Yup, you read that right: i was invited all the way out to Riga, Latvia, to get a behind-the-scenes experience of one of our most popular brands at Amazingy – Mádara Cosmetics!

Our trusted account manager Sanda Leitāne coordinated the visit splendidly, enlisting the help of a few colleagues – production manager Ieva and business development manager Marie – to offer me a charmingly personalized tour of the Mádara Headquarters, from the laboratories & production facilities in Mārupa, an outlying neighborhood of Riga, all the way over to their gorgeous office building near the city center.

As quite the Mádara fan myself, i was quite excited to see first-hand how their products are made, since everything is produced & manufactured on-site – which would be a huge feat for any cosmetic brand, let alone a non-conventional one. This has given them the advantage of offering top-notch natural & organic formulations at prices that are hard to compete with, as they continue to launch next-level product innovations each & every year. Mádara’s successes over the last couple decades are definitely something to be studied, and i wanted to turn my tour into an informative article to give us somewhere to start ?

The tour began in their Color and Aroma Development Laboratory. In total, Mádara has three laboratories. The second one is on the third floor and it’s a product-based laboratory where they prepare samples and test product stability. They also test the quality of raw materials there. And the third laboratory is located on a production site where the quality of the end product is checked. All of Mádara’s laboratory technicians are educated in different fields – for example chemistry, food technology, biology. And all the responsibilities, i.e. product-based development, aroma development, color development and quality inspections – are divided among them. There are approximately 10 scientists in the team.

There are many phases in their development process, from the time the idea for a new product comes until that product ends up on the market. And the development team is given tasks to figure out the best possible formulation for it. It was explained to me that a formula can be redone many, many times before the most desired version of the product is achieved. For example, with their Deep Matter Bold Mascara, there were more than 5,000 versions of it until they were able to make the one that they currently sell.

Mádara performs many tests to control product quality and keep it consistent across the board. One of the most important tests they perform on every product that contains water is the determination of pH level. Each product has a defined pH range according to the product’s specifications. pH is very important because that affects the product’s overall effectiveness and safety. And also preservatives work only within certain pH limits. They also determine stability using a centrifuge. The product is filled into a small tube – called an Eppendorf tube – and then it rotates. It spins for five minutes at a speed of 6,000 rotations per minute! This helps the lab technicians to determine whether the product is stable, to make sure that there is no phasing or separation of oil or butter in the final formulation. I was also shown what is called a viscous meter, which is used to determine the viscosity of a product. It has a special cylinder in which the product is mixed during processing, thus determining its flow rate. Viscosity is an important indicator of a product’s consistency – it is helpful to understand how it will flow out of the packaging, and also how it will apply onto the skin.

I was also told about an interesting fact about one of their latest launches, the Botanic Niacinamide Alternative – at first, it had a jelly-like consistency similar to the TIME MIRACLE Hydra Firm Jelly, but during development they tested a gel-cream prototype and it was so good that they decided to keep it that way. The texture made the feel of the product on the skin much better, and so they went with that version (super light and nice in my opinion, as well!).

Mádara also includes quite unique ingredients in its formulations, such as regional flowers and herbs that can be found in the region. And they are constantly seeking out new ingredients. If they find something really interesting and there’s already been a lot of tests done on it, then they test it out in product formulations. But all their research work is task-based, so the laboratory is given specific measures and goals to work with – mostly from the founder Lotte, who always keeps a hand in the production.

With some ingredients, Mádara has also gone ahead and led its own research with the University of Latvia, including birch water, chanterelle mushroom extract and also dragon head stem cells, a formulation that they even ended up patenting.  Chanterelle mushroom is very common in Latvia’s forests – in autumn as well as in summer, you are able to find it in patches and eat it directly. Birch water is even more culturally relevant, as it’s been considered to be a health restorative for many generations. But Mádara wanted to prove it with science, and once they found positive results, they decided to include it in their products.

The Concealer from Mádara is my absolute favorite concealer from all of our concealers at Amazingy. It’s just so good, and i am lucky that their range includes the perfect shade for my skin tone / how i prefer to conceal ♡  Since i also recently started using their SKINONYM Semi-Matte Peptide Foundation (truly the perfect synergy of skincare & coverage) and it has an even larger shade range than their SKIN EQUAL line, i asked them how they go about finding the perfect tones for darker complexions, which is unfortunately still a big topic in both the conventional and natural cosmetic industries. But Mádara was able to manage it, collaborating with a well-known Latvian makeup artist who tested their prototypes and helped Mádara to determine the correct undertones needed to expand and diversify their foundation palette. Now they’ve also launched new shades for The Concealer. And the shade numbers for SKIN EQUAL are perfectly synced with those for SKINONYM, so if you use a certain shade number for one, it will be the same number for the other.

