients of natural origin, and they are manufactured with renewable energy and packaged minimizing the environmental impact, inspired by the ideal of Sustainable Beauty as an inseparable unity between Beauty and Good (following the ancient Greek principle of ‘kaloskagathos’, what is beautiful must be also good). A few years ago, we started a collaboration with Slow Food, choosing specific ingredients produced in Italy by small local farmers, not only to promote biodiversity (of which Italy is particularly rich), but also to support the work and the livelihood of this community.
MoL: What are some of your projects that most excite you? Tell us about the Scientific Garden Project at the Davines Village in Parma. How did this idea originate?
DB: The Scientific Garden is our pride, a model, and a source of inspiration for our researchers. When we built the Village, which was our dream come true, our aim was not only to create ‘the home to sustainable beauty’, but also a happy work environment, and a place that could transit our values, including the harmony between humans and nature. The Scientific Village is a step in this direction. We have many new ongoing projects. In 2020 we became partners of the World Happiness Report, published by the United Nations SDSN (Sustainable Development Solutions Network), led by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. The report measures every year the level of collective and individual happiness & wellbeing of countries and their communities following a list of 12 indicators (social, economic, psychological), with specific focuses at every edition. In 2020 the main focus is happiness & environment, a subject which we feel particularly sensitive to. We decided to support this project because we feel the need to participate in this global dialogue on happiness & well-being, which represents the ultimate goal of our society. At the same time, and together with UN SDSN as an institutional partner, we lead the ReGeneration 2030 global coalition, an alliance of international leaders in the private and public sectors – including companies, policymakers, academics, spiritual heads, non-profit world, and institutions – who will start a dialogue in the 3 areas of Regenerative Economy, Climate Action and World Happiness, signing a pledge and attending a kick-off event in Parma, on October 15-16.
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The Scientific Garden
MoL: What should the consumer be looking for when buying an ethical beauty product?
DB: Consumers should look for products manufactured following the top ethical standards, possibly by stakeholder companies who are clearly committed to reducing their environmental impact and generate values at all levels of their chain.
MoL: Do you live a sustainable lifestyle and if so, how?
DB: I really try to ‘walk the talk’ in my daily personal life, not only in the professional one. I drive an electric car, I do not waste, I avoid any kind of unnecessary environmental impact. In general, I have a very essential lifestyle, which allows me to feel in harmony with Nature, which I deeply love and respect.Â
 MoL: What is the best advice you have ever received and from whom?
DB: The best advice I ever received – the one from a professor in cosmetic sciences, who was consulting for my mother on formulations. He advised me to study Pharmacy rather than Economics at University. He made a big difference in perspective in my life.
Photography courtesy of the Davines Group
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