Empowering Women With Confidence Through Transformative Skincare
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One of Australia’s leading cosmetic houses, Self Care Corporation boasts a portfolio of powerful brands, including the top selling phenomenon freezeframe. Founder and CEO Sonia Amoroso has recently been honoured with the award for Most Influential CEO 2023 – Australia (Beauty Care). With an EY Entrepreneur of the Year award already under her belt, we decided this was the perfect time to take a closer look at this dynamic entrepreneur and how her brands are changing lives for the better.
Sonia Amoroso is the founder and CEO of the Self Care Corporation, a business dedicated to empowering women with the confidence to live their best lives through scientifically backed skin, beauty and oral care treatments. Its award winning freezeframe brand provides alternatives to aesthetic surgeries and salon treatments that customers can use in the comfort of their own home, whilst clean beauty brand KEEP IT SIMPLE SKIN makes clinically effective, simplified skincare for sensitive skin and bodies. The portfolio also includes oral health brand alfree, which provides flavour free toothpaste to people with allergies and sensitivities. Sonia has a passion for solving problems by making clinical strength skin treatments accessible to all women. This is skincare made for women – by women who truly understand how life changing a little extra confidence can be.
Sonia’s passion is driven by the desire to help women feel better about themselves. She says that perceived imperfections or blemishes can sometimes cripple a woman’s self-confidence, so she is dedicated to finding solutions for women’s most frustrating beauty issues. Sometimes, the issue can seem insurmountable. Sonia recalls a letter from a customer who was undergoing radiation treatment for cancer and lost not only her hair, but her eyelashes too.. She explained that she began using the freezeframe LASH PRESCRIPTION when she was at an all time low, but thanks to the product she soon found her lashes growing back faster than she thought possible. This gave her a new found confidence to face the world, and her treatment. Sonia explains that this customer, and every other woman who feels less than the goddess they are, are the reason for the company’s existence, and constitute its true mission.
All of the company’s innovations are clinically proven to address targeted problems. That is why, at face value, it has a very unique product range. It includes treatments for specific signs of ageing on the face and eyes, pigmentation issues, body products designed to enhance the figure, alternatives to injectable treatments, and even products to help grow eyelashes and plump lips. Sonia is active in product development, in addition to still performing all the tasks one would traditionally expect from a person with CEO responsibilities in an organisation. She is the driving force behind the company’s NPD and also works as the Creative Director, taking a very hands-on approach to creating the firm’s marketing campaigns, right down to writing the copy for advertising and product packaging.
A walking testimony to the efficacy of her products, Sonia is very much the face of the brand, and will regularly appear in advertorials and speak at both media and industry events. She champions the company’s core values of respect, customer care and its commitment to providing women with transformative, accessible solutions to their beauty problems. This is something that has been consistent right from the start when she established the company in 2008. The goal has always been to provide women with professional results that are achievable within the privacy of their own homes. This focus on results, and the unique problems it aims to solve, have been the cornerstone of Self Care Corp’s success. Sonia strongly feels it is also the reason more than 1 million women choose to use freezeframe in their skin care regimes.
“Established in 2008 by award-winning entrepreneur Sonia Amoroso, Self Care have fast become the recognised leaders in the development, distribution and marketing of high tech and clinical beauty products in Australia. Famous for building sales generating brands in record time, Sonia has been responsible for some of the most successful brands and advertising campaigns in Australian history. The Self Care portfolio is proving to be no exception.”
As a leader, Sonia prioritises embodying the values, behaviours and work ethics she expects from her team. She tries to create an environment where staff feel like a part of something big and important. Sonia is particularly passionate about staff caring for customers, as well as for each other. She thinks it is essential to encourage a conscious culture of kindness, respect and accountability. The way she describes this is as a culture of empathy and excellence, where everyone is held to high standards, not just in their tasks, but in how they treat one another.
Of course, life is often filled with challenges, but recently Sonia has been faced with what amounted to the biggest of business problems she’s ever encountered in her 25-year long career in personal care. Following the tremendous growth of the company throughout Australia, leading to it becoming the foremost skincare brand (with numerous category leaders in its portfolio such as Australia’s number 1 selling eye cream for 4 years running) it was hit with the devastating impact of its freezeframe brand being counterfeited. The company had to navigate the awful effect of the counterfeit product entering the market in both China and Australia. Fortunately, the perpetrators were caught quickly, and legal proceedings shut them down.
Litigation is never an ideal situation to be in, but unfortunately it was a necessary evil under the circumstances. One of the culprits escaped to China, where he had the nerve to continue conducting the illegal activity. Thankfully, the Chinese Police were supportive and were able to conduct raids that finally drew the proceedings to a welcome close. Prosecution swiftly followed by a prison sentence was delivered to the offender in China, but the legal proceedings are still continuing in Australia. Sonia is hopeful that justice will prevail soon, and that the legal system will clamp down on this repellent infringement of intellectual property rights. It was the biggest counterfeiting case ever seen in Australia, and although this is hardly the standout example of what the company wants to be known for, the manner in which Sonia fought for her rights, and defended the essential safety needs of her customers, certainly is something to be greatly admired. This awful and considerable challenge was the worst thing she has faced in 25 years of business within the personal care realm, and all done while she was diligently working to build and grow her brand.
On a brighter note, Sonia has some very exciting news to share regarding the future 12 months. She tells us she has imminent plans to launch the freezeframe brand in the UK, which she considers to be a market culturally very similar to Australia, with shared values and a strong bond between the nations. Initially there will be a UK e-commerce site, but freezeframe will also be looking for retail partners to help it achieve its goal of empowering the women of the UK with the tools and confidence they need to feel happy and confident in their own skin. It is her intention to continue developing more life changing products, both in the personal care industry and through involvement in her other creative passion – film. Remember the name, because Sonia Amoroso is already about to embark on her second movie project! The first was when she came onboard as Executive Producer on the Australian movie Penguin Bloom. As with personal care, her central mission here is one of female empowerment, and so she looks forward to championing many more meaningful projects in the future.