Although it might seem at first glance that SKINONYM has better coverage because it has a thicker consistency, but i personally find that SKIN EQUAL has better coverage than SKINONYM. It just depends on the taste and skin type, and also what you’re going to use it for. Since i’m often performing, it’s nice to have something that really gives me a clean canvas to work with.

As we moved onto the production facility area of the building to meet with Ieva, the production manager, Sanda explained that producing the lipsticks was also a challenging task. They started with very sassy, bright red tones, and it was a huge challenge because they wanted to make sure they were vegan and to use only herbal waxes, which isn’t as easy as it sounds when it comes to producing bright red pigments. On top of that, each raw material needs to first be tested by their lab specialists. They check if each parameter complies with the necessary specifications; only once it’s been approved can the raw materials be used for production. And Mádara products have certifications from both ECOCERT and COSMOS. Each year they have to audit for the ingredients, for the recipes, and for the ready-made product. It’s a whole lot of process, all in-house!

After disinfecting myself, putting on protective gear and moving through an air-tight transition room, Ieva continued on with the tour. She explained that they have total control of the temperature and humidity within the facility, and that they even produce their own purified water, which has at least three purification steps. It’s purified with osmosis to take all the smell, all the ions, everything away, so then they can use completely clean water for production, as well as for equipment washing. This purified water moves through the entire factory, and it moves continuously because it helps prevent any microbial growth.

We moved into a separate room in the production facility, and i was shown their newest machine, one which is being used for pressed powder production. This is where one of their newest products, AIR EQUAL, came into existence. They first need to mix the powder and then it is pressed by the machine into the necessary form. At the moment, they have four new products in production, with more details soon to come 😉

Ieva explained how much work it took them to get the perfect powder. The first samples were made like coffee grounds, around 20 grams. And then scaled up to this production size for up to 10 kilograms. Each step takes a lot of different moves, sometimes quite difficult to coordinate. They worked with the new powder machine for around a year before a finished product was ready to go onto the market. The first production was for the warehouse. They needed about 2,000 to 3,000 products from each shade to have enough stock for launch. Then there was also the process of getting the very beautiful Mádara logo onto the powders; it must be very precise, with no defects. But the end result definitely makes up for all the trouble, wouldn’t you say?

The frequency of production for any given Mádara product is usually once every three months. But for the newer products it can be more often, as it is determined by the potential demand. Working one day in the production facility means processing around 100 ingredients – and it all needs to be very, very precise.

Their production process seems to have only gotten more and more efficient over time, especially since each and every phase of production happens on-site. At first, they had smaller machines and only one reactor. Nowadays, they work with five reactors. All the products are produced in their facility to ensure quality. And they even offer production services for other brands, as well.

The reactors have their own room, as they are a crucial part of production. To produce a product takes around four hours – two hours of mixing ingredients, mixing phases and, homogenizing products, and another two hours for the cleaning procedure. And the reactors even have a self-cleaning system in place; just push the button, add the cleaning agent and it cleans. They also have vacuum-mixing reactors, which allows them to mix phases for an emulsion, i.e. oil and water at lower temperature. And this really helps Mádara work at a high level of energy efficiency, while also helping to keep the active ingredients contained in their products safe and effective.

Apparently SPF is one of the toughest products to work with because it’s very difficult to clean the machine – especially with the tinted ones, they require a special detergent. Though all of the detergents and cleaning agents they use in the facility are also ECOCERT-certified. Their machines are manufactured in Switzerland. When a new machine is bought, there is about a two-week period during which the machine’s communication network is installed. Then comes an engineer visit, and then technologists who accompany the Mádara team for an initial production process to test the machine and make sure everything works. And because they are always so prepared, they also employ two engineers to work on-site in the event that any basic mechanical problems occur.

