Ethos Resilience with glass and fresh orange

Evergreen: Behind The Label With Ethos

April 02, 2024

Introduce yourself.

Ethos was founded in 2020 by Fergus Kerrigan and Amy O’Flaherty, an Irish couple from Galway and Dublin who left demanding corporate careers motivated by their personal experiences with stress-related health issues.

Together with an expert team of doctors and nutritional therapists, they’ve developed a range of functional health products designed to help build resilience to modern life stresses and restore mental and physical balance. The Ethos Stress-Care range now includes their award-winning food supplements, functional tea blends and a balm product. Since its inception in 2020, Ethos has emerged as one of Ireland’s fastest-growing health brands and a pioneer in stress management and holistic well-being.

What inspired you to join the natural health sector?

After a period of poor health including chronic fatigue, Fergus worked with a Functional Medicine Doctor to get to the root cause of his health issues. Fergus had leaky gut caused by antibiotic overuse and food intolerances. He rehauled his diet to dairy free, no sugar and gluten-free and was subsequently introduced to various supplements and within a number of weeks he was back to prime health - for the first time in months. Inspired by the transformational benefits Fergus experienced, this sparked our curiosity and interest in the natural health space and the products that could truly improve people’s lives.

Where did you get the idea for your brand?

We are Stress-Care for modern life. The problem is complex, but our mission is simple; to empower our community to reduce mind & body stress so they can live healthier and longer lives. According to the World Health Organisation, stress is the epidemic of our generation and is at the core of 90% of today's chronic health issues. This was evident in our own lives, and when we spoke to friends and family. That's why we developed the Ethos Stress-Care range — to help people just like us who often get caught up in the grind, neglecting our health and routine.

What makes your brand unique?

When building out our brand, our expert team explored the mechanisms in the body directly related to stress. These are: the gut, the mind, sleep, immunity, and energy. We built our product range to support these five key mechanisms, helping you build inner resilience to stress, restoring balance in your mind and body. 

What are your company’s core values?

Our company core values are:

  1. Curiosity - to actively seek out new innovations, and challenge our systems and thinking for better health outcomes.
  2. Community - the best health outcomes are achieved when everyone works together.
  3. Care - to think and act with care is fundamental to a thriving society.

How do you support your community?

Our commitment to our community is to educate and inspire them to live longer and healthier lives. We do this through our expert content on social media and website - partnering with health experts across all aspects of health to keep our community informed on the most up to date science and research. This helps empower people to make more informed health choices. We actively run free wellness workshops and community gatherings throughout the year. Most notable is our run club collaboration with Fun Guys Run Club and Flowstate where we host 100 people at Maser’s studio in Charlemont Dublin and run 5-6 KM around Dublin City, with a panel talk to finish. We run these events once a month.

What has been the most rewarding part of your brands journey?

The most rewarding part of our journey is when people tell us we have helped them better their health. This could either be directly through our products or perhaps they’ve heard us tell our story on a podcast and it’s inspired them to take action. The ripple effect this then has, when people then go on to recommend the same to their friends and family. We’re very proud of this! 

What in your opinion makes Irish brands unique?

Irish brands have an undeniable reputation for quality, especially in the food supplements category. This quality stems from our passion for sustainably sourced, clean, natural and biodiverse ingredients and using technology to develop best in class products.

What is your favourite product from your brand?

It depends on the week we’re having! But for both of us right now it has to be our newest launch Resilience. It’s got it all really and we’re getting incredible feedback from our customers quite quickly, so we’re very excited about the potential this product has.

Tell us about something that has shaped your brand?

Our customer is the fundamental driver of our brand, our business decisions, and our strategy. We speak to our customers all the time - on the phone, over email, DMs and surveys. They tell us what they want, what they need, and we make it happen.

What do you hope to accomplish in the future?

We hope to continue to grow both nationally and internationally, by offering our customers the products and services they need.