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Text by Anna J. Kutor
Beauty is a serious business, one that needs to be handled in a forward-thinking fashion, with sensitive care and the wisdom of long-range experience. No one understands that better then Dr. Irena Eris, Poland's grand dame of the beauty industry. Having built up an enviable and prestigious cosmetics enterprise around the cult of cosmetic innovation and premium quality beauty products and services, her 25-year-old brand has become a household name in Poland and just about everywhere else in Europe.
The company's grand future commenced from very humble beginnings in the 1980s, from a makeshift laboratory set up by Dr. Irena Eris and Henryk Orfinger, a spirited husband-and-wife team. Eris was studying at the Medical Academy of Warsaw when she met Orfinger, a graduate of the Department of Transport at the Warsaw University of Technology. They shared the same vision of building a nimble and smart company that would design cosmetics and hygiene products based on comprehensive research and the best possible ingredients. That vision was turned into reality in 1983, at the height of Socialist power in Poland, when they kick-started the business in a small one-room workshop in Warsaw. At first, the dynamic duo employed one single worker and produced one type of cream at the plant and the monthly output of 3000 cream containers where distributed personally to each buyer by the family car. Acquiring satisfactory materials from foreign producers was painstakingly long and difficult under the strict Communist control, especially given the massive amounts of compulsory paperwork and the limitations of transport and communication, but their motivation and drive to develop their brand inevitably yielded positive results.
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