The Managing Director of Frella International, Sudath Horadagoda, was initially a Sales Manager for WAQUIS BPO whose role was to bring in large US banks to offer their work to Sri Lanka. Subsequently he joined as the Country Head for Maldives in the multinational company, Nokia, and later moved into the cosmetic industry as he began his own venture following the five thousand year old ancient science of Ayurvedic beauty products under the name of ‘Frella International’.
Frella International is one of the leading and trusted suppliers of safe, authentic holistic wellness spa and Personal Care products in the region with exports to Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, UAE, and Europe and they focus on bringing time tested wellness and beauty back into the modern age with sophistication. Furthermore, as awareness builds around environmental protection Frella International is dedicated to preserving the environment and its habitants by excluding the use and application of parabens, synthetic fragrance, dyes, petrochemicals, PEGs, SLS and other harmful ingredients and reducing their carbon footprint on the environment. Frella International has also switched to BPA-free airless pump bottles, to printing with recycled material and ink as well as giving $1 of each web sale into conservation and empowering communities.
In continuation of the discussion, Sudath mentioned his opinion regarding the latest international Personal Care trends reflected in Sri Lanka, where he stated “we can see the generic shift in trends in Sri Lanka but in comparison it is slower than the generic international shifts.”
The Managing Director believes that the industry is not taking adequate measures to ensure product quality as he went on to state that even with immense market potentials entrepreneurs face great difficulties with product development in sourcing and marketing. He added that the trust in a small scale home based Personal Care is something that generally would not sustain sales.
Furthermore he shared his views on local production in comparison to imports, where he stated that Sri Lankan Personal Care products are of high quality juxtaposed to other Asian productions, and it carries a vast potential however they lack the correct marketing and channel development knowledge to push their products in the international arena.
Sudath in further discussion explained the key challenges that are faced by the industry; “Personal Care is shifting to wellness and natural based, in US/ Europe the populations are shifting to body oils instead of lotions and creams which opens up huge potentials to Asian manufacturers due to RA material availability. The wellness market is 4.3 trillion USD and Personal Care is 1 trillion USD (the tea market is 45 billion US and we do 1.5 billion of it) it has double digit growth and grows double the global economy too.”
In conclusion, divulging the future plans of the company, Sudath shared that as a company they will expiate on export destinations, expand hospitality spa supply channels globally as well as expand retail locations with Sri Lanka and the distributors and moreover be the leader in authentic holistic products.