Launching an Indian brand in Germany
Holy Lama is an all-female enterprise in Kerala, India, founded with the aim of uplifting disadvantaged women. Their goal is to enable widows, divorcees and single women to live with dignity and respect in many parts of India.
The company’s award-winning Spice Drops are widely stocked across the UK. Internationally recognised, their vegan natural body care products have a growing reputation. This positive recognition and reputation prompted Holy Lama Naturals to launch its products in Europe.
Holy Lama required custom translations to launch their body care range in Germany, and they turned to Atlas for help.
Gouri Koubair, director of Holy Lama, says that trying to access a foreign market without language knowledge made specialist support and guidance essential. “In order for us to be successful in Germany, all the products in our UK Amazon shop needed to be translated,” says Gouri. “But we didn’t want to use Amazon’s automated packaging translations. It didn’t feel right for us—a specialist business—to rely on a computer system for translations. I was concerned that the integrity of the products and ingredients would be compromised if we chose this approach.”
Compliant Translations Suited to German Tastes
The project involved:
- Translating the extensive ingredients list and product descriptions from English to German
- Making sure every ingredient we translated complied with EU consumer safety legislation
- Complied by using International Nomenclature for Cosmetic Ingredients (INCI) names
Nina, our German-born project manager, understood how German consumers are different. This made her the perfect choice to run the project. “A rather different approach is needed when appealing to the German market,” she explains. “We don’t use as many adjectives to describe products; Germans aren’t too keen on being bombarded with extensive descriptions when buying—we find it slightly overwhelming.”
Her challenge was to provide relatively simple, straightforward translations but also communicate the story behind the Holy Lama brand. Equally important was to capture the elaborate process of creating these sustainable products. The end result left our client delighted.