Aje co-founder Adrian Norris launches Ikkari skincare
Aje co-founder Adrian Norris has now turned his focus to skincare and wellness with a holistic range named after a Greek island.
“So I am a bit of a crazy person in that I don’t like spare time,” declares Adrian Norris, co-founder and CEO of the hugely successful Australian fashion brands Aje and Aje Athletica. “I am one of those people who always wants to find something to fill my mind and my time, and something that will challenge me. I also absolutely love looking at product and creating solutions for people.”
Norris is sitting in his newish second office in Surry Hills, in front of what he has come up with in his spare time in the past five years in between running Aje, launching Aje Athletic, overseeing a growing staff of more than 400 and operating 42 stores, as well as dealing with the challenges of the Covid pandemic.
That something is an entirely new all-natural wellness brand called Ikkari, which encompasses skincare, supplements and aromatherapy. Norris is showing WISH samples of the entire 71-product collection and it is the first time he has seen it all together. The beautifully designed dark green glass containers would look at home in any bathroom and the aroma of the products is just divine.
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“Just to see what it is actually going to look like and what the customers are going to see after all this work is really exciting,” he says.
Ikkari is named after a tiny Greek island in the Aegean Sea whose inhabitants live exceptionally long lives. It has been included on the list of Blue Zones, countries nominated by American author and researcher Dan Buettner as places in the world where people live longest and healthiest. Norris was inspired by this when coming up with what he calls his “modern-day apothecary”, which will offer holistic and natural solutions to body, mind and spirit.
The 38 year old, who started Aje with friend and business partner Edwina Forest when he was just 23, said the idea for Ikkari originally came from his own interest in what he was putting on his skin. “I am a big proponent of natural skincare and I absolutely refuse to put chemicals on my skin,” he says. “I was also really into my fitness, my nutrition and supplements, so I became a bit of an expert in my circle, among my work colleagues and my family – that person everyone will come to and ask what face oil should I use, or should I take protein, this protein or that protein.
“The whole beauty industry is so overwhelming so I really saw an opportunity no one had really taken up, and that is to do it all under one brand. One person had done a signature oil here and somebody else had done a Vitamin C thing, and there was a collagen over there. I thought, I am good at product development, I love understanding customers’ needs and I am obsessed with quality across everything I do, so I knew I could bring something really special to this space.”
Norris first had this idea way back in 2017, but life and the burgeoning Aje empire kept him busy, the womenswear brand took off here and internationally, and the company was opening stores around the country. Then Covid-19 hit in 2020, caused chaos everywhere, and Norris and Forest (who is the creative director and takes care of design at Aje) focused on launching the second arm of their brand, activewear label Aje Athletica in 2021, initially rolling out 11 stores. It struck a chord among women, just as Aje has, and there are now 16 boutiques, with more slated to open.
It was when Norris was working on the Aje Athletica stores that a member of his team suggested it would be nice if they could put some wellness products in the boutiques. “I literally threw down the 120-page market strategy I had for Ikkari and they went, yep, that is it,” he recalls. “So that’s when we went into production, so we could get that full offering of a sanctuary for our Aje Athletica boutiques.”
The Sydneysider approached Ikkari much as he did Aje and Aje Athletica: it is all about quality. “We can make things look beautiful, but if you can’t work out in them or you don’t feel good wearing it, there is no point,” he explains. “It is all fit, fabrication and the detail we put into our clothing. And so that was one of the big things in developing Ikkari – I knew I could create some of the world’s best products. I know that is a big statement but that is what I briefed our product developer: just make the most beautiful and effective products in the world. I will take care of the rest.”
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“I knew I could create some of the world’s best products. I know that is a big statement but that is what I briefed our product developer: just make the most beautiful and effective products in the world. I will take care of the rest.”
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The products Norris and his team have come up with include cream cleansers, body and face oils (the body oil has become essential to my routine), masks, sunscreens and hand washes under skincare. Then there are the ingestible supplements, such as marine collagens and proteins, liquid tonics for sleep, energy and immunity, and nutritional supplements Adrian describes as “a bit more obscure”, such as bovine liver capsules.
“I feel there are a lot of people, especially busy women, who aren’t eating what they should be for optimising energy and wellbeing,” Norris says. “So my question was: how do we get them something that is really nutrient dense that they would never eat on a daily basis? That is where the liver capsules come in, as cow’s liver is one of the world’s most bioavailable forms of nutrients.”
The third part of Ikkari is what Norris has called aura, which takes in products such as aromatherapy sprays and other things that improve the environment you are in, whether that’s at home or in the office.
The full Ikkari range will be available in Aje Athletica stores from this month and Norris is also planning to roll out standalone Ikkari flagships – a “modern-day apothecary” – the first of which will be in Noosa. “I really wanted to have a fully-fledged retail offering that was so broad that each person who came in would have a different protocol developed across all our products,” he explains.
After working on the project for five years, Norris is really excited about what customers will think of Ikkari. But he is not nervous as he is more than happy to adapt to what consumers want, and he credits this mindset as helping Aje and Aje Athletica be so successful in a relatively short time. “I haven’t got fear,” he says. “I understand what failure is, but I also know when you are doing something it is never going to be right the first time. My biggest thing is to just get in there, get it open, start learning and listening to our customers, and then we can star refining our offering.”
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“I haven’t got fear. I understand what failure is, but I also know when you are doing something it is never going to be right the first time.”
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Norris, who is gay, believes the challenge he faced coming out as a teenager partially explains why he does not have a fear of failure. “When I was growing up it was still taboo, so coming out was the most frightening thing in the world,” he tells WISH. “There was a full-on fear of being gay. And what that did for me is it took away the linear projection we have of life. So I couldn’t see that one day I would have a wife, three kids, get a good job and buy a house. I had no idea what my life was going to be, so I created it.
“At that stage same-sex marriage didn’t exist, so it definitely made me think outside the square. It allowed me not to be scared of being different or doing things differently, or of change. I think it’s also a superpower.”
And he loves the fact that in a relatively short period – the two decades since he went through that experience in the 1990s – there has been so much change and it is hopefully getting easier for kids figuring out their sexuality in high school. “It is kind of celebrated now, which is amazing,” he says.
As for his work at Aje, Aje Athletica and Ikkari, there is no chance Norris is going to slow down, or even start wasting his spare time, anytime soon.
“I know this a cliché, but I wake up every morning excited to go to work,” he says, smiling. “I enjoy creating things and being part of the whole process, especially the business side, which is more my focus these days. I just really love my work.”
This story appeared in The Pride Issue of WISH, which celebrates the game-changers who are shaping Australia into a more diverse and inclusive society.
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