Aesop
Opportunity Audit
2025
Designer
Overview
Team Members: Brianna Petrut | Riley Goldstein | Jawad El Ghazal
The Opportunity Audit focused on evaluating Aēsop, a luxury skincare brand, through the lens of social and environmental responsibility. We assessed Aēsop’s current sustainability practices and explored how the company could enhance its existing efforts to achieve a truly sustainable business model. Aēsop’s commitment to sustainability is rooted in various initiatives, including net-zero goals, refill programs, sustainable packaging, and ethical sourcing. We applied frameworks like B Corp Certification Benchmarks, and Social, Economic and Environment Sustainability frameworks to analyze its environmental, social, and economic impact.
Process
We began by defining a comprehensive framework that was informed by global sustainability standards, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and B Corp certification. This helped structure the audit and assess Aēsop’s sustainability performance in relation to these widely recognized benchmarks.
We identified Aēsop’s existing initiatives in environmental responsibility (e.g., refill stations, net-zero goals, circular packaging), social responsibility (e.g., diversity and inclusion, ethical sourcing, philanthropic work through the Aēsop Foundation), and economic impact (e.g., profitability, consumer engagement strategies).
A combination of methodologies was used to analyze Aēsop’s sustainability efforts:
Lifecycle Impact Analysis to evaluate emissions, resource use, and waste management.
Stakeholder Mapping to understand relationships with employees, customers, and suppliers.
Competitive Benchmarking to compare Aēsop’s sustainability performance with other luxury skincare brands.
Using the insights gained from the analysis, we identified potential opportunities for Aēsop to improve its sustainability initiatives. These included expanding waterless beauty products, developing a Virtual Scent Lab, scaling refill programs globally, and enhancing supply chain transparency.
Feedback
The feedback from the opportunity audit was largely positive, with the following areas of strength and improvement highlighted:
Strengths:
Comprehensive Analysis: The audit provided a multi-dimensional evaluation of Aēsop’s sustainability efforts, using relevant global frameworks and methodologies.
Innovative Recommendations: The report suggested creative, forward-thinking strategies for enhancing Aēsop’s sustainability, such as expanding waterless beauty products and leveraging AI for fragrance personalization.
Engaging Presentation: The visual communication of the findings was compelling, using infographics, impact maps, and comparative tables to illustrate key points.
Areas for Improvement:
Scalability Analysis: The feasibility and cost implications of scaling sustainability initiatives, particularly refill programs, were not fully explored. Future audits should include more detailed cost-benefit analyses and scalability assessments.
Counterargument Engagement: The audit could benefit from a deeper exploration of counterarguments around Aēsop’s luxury pricing and its potential to limit accessibility to sustainable products.
Learnings
The opportunity audit deepened my understanding of how companies can be evaluated against sustainability metrics such as SDGs, B Corp benchmarks, and circular economy principles. This reinforced the importance of aligning business practices with global frameworks to drive sustainable outcomes.
But, it was also about being able to see what they are already doing well and still seeing opportunities for development. We did this by looking at problems they are facing and latest trends to see how the company can take advantage of that.