About Kawakawa Skincare | Eckco®

Yes, this is the “Our Story” page

You’ve probably read a version of this page before.

Someone couldn’t find the right skincare product for themselves or a family member, so they decided to make one.

A few kitchen experiments followed, friends loved it, and before long there was a skincare brand.

It’s a good story.

It just isn’t quite ours.

Eckco® has been a little less tidy than that.

There have been plenty of products, plenty of experimenting, a few changes of direction, some things that stayed and quite a few that didn’t.

And looking back, that’s probably a much more honest picture of how a small skincare brand actually develops.

Before there was Eckco®

The business began around Kawakawa skincare, with Kawakawa Balm becoming the name people came to know.

But it was never just one balm.

The earlier range included several different balms, including Flaxseed Balm, Botanical Balm and Wonder Balm, three water-based cleansers, a collection of beard oils, face oils and plenty of other experiments along the way.

Some formulas included essential oils or natural fragrance.

Some products evolved. Some were discontinued.

Others simply belonged to a particular stage of the business and eventually made way for something else.

It was a considerably broader range than the Eckco® collection you see today.

Finding the name

The Eckco® business name was registered with the New Zealand Companies Office in 2022.

The Eckco® trade mark was filed on 31 March 2022, accepted on 13 April, published on 29 April and registered and protected in New Zealand from 4 October 2022.

But registering a name and becoming a brand are two different things.

For a while, Eckco® existed alongside the original Kawakawa Balm identity.

There were two websites and, in a way, two versions of the business trying to find their place.

Eckco® had its own site, but it never gained the same traction.

Sales continued through the established Kawakawa Balm website, which increasingly carried the Eckco® identity.

By the middle of 2025, it became clear that Eckco® needed to be more than another name sitting alongside the products.

It needed to become the brand.

Why Eckco®?

The name comes from the idea of an echo — something reflected back, carrying something of what came before while changing as it travels.

That turned out to be a rather fitting idea for a brand that has evolved as much as Eckco® has.

Products have changed, disappeared, returned in different forms and sometimes taught us exactly what we didn’t want to make again.

Ingredients have carried from one formula into another.

Ideas have been revisited, refined and occasionally left behind.

So the name isn’t about looking backwards.

A different direction

The biggest change in the Eckco® story came later.

During early 2025, our thinking began shifting towards a much more pared-back way of making products.

After years of working with different oils, balms, cleansers, fragrances and combinations of ingredients, we became increasingly interested in what happened when we took things away.

It wasn’t about deciding that everything we’d made before was wrong.

Those products were part of the process.

They helped us work out what we liked, what we didn’t and, eventually, what we wanted Eckco® to become.

The minimal direction wasn’t the beginning of Eckco®.

It was something we arrived at.

The first of the new Eckco® products

The first product to properly embody that new direction was the Barrier Balm, released on 1 February 2026.

It was followed by the Barrier Oil, and then by the Support Balm and Support Oil — products created for an even more stripped-back approach.

These weren’t simply new names for the old range.

They represented a different way of thinking about what belonged in a formula.

The current Eckco® range has grown from that point rather than from the much larger collection that came before it.

Not everything needed to stay in the past

There is one older product that found its way back into the current range: our Botanical Soak.

It returned in a revised form, with Mānuka added to the botanical blend.

It seemed worth bringing back.

Not because everything old needs rescuing, but because sometimes an idea still fits — it just needs another look.

Why Kawakawa remains at the centre

For all the changes, one thing has remained remarkably consistent: Kawakawa.

It was there before Eckco® had a name of its own, and it remains part of the botanical identity of the brand today.

Kawakawa, Mānuka and Calendula are brought together in our botanical infusion, which forms the base of selected Eckco® oils and balms.

We like that the ingredients have their own character.

There is no need to cover that up with added fragrance or essential oils in the fragrance-free range.

The result is simply what the ingredients bring to the formula.

Minimal, but not just for the sake of it

Minimal has become an important part of Eckco®, but we don’t see it as a competition to create the shortest ingredient list possible.

For us, it is more about knowing why something is there.

We choose oils, waxes and botanicals for the role they play in a formula and how they work together.

If something earns its place, it stays.

If it doesn’t, we’re quite comfortable leaving it out.

That sounds simple enough, although getting a simple formula right can take rather more work than making a complicated one.

Products, not promises

There has been another change in the way we talk about our products.

From 2026, we’ve taken a deliberately claim-free approach to how Eckco® products are presented.

We don’t want to sell an expectation of a miracle.

Skin is personal.

What one person enjoys using may not be the right choice for someone else, and there is no honest way for us to promise that every product will behave exactly the same way for every person.

So we’d rather tell you what a product is, what goes into it, how we’ve made it and what makes it different.

Then you can decide whether it belongs in your routine.

Made in New Zealand

Eckco® products are made in New Zealand in small batches.

Keeping things close suits the way we like to work.

Ingredients are prepared here, products are made here, bottles and tins are filled here, and orders leave from here.

It’s a small operation, and we’re quite happy about that.

There isn’t a giant distance between the products and the people behind them.

We make them, pack them, answer the messages and keep a close eye on what leaves the door.

What Eckco® means now

If Eckco® comes from the idea of an echo, perhaps the brand has ended up behaving like one.

The things we’ve learned from earlier products haven’t disappeared.

They have come back in different forms.

An oil made years ago can influence an oil we make now.

An old balm can raise a better question about what a balm actually needs.

An ingredient can disappear from one formula and return somewhere else when the right combination comes along.

The past isn’t being copied.

It’s being reflected, reconsidered and carried forward.

Where we’re heading

We don’t have a perfectly fixed roadmap for Eckco®.

We want the range to stay focused enough that every product has a reason to exist.

We want formulas to remain considered rather than complicated.

We want to keep experimenting, but with a much clearer idea of what belongs in the Eckco® world.

And if something no longer fits, we’ll probably change it.

That’s how we got here in the first place.

So, that’s the story

No perfect kitchen-bench origin story.

No overnight lightbulb moment.

No master plan that was flawless from day one.

Just a New Zealand skincare business that started around Kawakawa, became Eckco®, tried a lot of things, changed direction, became much more particular about what goes into a formula and is still figuring out what comes next.

Which, when you think about it, is a more useful story than pretending we knew all of this from the beginning.

We’re still making things.

Still learning.

Still refining.