August is usually Mádara’s busiest month for production as they prepare for new product launches. There are 35 people in the production team, which isn’t a lot for the volume of products they are manufacturing. And all of them are full-timers; Ieva explained that it is especially important for operators to understand the machines very well, because their facility possesses a high level of automation, and they are quite impassioned about new automation technologies. The work day is only one shift – eight hours a day – even though the production volume increases each year, usually up to 20%. But they do their best to squeeze it into one shift to be more effective; it’s also a great perk for production workers to have a normal day and fixed hours as such.

Here at Amazingy, we work with many brands, and we usually take time each year to analyze our successes and decide if any brands in our portfolio need to be refreshed or replaced by a more appealing one, but i feel that Mádara is extremely concise with the products that are chosen to stay in their assortment. They decide quickly and consistently if something makes sense to still produce or not, and that seems to help keep things from becoming too overwhelming for the production team.

And at the same time, the production team gives very active feedback to Mádara HQ. If they see that a process is running ineffectively, e.g. when they’re not producing that much of a product in the usual 3-month rotation, then they will also inquire whether it makes sense to delist the product or not. And since the production process is all in-house, the communication between the different departments of the company is much quicker than usual.

At some point while touring the production area, the fire alarm went off – luckily it was just a drill, and as such it was nice to see how regulated everything is there 🙂  As Ieva guided us from machine to machine, she showed me which ones are used to fill the bottles and tubes, and that the speed at which products can be filled differs. The filling of tubes, for instance, is very fast – up to 80 pieces per minute. They also have different types of packaging. A facial cream, for example, features a metallic pump, which is inserted with the machine. But for SKIN EQUAL, they have the screwing pump, and it is inserted by hand, by the workers. Once they have a large enough amount of one product to fill, then they choose to invest in equipment so that the process can be more automated. With lipstick, it was very interesting to watch how they’re filled. The product is heated somewhere in between 60-80 degrees, and then it’s filled into a silicon mold. Then it’s cooled down by the system, and the packaging is put on top of the silicon mold, from which the lipstick is taken out. And that’s the finished product. The lipsticks are also so pretty with this emblem, the Mádara engraving.

They have two cartoning machines on-site, each of which takes flattened boxes, opens them up into the form of a square, taps the bottom, marks it, puts the product inside and closes it. They tend to use the cartoning machine if the amount are product needed to be produced is over 1,000 units. If it’s less than 1,000, then those are packed manually, as it’s more efficient that way. Also they own a pair of robotic hands (so cool!), which help to automate the packing of products into their transport packaging.

And with the last phase of production explained, the first half of the tour was complete. Sanda then offered me a ride to the outskirts of Riga city proper to also take a look at their gorgeous office space – a beautifully restored, centuries-old building, a Latvian neoclassicist masterpiece spearheaded by Eižens Laube. We were met at the entrance by Marie, the business and development manager.

Mádara’s founders, Lotte and her husband Uldis – they bought the house together during the pandemic, and since everyone was already working from home, they decided that the team could keep working via home office. So the Mádara office team can work from wherever they would like to (which we love!). But they do like to pop into their city office, as the facility in Mārupe can get a bit too small for the whole team.

The building is actually famous and has its own name: Laubes Nams, because Eižens Laube rebuilt it after it was incredibly damaged – it was in the restoration phase for quite some time. Marie gleefully explained that when the team shows up to the office in the summer, they enjoy barbecuing together, sitting on the benches outside and working from there.They even have their own bees! It truly is such a beautiful space they get to share. You see the city towers from the backyard – all you have to do is cross the river and you’re in the big city.

In total, Mádara employs around 220 people. The marketing and sales team is around 40 or 50 people alone. So on Wednesdays, the sales team has their office day, and then the marketing team has Tuesdays, and Thursdays is for their econ team. And they do make an effort to meet once a week, since many of them work remotely and they want to make sure the work flow stays cohesive.

Lotte’s husband and co-founder Uldis left his position last year and Mádara hired a new CEO externally, which the team as whole considers a step towards growth. Because the new CEO is coming with new ideas. We walked past the room where their creative team meets to draft up new campaign ideas, like this year’s “Tinted” campaign. Everything creative is done in-house, as well – including the displays. Fun fact: they had just organized a big photoshoot two days before my tour, during which the whole building was taken over by the creative team. Marie & Sanda agreed to take me upstairs to their yoga studio, a lush open attic space where they usually have a yoga class once a week – otherwise it’s also used for meetings, trainings and the like. It was beautifully lit and warm, offering the perfect environment to wind down with some final questions and a bit of storytelling ♡

Marie: “By the way, do you know the story of birch juice?”

