Forest Essentials: Demystifying India’s Luxury Ayurveda Brand

In December 2021, Forest Essentials opened its one hundredth store in India and a store in the United Kingdom; the Indian home-grown luxury Ayurveda brand had rapid expansion plans despite the obstacles it faced. Twenty-one years earlier, the company’s founder, liberal arts graduate Mira Kulkarni, converted the six-thousand-year-old science of Ayurveda into bottles and jars of luxurious skin-care and hair-care products, making Forest Essentials an aspirational luxury brand. Forest Essentials had grown to establish a robust presence in five categories—skin care, hair care, wellness, health, and makeup—while acquiring a large and loyal customer base in India. The company was meticulous about the quality of its ingredients and put great effort into sourcing high-quality ingredients from all over India; however, easy access to cheaper Ayurveda-based brands and the entry and availability of international wellness brands into the Indian market threatened Forest Essentials’ customer retention.<br><br>Kulkarni and her son, Samrath Bedi, needed to sustain the growth of Forest Essentials across digital and physical channels in India’s cluttered beauty and wellness market, with a price-sensitive customer base, while also growing the brand’s presence in cross-cultural markets overseas. Could they pursue growth in both marketspaces consistently? Should Kulkarni and Bedi focus on engaging with their existing and potential customers in India, or should they aim to establish their luxury brand in international markets?

This case is intended for use in graduate- and executive-level courses on marketing management, luxury brand marketing, and management. It can be included in courses that focus on the growth and challenges of nurturing heritage-based luxury brands in fast-growing economies. The case helps students explore the factors that have led to Forest Essentials’ growth as well as the challenges and key issues the company faced. Students will learn how the founders preserved their brand philosophy in a challenging marketplace within a developing economy; they will also appreciate how a company can increase the value of ancient practices for luxury customers through the application of sustainable production processes and technology. This case lets students examine the voice of a customer of a successful modern Indian brand rooted in heritage, allowing them to evaluate the impact of the customer voice on a luxury brand’s emergent and future growth using the concepts of brand attachment, brand trust, and brand attachment. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:<ul><li>Use the concepts of brand identification, brand attachment, and brand trust in the context of a luxury brand to understand customer–brand relationships.</li><li>Analyze the challenges of establishing and growing luxury brands rooted in heritage and ancient wisdom.</li><li>Analyze the factors associated with the success of luxury brands such as Forest Essentials in the context of a developing economy.</li><li>Evaluate the strategy that a luxury brand used to grow internationally.</li><li>Analyze the experiences of customers of luxury Ayurveda products.</li></ul>

• Luxury Marketing
• Luxury Ayurveda
• Welln
• Beauty and Wellness Industry