Between honey, skincare and attitude. How Katrin Otto is shaping a new concept of performance between boardrooms and beehives.
A morning in Hesse. A purple cream jar has found its way between laptops and strategy papers. Outside, the bees are buzzing; inside, a balance is emerging between global strategy work and the idea of creating a skincare product from honey and plants that redefines performance.
Katrin Otto is Global Head of People at a technology scale-up and founder of Beetiful, a skincare brand that focuses on honey and botanical ingredients.
‘I learned early on that growth is only sustainable if it remains simple,’ she says. A sentence that could just as easily be uttered in the boardrooms of Frankfurt or Singapore as in a conversation about skincare routines. For Otto, clarity is not a cliché, but a philosophy: less ballast, more impact, which runs through business as well as everyday life.
The idea for Beetiful did not originate in a laboratory, but from a moment of maternal concern. When her newborn daughter suffered from sensitive skin, it was her husband's honey, a passionate beekeeper, that brought relief. ‘Suddenly, I had this thought: if it helps my daughter so much, why not develop a skincare product that makes this great result possible for many?’
Beetiful sees it as the antithesis of overloaded beauty routines. ‘I don't have time for ten products in the morning, and I don't think most women do. The children have to go to school and I have to go to the office. Still, I don't want to give up beautiful skin. I have to feel good.’ The formulas of her brand are deliberately reduced to the essentials and natural, but powerful: raw honey, selected botanical essences, skin-friendly active ingredients. Each cream jar reflects the same attitude that she pursues professionally: dissolving complexity in order to radically simplify it.
For Katrin, it's the little things: her morning notebook, freshly brewed coffee, a fine wine, cooking with sun-ripened tomatoes and fresh herbs from the garden, or warm, homemade bread. And the purple cream jar on her bedside table. ‘For me, luxury means not more, but better,’ she says. ‘Something that makes my skin, my day and my life easier.’
Between global strategy meetings and rural beehives, Katrin Otto has found a new form of luxury: skincare that is as intelligent as it is sensual. Beetiful is more than a brand; it is her personal answer to the question of how clarity, quality and nature can find their place in a hectic world.