Our Company
Our Mission and Values
Founded in 1998, Flash Beauté Inc. conceives, manufactures and distributes the KARIDERM products, maintaining its leader position in its domain: natural products made with shea butter.
We are leaders in the field because we commit to offering effective products made with active natural ingredients of the highest quality in the goal of obtaining products that offer adaptive results for our clients, always minimising risks of skin reactions or allergies.
Our products are voluntarily tested by our personnel and we never test our products on animals.
Our production line uses a system that is designed to generate the least possible waste. All our raw materials are biodegradable and our plastic, metallic or cellulosic (paper and carton) waste is recycled.
Fair trade
Unlike other cosmetic brands, the Kariderm line is really the desired consequence of a fair trade business relationship. Flash Beauté Inc. is one of the rare companies that are directly implicated with African shea butter producers. In fact, our company imports on its’ own the shea butter, without any third party implicated. We have been the first distributor of certified organic Shea Butter in the world since 2003. Flash Beauté pays a price 2.5 times higher for the shea butter than any standard price applied to raw shea butter usually found in the market. In exchange, our provider and partner guarantees a respect of our demands for a high quality shea butter.
Too often other shea butter brands sell a so-called ‘hand crafted’ or ‘genuine’ shea butter that was actually purchased at a very low price from small village producers just before the general harvesting period when food and money are scarce but mouths to be fed still very many. Sometimes other traders will purchase any kind of shea butter, mix it with other ingredients like palm oil and sell it to third parties that will in their turn sell this product of suspicious origin to countries in Europe or North America. In the end that shea butter, said to be ‘traditional’, will have passed through numerous hands, while women who harvested and produced it will still have theirs empty.
Fair trade certification
KARIDERM is now being granted the Fair Trade certification by ECOCERT. This certification emphasizes a series a commitments made by our company towards our African partners in order to respect the following conditions : - social responsibility :
- respect of workers’ rights: democratic operation of the production structure, working conditions above the average standards in place in the concerned country, especially in terms of payroll, hygiene and safety;
- economic solidarity : direct relationship between the supplier and the buyer and control of profit margins, presence of a guaranteed minimum price, presence of a joint social fund designed to improce the workers’ living conditions;
- environmental responsibility: implementing good management of natural resources, banning GMOS, reducing packaging, etc..
- transparency of information: disclosing basic data about the shea butter industry to the publio, advertising how the social fund is being spent, promoting fair trade, etc.
Our Solidarity Commitment
Since the creation of KARIDERM, we have put a great emphasis on the friendship and partnership that we have built in Burkina Faso, in West Africa, with the women of the Songtaaba women’s association (www.songtaaba.net) .
Our personal engagement and numerous trips on the field have lead us to undertake many cooperation and aid projects that not only targeted a better quality and image of the shea butter, but also aimed at gaining better working conditions for the women who produce it, better revenues and better perspectives for their future and emancipation.
Since 1999, Flash Beauty Inc. has recruited several young Canadian students that have put in practice their expertise in management or other operational skills during these cooperation projects over a period of several months on the field and with the women of Burkina Faso.
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These projects have impacted many aspects of the production. Our trainees have worked very intensely to improve the production and management tools and methods, like security, productivity, hygiene or cooperative management. They clearly established the procedures following strict norms for an organicl certification, and they even developed new products for the cooperative like shea jam in order to diversify and increase revenues. This was for them, and for our company, a life transforming experience.We are very proud of their work and devotion and are very grateful for their extremely positive accomplishments with our partner and supplier.
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KARIDERM Social Fund
On November 1st, 2008, Flash Beauté Inc. created an independent social fund that is sustained by royalties on the sale of several KARIDERM products. The KARIDERM social fund is aimed at financing specific healthcare and developmental actions that are chosen democratically by the members of our partner coop in Burkina Faso. The funds that are being raised are deposited monthly in a special bank account, then transfered in full in Burkina Faso, without any fees retained whatsoever. Thus 100% of collected money, with added interests, does serve to finance concrete actions on the field.
In a first phase, the KARIDERM Social Fund has paid for the implementation and equipment of a nursery inside the premises of the Songtaaba Cooperative. This nursery offers first aid material and common medicine drugs and enables to hold surgery hours by a part time doctor. This will considerably help put in place an in site and free preventing medical follow-up system for the members of the coop. It is already granted that every participating woman has free access to a doctor twice a year. In a second phase, the KARIDERM Social Fund is intended to ensure the workers’ contributions to a mutual health insurance that will help them pay for their medicine and hospital care charges if the case arises.
Financing this fund is ensured by royalties based on points attributed to every specific KARIDERM product that is included in this program. Sales statistics and raised dollars will be controlable by ECOCERT, and the actual value of the KARIDERM Social Fund is posted every month on our website.
As of December 1st, 2008, this is the scale of points for the KARIDERM Social Fund :
Organic Shea Butter 120 ml : 10 points
Organic Shea Butter 15 ml : 2 points
Organic Shea Butter 60 ml : 5 points
"Spa Collection" Organic Body Butters (4 kinds) : 8 points
Body Milk 250 ml : 8 points
Lightening Cream 120 ml : 15 points
Moisturizing Protective Cream 60 ml : 10 points
Gentle Cleansing Milk 200 ml : 6 points
Regenerating Mask 120 ml : 8 points
Shea Butter Discovery Kit : 8 points
1 point = $ 0.05 for qualifying products sold in North America
Total value of the KARIDERM Social Fund as of March 1st, 2010 : $ 11,063.
