Clean & Pure: The Aussie brand that sells one lip balm a minute

This up and coming Australian lip balm brand is making big waves in Asia where shoppers can’t get enough of its natural ingredients.

Hannah Paine

2 min read

September 22, 2019 - 1:35PM

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Mark and Melanie Chapman stumbled on their skincare brand almost by accident.

The couple had returned to Australia after living in Greece, where Mrs Chapman had discovered her eczema had completely vanished after using local skincare products.

But when they moved back to Queensland they were unable to find similar products and the couple had to come up with their own fix.

“We couldn’t buy them,” Mr Chapman told news.com.au. “So, we had to learn to make them. (It was) just simple products we were making and then friends and family, people dropping in — you show off what you’re doing … and then everybody said, ‘Oh can I buy a dozen of them’.”

After selling to friends and at local markets Mr Chapman decided to start selling their Clean & Pure lip balms on eBay in 2010, where their hobby quickly took off.

Today it’s a full-time job for the couple, who sell on average one lip balm a minute, with over $1 million of sales to date just through eBay.

Their Clean & Pure lip balms contain six items or less with ingredients including extra virgin olive oil and Manuka honey beeswax sourced from either Queensland or Victoria.

Mark Chapman.

Clean & Pure’s natural, locally-sourced ingredients have made them a hit in Asia where demand for Australian skincare and health products are high.

They started selling to Malaysia and now have firm customer bases in Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong. Macau, Thailand, the Philippines and China.

“The only difference is they buy different flavours … number one is the Manuka honey lip balm. Nobody in the world doesn’t want that lip balm, so that’s our number one everywhere, doesn’t matter where you go,” Mr Chapman said.

“Pawpaw is really big in Asia, while we would probably sell more peppermint and more vanilla in Australia.”

Mr Chapman credits Clean & Pure’s success down to the brand starting out on eBay, which is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, as it provided a user-friendly platform for them to get their products out there.

“That’s why we started with eBay because you don’t need to have infrastructure or distribution contracts or anything, you can just load on easily and you’ve got access to it,” he said.