Founded | 2003 (Germany), 2023 (United States)
Headquarters | Santa Monica, CA
Top Executive | Thomas Lommel, Founder & CEO
Product Category | Personal Care
AS YOUNG MAN IN HIS EARLY THIRTIES, Thomas Lommel was already a successful entrepreneur and deeply immersed in what today would be labeled “hustle culture.” He’d founded businesses and was pushing himself to achieve more, convinced that happiness lay on the other side of ambition. But then he got sick and discovered more about healing, meaning and happiness than he ever could have imagined.
The Path
Thomas Lommel could never have foreseen the path that illness and burnout would lead him on. In the late 1990s—fighting both illness and the effects of strong medication—Thomas found himself searching for answers about his health, his way of life and which path could lead him out of his circumstances. This soul-searching led to a surprising place: an olive grove. Thomas credits olive oil with saving his life and olive trees for defining it.
A year into his healing journey, that revolved entirely around integrating olive oil into his completely revolutionized diet, Thomas traveled to the Mediterranean to see these miraculous trees in person and learn more about the healing they could offer. He believed they had been beckoning him to learn more about the connection between nature and healing. Ultimately, he would follow this olive tree-inspired path; uproot his life in Germany; and move permanently to the coast of Spain where he purchased an olive grove and built a home.
His connection with the trees led him to another ancient therapy that Mediterranean olive growers had used for generations, an elixir made from the crushed leaves of the olive tree. Olive tree leaves contain polyphenols, protective organic compounds that allow olive trees to live for thousands of years. Thomas began experimenting, making this elixir in his own olive grove and sharing it in various forms: an ingestible version as well as topical creams, oils and serums.
“I bought my first olive grove with around 120 trees,” he shared. “I built my tree house in the grove because I wanted to be very close with my trees. I developed the olive tree therapy and later established the Oliveda Spa on Mallorca. I lived there around eight years with my family on that beautiful island.”
The Vision
His vision to share olive tree therapy with the world began with a small line of olive tree leaf-infused beauty products across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
“I really jumped in,” he laughed. “I was very, very naive. I think sometimes it’s important to be very naive because otherwise you wouldn’t do that. We figured out how hard it is to exist in that most saturated industry in the world—the beauty industry. There is no other industry on the planet more saturated than skincare.”
Since those first retail stores in Europe, Thomas has built more than an olive tree-inspired brand—he’s built a house of brands that has only recently launched in the United States. Today,
Olive Tree People is home to six distinct olive tree-focused brands:
1 / OLIVEDA: Olive Tree Pharmacy
A collection of beauty and health elixirs, including both topical and ingestible formulations.
2 / LA Dope
Products that combine the power of the olive tree with hemp.
3 / Olive Rose
A soon-to-be-released line of makeup, infused with olive-based ingredients.
4 / OliveMush
A coffee alternative that harnesses the power of the olive leaf along with functional mushrooms and awakening herbs.
5 / Olive Reconnected
Olive tree meditation that offers the healing and balancing sounds of the olive trees.
6 / OliveBrain
An AI-powered application that analyzes customer-provided data points to make smart product suggestions.
In 2019, Thomas was planning to introduce his products to the American market through his own retail stores and partnerships with beauty powerhouses like Sephora and Ulta. But then the pandemic hit, and his plans slowed. But they also shifted significantly when he discovered the power of direct selling.
“I wasn’t aware there were so many direct selling brands, and then I saw there is a possibility with real consultants. I really liked the idea,” he explained. “I dove deeper in the direct-to-consumer world and found out that the most successful skincare brands are not on retail shelves. That really encouraged me, and I did lot more research. In March 2023, we jumped in without any experience. We started in my garage in Venice Beach only with one packer. We packed 40 boxes or something like that a day. And then we moved into our first, then our second and now in our last warehouse. We’ve grown from 40 to 10,000 boxes a day in just 18 months.”
The Difference
The company calls members of its field team “Waterless Beauty Consultants” because the products aren’t just innovative because of what’s in them—they’re game changing because of what’s NOT in them.
Years ago, as Thomas was formulating his olive tree therapy, focusing on the power of the polyphenols within olive tree leaves, he learned how traditional skincare is formulated and preserved. And what he discovered changed everything. Most topical beauty products are made primarily of water—often 70 percent water or even higher.
But water-based products aren’t shelf stable, they require preservatives to become shelf stable and safe for consumers to use. Most beauty products are emulsions, mixtures of water and a refined oil— typically a vegetable oil that’s been treated with hot steam; sanitized with bleach; and treated with other chemicals to make it last on the shelf.
For Thomas this was a huge problem. He understood that the power of the olive tree, from its oils to the elixir made from crushing its leaves, rested in how alive or bioactive it was. Bioactivity allows it to reduce inflammation and benefit the microbiome both on the skin and in the gut. But most oils in skincare products aren’t just dead—they’ve been so chemically treated that they create inflammation. So, he chose to create products without water and educate consumers about why.
“I feel that to most people it makes a lot of sense. I feel that’s also the reason why our consultants are so successful. A lot of people tell us that they didn’t know about the 70 percent water in skincare. They don’t want to pay for 70 percent water. They want to try something different and have a 365- day guarantee.”
The Trees
“We built this beautiful community around the tree,” Thomas shared. “We cannot attract everyone, and we cannot please everyone, but I feel we’ve built something extraordinary, something strong and beautiful.”
In nature, trees support each other in community, just as the growing collective of Waterless Beauty Consultants bands together to impact change across cultures. The synergy and diversity of over 35,000 consultants brings a strength that has fueled the company’s explosive growth over the past two years.
Olive Tree People has more growing to do in the short term, with the upcoming launch of the Olive Rose brand of waterless makeup; a flagship store experience in Santa Monica set to open in 2025 and international expansion in Canada and the United Kingdom on the horizon.
The company’s philanthropic impact is growing, too. Thomas is passionate about eliminating water in his products but he’s equally committed to creating access to water through “OLIVEDA for Africa,” a mission to build one well in Africa for every 100 hectares of mountain olive land the company acquires.
“I called myself an olive tree farmer because that is really one of the biggest dreams I had after I healed myself with the power of the olive trees,” he shared. “I wouldn’t be here without these trees.”
From the December 2024 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.
