All Soap, No Water
Swedish design studio Form Us With Love (FUWL) has brought out a new subscription-based cosmetic brand called FORGO and the brand’s first product is a mix-it-yourself hand soap in the form of concentrated powder. A product that that avoids plastic and minimises carbon emissions.
Form Us With Love’s newest venture, FORGO reconfigures the most basic of personal care products; handwash. One small paper sachet contains the essential ingredients needed to turn regular tap water into a full bottle of foaming hand wash— in under a minute. It’s simple and sustainable.
“We see so many products designed to be wasteful and inefficient. Liquid personal care products are mostly water, an ingredient you probably have at home. So why ship it around in plastic bags and bottles when it’s possible to do better?” says John Lofgren, Creative Director at Form Us With Love (FUWL).
The spark for FORGO was seeded by FUWL design team member, Allon Libermann. The idea was pitched internally and incubated at the studio together with entrepreneurs. FORGO is the fourth venture from FUWL and shows the studio’s direction towards sustainable initiatives.
The entire packaging reflects the principles of the company with its outer packaging isn recycled paper and cardboard which is a noticeable difference from nearly all eCommerce packaged products today. Refills come in a paper envelope directly to your door in sets of three, when ordered, say the designers.
“We have defined our mission as Design Real Change, our guide to influence everything we do here.This ambition is very time consuming. It means we have to dig deep to influence entire industries, and make better products in terms of innovation, sustainability, quality production to make things long-lasting solutions,” says Jonas Pettersson, CEO at FUWL.
Together with a lab specialised in natural cosmetics, the team iterated on the idea that is now a sustainable alternative to liquid soap. One sachet contains approx. 12 grams of powder. Just those twelve grams makes a full bottle of foaming hand wash with 250ml of hot tap water.
FUWL works closely with a perfumer to source fragrances from unlikely sources. The Woody fragrance is distilled from timber yard scraps in Canada. The Citrus fragrance is distilled from the leftover peels and pulp from organic juicing plants in the Caribbean.
“For us hand wash is just the beginning. We’re here to make all personal care more sustainable with less,” concluded Allon Libermann, Design Manager at FUWL, and co-founder of FORGO.
Stockholm based design studio, FUWL, repositions brands and builds their own through the strategic design of things. At the studio’s core lies a process that blends traditional creative practices with a lean, strategic application. The central intention is to evolve with the needs of each project, its place in the market, and the ever-changing needs of real people.
