NIVEA

NIVEA traces its origin to 1890, when Dr. Oscar Troplowitz bought the Hamburg laboratory of Paul C. Beiersdorf. Working with his scientific advisor, dermatologist Professor Paul Gerson Unna, Troplowitz developed Eucerit, a stable emulsifying agent that let oil and water be combined into a cream suitable for mass production for the first time. Launched in 1911 and named after the Latin word for snow, nix/nivis, NIVEA Creme became the company's flagship product.

Growth was fast and international from the start. Within three years of its Hamburg debut, NIVEA was sold on every inhabited continent, and by 1914 the cream was being manufactured not only in Hamburg but in Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, Paris and Sydney, an unusually early global manufacturing footprint for a consumer skincare product.

The brand's presence in West Africa is longstanding and dominant: a SagaPoll survey of twelve African countries conducted by Sagaci Research in January 2021 found NIVEA held first place in unprompted brand awareness for skincare in ten of them, including Ghana and Nigeria. NIVEA now sells more than 50 product lines in 173 countries, distributed through pharmacies, supermarkets and beauty retailers across West African markets rather than through any single flagship store.