Speaking to Premium Beauty News at Shoptalk Europe 2025 in Barcelona, Spain, last week, Tina Müller said the vision was to eventually reach sales of EUR 1 billion, starting with EUR 800 million by 2030.
The CEO told attendees earlier on stage during her keynote fireside chat: “This brand deserves to be a EUR 1 billion brand because it is so purposeful and the quality is so high. (...) There is so much potential for this company; this brand. There is a journey to go on and I love transformative jobs.”
Expanding after her session, Müller said digitalization would be the “main growth motor” worldwide for Weleda moving forward, and innovation “the main lever” within this. “We have transformed our organization to the max to become an agile, digital organization.”
The digital re-think
Müller was heavily investing in people, innovation and digital transformation across Weleda and in just one year had already grown online sales by 30%. In some markets, such as the UK, digital now represented 50% of total sales. “I strongly believe if you want to build a digital business, you need the right team. And it’s also something which starts at the top. If you don’t think ’digital’ as a CEO, you will never ever reach that level.”
Weleda now had a chief digital officer focused on building out digital commerce across the company’s D2C platforms as well as expanding digital reach through social media marketing – a strategy which had already drawn younger consumers in, she said.
The brand was now heavily active on TikTok, for example, responding to viral moments like when American model Bella Hadid told her community she used eight tubes of Weleda’s Skin Food face cream per month – an unexpected and unpaid endorsement. “Only a real and true purpose brand can get this organic audience when influencers or celebrities are doing this without being paid by the brand, because most of them have their own brands. So, what did we do? We tried to amplify it, push it, and share it on our channels,” Tina Müller explained on stage.
Premium beauty and longevity
Asked what the future looked like for Weleda, beyond its digital transformation, Müller said the premium end of beauty looked especially promising. “We see big opportunity here because the premium market is growing over-proportionally because of this underlying trend of longevity. People are investing more and more into skin, into skin care, and not only because of appearance or for less wrinkles but also healthy skin.”
And Weleda had already started its venture into premium, with the launch of its first anti-ageing Blue Gentian & Edelweiss facial skin care line in April, last year – a range it was now in the process of patenting, she said. And the company was now primed to launch its premium Weleda Cell Longevity range in October, targeting a very specific mechanism in the body to boost longevity, she explained, as well as launch a joint-venture family skin care line in September called MinLen, co-developed with Swedish royal Princess Madeleine. “We developed this range in a very entrepreneurial way together and it is a wonderful partnership because Princess Madeleine is involved in everything,” the CEO said.
Both new ranges, Müller said, would launch into selective distribution channels only, instead of pharmacies and drugstores where Weleda’s core business sat today. “We believe the step into selective distribution is not a big step because in the drugstore we are already in the highest price bracket, so the distance is not that far.” Weleda’s core pharmacy lines tended to cap off at around EUR 30, she said, whereas the three new premium lines started at EUR 30 and went up to around EUR 80-100.
Weleda would also soon launch its first ever sun care product – “not an easy play in natural cosmetics” – to tap into the “booming” category and help connect skin and sun care, she said.
’Confident’ in beauty’s future
Reflecting on what the next 5-10 years had in store for beauty, Müller said: “I think we are entering into a phase this year where things are getting more challenging. We see that consumer sentiment is a bit lower because of all these geopolitical questions, the tax topic from the US. So, there is a lot going on.”
“On the other hand, there is this underlying, very strong trend of rejuvenation of health and beauty going together. We see a booming supplements market; this inner beauty and outer beauty trend nearly all over the world. And you see now that a big chunk of the population is getting older – the Baby Boomers all want to live longer and healthier – so there is a big investment into longevity as a main topic. So, I’m very confident for the market over the next five to ten years. There might be years where it goes a bit up and down, but in general I think it’s one of the best markets in the world when it comes to consumer products.”
