In this guest column, newly-appointed Rituals Global Travel Retail Director Melvin Broekaart highlights travel retail’s human spirit in the lead-up to World Kindness Day. He also illustrates how kindness and the act of gifting are core to Rituals’ ethos.
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind.”
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
These are just a few of the many quotes that highlight the power of kindness and the impact that being kind can have on the world around us. Besides making others feel good, being kind has numerous mental and physical benefits to us all. Giving back is associated with lower blood pressure, increased self-esteem, lower depression and stress levels, longer life, greater happiness and satisfaction.
World Kindness Day
So, why am I talking about kindness? 13 November marks the annual celebration of World Kindness Day. On this day, people globally attempt to make the world a better place by celebrating and promoting good deeds and pledging acts of kindness, either as individuals or as organisations.
Kindness is embedded in the Rituals philosophy of helping consumers find happiness in the smallest of things. Filling somebody with joy is central to what Rituals stands for. We aim to better ourselves every day with the help of three sustainable wellbeing pillars: Clean, Conscious & Caring, where not only do we care about the environmental impact of our products, but also develop and support wellbeing programs that can be used in society.
Kindness in travel retail
Over the past year and a half, the travel retail industry has witnessed some terrific acts of kindness and generosity. Essence Corp funding and delivering meals to those in need, Women in Travel Retail WiTR’s support to house homeless women in Hong Kong and The Moodie Davitt Report funding key cancer research projects are just a few examples of how our great industry has come together to help vital causes.
At Rituals, we also do our utmost to share kindness where we can. During the height of the pandemic, the Rituals travel retail team helped pack and deliver 200,000 personal care goodie bags to hospital workers across Holland. Some team members were also involved with the launch of Super Chill – an app which provides school children with free access to psycho-social and stress management skills and guidelines on personal development and self-reflection.
Rituals believes that all stories and acts of kindness deserve to be heard, seen and embraced. As part of our summer The Ritual of Karma Campaign, we shared insights to help consumers practise The Art of Kindness via social media. We also invited the travel retail community to nominate acts of kindness via a competition with travel retail publication DFNI-Frontier.
Kindness and the Art of Giving
The festive season is an important time of year for gifting with consumers eager to show kindness to their loved ones. This year’s festive season is set to be extra special as people all around the world look forward to reuniting with family and friends after being apart for so long.
Gifting certainly has a significant role to play in driving recovery in travel retail, particularly as we head into the holiday season’s celebrations of Christmas and Lunar New Year. Rituals’ share of the travel retail gifting category has been on an upward trajectory since 2019, and in 2021 our share is forecasted to grow to 31.7%. We’re extremely encouraged by this figure and confident in our strategy to maintain gifting as a key category for our brand.
Several studies have shown that spending money on other people brings us more happiness than spending on ourselves. According to M1nd-set, it’s expected that gifting will generate even deeper meaning this year, which will be reflected in the value of gifts purchased as consumers seek out more meaningful and therefore more expensive gifts.
Being a wellbeing brand, gifting is an important pillar of our business and an area in which we constantly innovate. This year, we are encouraging consumers to express gratitude to the people who enrich their lives through The Art of Giving campaign. As part of this campaign, we’ve upgraded our popular gift sets and launched Golden Advent Calendars. The 2D Advent Calendars are consistently among the top performing gifting SKUs for Rituals in travel retail and, as a single SKU, are predicted to account for a 9.7% share in Q4 2021.
As Rituals, we encourage people to not only give in the form of gifting but also give by offering advice, support or simply a moment to listen to a loved one. At the end of the day, it costs nothing to be kind and we should all strive to incorporate an act of kindness into our daily lives.
Note: The Moodie Davitt Report has launched an e-newsletter, Wellbeing Curated, in association with Rituals. It offers a curated selection of stories focused on the key wellbeing category in travel retail and beyond.
To subscribe free of charge please email Sinead@MoodieDavittReport.com headed ‘Curated Wellbeing’. All stories are permanently archived on this website. If you would like to be added to its mailing list (or to those for any other Moodie Davitt titles), please click here.
