About Halka B.
Halka B. Organics was initiated by Halka Beseda in 2010 and grew out of Halka B. Pristine Organic Skin Care into a small business that not only incorporates products for skin care but also for internal health. Halka B. Organics has developed their own standards of growing a business. It is all summed up in one word: SOETE. But we thought it best to let Halka speak for herself and asked her:
"What has been your motivation to create Halka B. Organics and how did you come about creating a business philosophy you call SOETE?"
I was working in the field of psychology for the past 20 years, had my private practice for some years and was heavily involved working with colleagues from around the world building a community in WA and Australia wide around a body-centered psychotherapy called Hakomi. I generally worked from a holistic understanding and at the center of that is the wisdom, that our organism is always working naturally and effortlessly towards healing given the right conditions and supports. I learned about energy medicine (yoga, tai-chi, chi-kung, pranic healing, homeopathy, kinesiology and many more) as well as humanistic and more conservative approaches. When it was time for a little change, I knew I wanted to incorporate everything I learned on my journey into my new adventure. So besides starting to write a book, a little business called Halka B. Organics was emerging really out of nowhere quite naturally as time went by.
A friend of mine made chocolates and I started utelising the cacao butter for body butters and as I was experimenting more and more with them, I became hooked. They felt fantastic, they smelled great and they did wonders for my skin but for a business, they had one flaw: they melted in their pots in our Australian summer and people were not used to this sort of behaviour from their skin creams. So I thought, we will do the right thing: I hired a bio-chemist and learned to make conventional organic skin care. But I did not like what I was learning. Nor did I like the waxes, the preservatives (even if food-grade) or the percentage of watery substances in the creams. I found that unnecessary and misleading and started asking myself what for?
“If you want to truly create natural luxurious skin care, then you need to go 100% water-free.” I was told. And so I did.
I wanted to work with the best oils available so I started sourcing myself directly from organic communities around the world. Some stories I encountered have inspired me to view my business beyond organic and fairtrade. And out of this all grew our business philosophy SOETE which stands for Sustanaible, Organic (or wildcrafted – generally meaning living), Ethical, Transparent and Empowering. And with 'empowering' I truly mean on all levels: empowering to our skin, empowering to our internal health, empowering to the people that are involved along the production line of the ingredient or oil, empowering to nature and animal kingdom - and this begins with sourcing but goes straight through to packaging our products.
We still don’t source everything directly but as for 95% of our ingredients, we are very proud to say that we do. And each week that passes opens new doors for us and we are getting closer to our goal.
Working with the skin, one truly is working with the whole of a person. But what affects the health of our skin most is the digestive tract and the immune system. So we started to look at internal oils and health supplements. I fell in love with the purity of these products and how easy it was to incorporate them into our culinary plan. It was just a natural progression to incorporate health oils and supplements into a skin care business. In business terms this is called nutricosmetics - we just call it a holistic approach to internal and external health.