Hazardous? No. Honest? Hopefully

In the US, Honest is sold on the shelves of retailers including Nordstrom, Target, Costco and Whole Foods as well as directly to consumers in monthly subscription packs. In China, the brand would most likely start sales via an ecommerce model, Alba has told US media.

Brian Lee, CEO and co-founder at The Honest Company, believes the brand will “really resonate with the Chinese family looking for non-toxic lifestyle choices”. Scare cases involving gutter oil, chemical-laden milk, and antibiotics-filled food occur so frequently in China that a joke has been making the rounds on the country’s social media: “If you laid someone out flat on the ground, you’d have a human periodic table.”

Chinese consumers have lost faith in local suppliers of products, in particular those for babies and children, that don’t meet safety standards. So Honest touts itself as not just a CPG (consumer packaged goods) company but “a lifestyle, a way of life, and also an education platform … to create a non-toxic world”.

Another obvious reason for the impending launch is the sheer size of the new market: the number of children born each year in China is 22 million, plus the middle class in the country will soon equal the entire US population. Honesty may be the best policy.