No, I was just told that it’s culturally relevant here, but I didn’t understand why.

Marie: “So, with the coming of spring, Latvians will screw into birch trees with a huge nail. They put a screw in, they put some plastic or some bottle and they collect the water. And the birch water – Lotte saw that they were doing this for generations and generations – they are taking and drinking this birch water by the liter. And it’s said that it’s very good for a detox-like effect. And then Lotte thought, ‘Okay, I will have to take it to the lab to see what’s in there.’ And they found out that it’s full of antioxidants and it contains vitamin B, which helps activate cell regeneration. And so, it actually helps to renew the skin. And that’s why we replaced the water with the birch water in the anti-aging line. It’s really a lovely story to tell. And it shows very much how Mádara works because it really works with natural ingredients and all this know-how that we use comes from generations and generations. But Lotte had this approach to say, “Okay, why do we do it?” Each generation just does it, but let’s take it and let’s bring it to the lab and to see scientifically proven what’s going on there. And then she actually found out about it having really good attributes, and she used it for our products. And this is, for me, very much how Mádara is working. That is the core of Mádara. In German, we call it “Kreuterhexe”.

Like herbal witchery?

Sanda: “Yes, a person very interested in herbs.”

Marie: “Yeah, in earlier times, these Kreuterhexe were just like doctors – fewer, but in many villages there were these Kreuterhexen. And they were similar to what we would now call a pharmacy. So, if you had some small issue, you went to them. They were also the ones who helped with the birthing of children. And Lotte understands herself much like that. I talked with her once about this. She has this approach that she wanted to be like the Kreuterhexe, but with the scientific know-how, not only generation-given.”

Well, i think it’s also really special for any brand, that you’re taking cultural tradition and actually trying to legitimize it in this industry – not even the conventional industry but the natural one, which is harder to navigate in the first place. From all the brands we work with, i don’t know many that are really investing their time in such an approach, even considering that you manage your own production… that feels like it’s a big part of the “Kreuterhexe” approach, that like the production also stays here, it affects the whole process in a very sustainable and positive way.

Marie: “Totally. And actually Lotte herself, right, she’s still very much a part of the process. She’s still going to the labs, asking, checking, she’s still there throughout the product development. She knows that this is the core of our company.”

Sanda: “ Yeah, many ideas come from her for the new products.”

Marie: “And so it’s very nice to work for her. It’s a very high motivation for me personally to work here.”

What are your favorite products?

Marie: “So, actually the one that I really, really love is the brow gel. And I really love the body oil, since you told me the trick to use it before showering, Sanda. Yeah, you just add the oil to your skin and then you shower it away. Then you don’t have to cream. I love it because I have more time.”

Sanda: “Or shower, oil, and then a little bit of water.”

Marie: “And I have such nice skin since I’ve been using it. So, that’s definitely a favorite. Ah, and one more hidden pearl. There is the PEEL serum. Do you know it? You just apply it overnight and I think the next day you have really beautifully shining skin. Like it really has a direct effect.”

Yes, i’ve used it recently and i think it works quite well indeed for my combination skin! And which ones are your favorites, Sanda?

Sanda: “Ah, I like the vitamin C cream. Also the PEEL serum, as well. I like several products. Also the City CC cream. Yeah, I think I use everything.”

Marie: “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we got nominated from Vogue as the best natural concealer.”

And i agree!

Marie: “And the Wrinkle Resist eye cream is also amazing. And we also have the SOS mask for eyes. And you know, I’m not even working one full year for Mádara yet. And at the beginning, I was wondering why we have so many products, as it can be hard to understand the difference between all the lines if you don’t know Mádara.”

But it’s very clear that Mádara is also consistently making decisions about which products make the most sense to keep or not, and this approach definitely seems to be working…

…because all of you, our lovely customers, seem to be quite happy with the current Mádara assortment. All the sachets and testers they provide for our super sample service can also give you the opportunity to understand which products from which lines will work best for your skin & hair. And then our customer service team is always there to clear up any lingering confusion, so please give them a text or call whenever you’re in need 🙂  Amazingy is here for you!

To learn more about Mádara and all the amazing products this brand has to offer,
be sure to visit their brand page in our web shop!