BioWell

BioWell, trading in full as BioWell Heilkräuterkosmetik ("herbal cosmetics"), is a small German maker of skincare built around a single plant: comfrey, known in German as Beinwell. The company was founded in 2002 by the chemist Christine Schramm, who started it at the age of 58 [2], and has been run since 2008 by Saskia Riethmüller. It is based in Ringenhain, a village in the municipality of Steinigtwolmsdorf in the Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz) region of Saxony, where it grows its own comfrey and turns it by hand into salves, oils, creams, soaps and a face tonic.

The business is a one-owner operation with no shop of its own. It sells through its website, by telephone, at craft and nature markets, and through German pharmacies, and the German drug database Gelbe Liste lists five of its products [12]. BioWell remains active: its website carries a market calendar running to December 2026.

Christine Schramm, who holds a German chemistry diploma (Dipl.-Chem.), came to comfrey through a hobby rather than through her profession. On her own account, she was a keen water-sports enthusiast and kept meeting the tall, sturdy plant along the banks of the canals and lakes around her adopted home. That familiarity turned into curiosity, and she began reading both old herbal books and newer publications about the plant's long history of use.

In autumn 2001 she decided to turn comfrey into natural cosmetic salves, oils and soaps. What tipped the decision, she writes, was the response to the first salves she made herself: people reported back on how their skin looked and how they felt. A period of research and hesitation followed before she committed to the idea. In 2002 she founded BioWell Heilkräuterkosmetik, with newly developed recipes that left out preservatives, fragrances and colourants [2].

Schramm frames the venture as a late-life project, writing that there is no age at which one cannot start something new or pursue a dream. Her stated aim was to bring clean and effective comfrey products to market and, in her words, to help the plant to a kind of rebirth.

The company's documented history is short and mostly told in its own words. After the 2001 decision and the 2002 founding, the next recorded turning point came in 2008, when Schramm handed the business over to Saskia Riethmüller [2]. Riethmüller has run it since, and the company's notices to customers are signed in her name together with "Team BioWell".

Later changes are recorded as undated notices on the company's news page rather than as a timeline. BioWell has stopped shipping to Switzerland, a change it announced as an amendment to its terms of sale [5]. It has also adjusted its shipping charges and minimum order value, while offering a period of free shipping that ran until 15 October 2026. Its day and night cream and its hand cream moved into new tubes after the earlier tube model became unavailable, allowing the products to be offered in 50 g sizes.

The company has also published a technical note for online customers, saying that its shop had problems on older versions of Apple's mobile operating systems and works normally again from iOS 16.6.

BioWell is privately owned. Its legal notice names Saskia Riethmüller as the proprietor (Inhaberin) of BioWell Heilkräuterkosmetik and gives an address on Lausitzer Straße in Steinigtwolmsdorf, district of Ringenhain, noting that there is no shop at the site [9]. No parent company or acquisitions are documented.

Published addresses for the business differ. The Gelbe Liste manufacturer entry places it at Dresdener Straße 25 in Ringenhain, in the same village as the legal notice but on a different street [12]. A business directory lists a mail-order firm named "BioWell, Christine Schramm" at an address in Berlin [13]. That entry is undated and carries the founder's name rather than the current owner's; the company's own legal notice gives the Ringenhain address.

Riethmüller also appears among the members of artesanas – frauen am werk, a group of women working in crafts such as wood, jewellery, felt and design. Her profile there presents BioWell as unusual for still being made by hand to original recipes [11].

BioWell describes itself as a small company in Upper Lusatia that wants to follow the "back to nature" trend and give comfrey, a native plant, new life in cosmetics. Its homepage carries no slogan of its own; instead it quotes Paracelsus, who called all meadows and pastures, valleys and heights "pharmacies of God".

The company leans heavily on the plant's history. Its website explains that comfrey (Symphytum officinale) was once called the "queen of medicinal plants" and has a recorded history of use going back almost 2,000 years [3]. It traces the plant through ancient writers such as Dioscorides, through Hildegard von Bingen, who called it "Consolida", and through the 16th-century botanists Leonhard Fuchs (1543) and Hieronymus Bock (1551). The German name, the site notes, combines "Bein" (bone) with an old word meaning to join together. These pages describe the plant's traditional uses; they are presented as history rather than as claims for BioWell's products.

Against that backdrop, BioWell positions its range as handmade and simple. According to the company, every product is made and filled individually by hand without technical aids, and its recipes are rooted in traditional herbal books. The products contain no added fragrance, colourants or preservatives.

Cultivation is central to how the company presents itself. BioWell says it grows its own comfrey without fertilisers or insecticides, so that the plants grow "as in the wild". Leaves are picked in spring and roots dug in autumn, and the company says it follows the phases of the moon when the weather allows. Only hand-picked fresh roots, leaves, flowers and parts of the stems are processed, along with leaves dried from its own harvest so that products can be made fresh throughout the year. Because the plants grow under natural conditions, the company notes, the colour of its salves and oils can vary from batch to batch.

Despite the "Bio" in its name, no third-party organic or natural-cosmetics certification is documented for the brand.

The range is small and almost entirely built on comfrey. Its best-known product is the Beinwellkonzentrat, a salve made from comfrey root and sold in 30 ml and 125 ml sizes. Alongside it sit the Beinwellöl, a body and massage oil made with comfrey leaves, a version of that oil with sea buckthorn seed oil, the Hautpflegesalbe (skin-care salve), the Mundwinkelsalbe (a salve for the corners of the mouth) and the Haarstimulans, a hair tonic. The range also includes a day and night cream, a hand cream, a face tonic, a body lotion and soaps.

The salves are based on lanolin (wool fat), almond oil and shea butter; alcohol is used only in the face tonic and the hair tincture. Because the salves are made with lanolin they are not vegan, but the company marks several other products as vegan, including the hand cream, the comfrey oils, the day and night cream, the face tonic and the body lotion.

BioWell attributes its products' effects to compounds found in comfrey. It says allantoin, from the mucilage in the root, helps clear away dead skin and supports skin renewal, while the plant's tannins have a tightening effect that refines the pores. The company also says its salves keep for more than three years without preservatives, because they contain no water-based ingredients and the plant's own compounds have a stabilising effect.

On regulation, BioWell states that it manufactures under the EU Cosmetics Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, that every product has a safety assessment and is registered with the EU, and that its products are regularly tested for skin tolerance by an independent laboratory [2].

BioWell is an active business. Its market calendar for autumn and winter 2026 lists appearances from September to December, starting at a nature market in Wartha, in the Guttau biosphere reserve and ending at a Christmas market on Mexikoplatz in Berlin, with stops at herb, craft and Christmas markets across Saxony in between [6].

Pharmacy sales run through product registration numbers (PZN) for the most important items. The company has acknowledged that orders through pharmacies sometimes fail, explaining that a product is reported as "not available" when wholesalers do not hold it in stock, and invites customers in that case to order directly [5].