How it all began

The year was 1967 and two brothers, Jonas and Robert af Jochnick (and their friend Bengt Hellsten who left the company three years later) had decided to start their own business. They were young, ambitious and entrepreneurial – and they had a powerful vision. They wanted to create a cosmetics company that offered a kind of skincare that was different from what was available at the time: one that was based on natural ingredients. They also wanted to introduce a new and innovative method of distributing the products directly to everyone’s home.
Knowing that Swedish women were renowned throughout the world for their natural beauty, the founders thought: “What if we could bottle that?” So they set out to formulate skincare products based on natural ingredients from Scandinavia, like cloudberry, birch bark and many others. They developed the formulations to be safe, effective and low in fragrance. Oriflame’s Swedish Care skincare line was soon born. Today, it is used by millions of women around the world. From the early years, Oriflame was also a pioneer against animal testing, long before it became industry practice.