Dr. Scheller

Dr. Scheller, marketed as Apotheker Dr. Scheller, is a German natural-cosmetics skincare brand founded in 1986 by the pharmacist Dr. Hans-Ulrich Scheller. Its products are built around a calendula extract that the company calls its medicinal-plant essence, and the whole range is formulated for mature skin with an anti-ageing focus. The brand is certified to the NATRUE and COSMOS natural-cosmetics standards, registered with The Vegan Society, and sold mainly through drugstores and its own online shop.

Dr. Scheller is not an independent company. In 2011 the natural-cosmetics line was acquired by BCG Baden-Baden Cosmetics Group in an asset deal, and it continues today as one of that group's brands, run from Baden-Baden in the Black Forest region. The name also has a longer corporate past: an older manufacturer of drugstore products, Dr. Scheller Cosmetics AG of Eislingen, was founded in 1944 and dissolved in 2011.

According to the company, Hans-Ulrich Scheller founded his own natural-cosmetics brand in 1986 "out of personal passion", launching it under the name Apotheker Scheller Naturkosmetik ("Pharmacist Scheller Natural Cosmetics") [2]. The idea, as the brand tells it, was to combine a pharmacist's knowledge with traditional medicinal plants and modern formulations based on natural ingredients. The company today describes him as a pioneer of classic natural cosmetics, and sums up his outlook in a credo attributed to him: "Sophisticated skincare must be accessible to everyone."

Accounts differ on how old the brand is, largely because two entities share the Scheller name. The company dates the brand to 1986, a year repeated by the trade magazine Kosmetiknachrichten and by the brand's current owner. German Wikipedia, by contrast, gives 1944 as the founding year of Dr. Scheller Cosmetics AG, a company established in Eislingen by Karl-Heinz Scheller [7]. That firm was best known for the Manhattan cosmetics line and the durodont toothcare range, and it is a separate entity from the natural-cosmetics brand. This article follows 1986 as the founding year of the brand itself.

Even the brand's own wording varies. Its about page speaks of 40 years, while its homepage refers to "more than 35 years". Both figures are consistent with a 1986 start.

For much of its existence the natural-cosmetics line sat inside a larger corporate structure in Eislingen, in the Swabian part of Baden-Württemberg. From 2006, the Lausanne-based Kalina International held more than 75 percent of Dr. Scheller Cosmetics AG [7]. Besides its own brands, that company produced private-label toothcare for German discount chains, and in 2007 it employed 387 people.

The group was broken up over 2010 and 2011. Its stock-market listing ended in March 2010 through a squeeze-out, a procedure that forces out the remaining minority shareholders, and in late 2010 Kalina sold the Manhattan line to Coty. In June 2011 the legal and business magazine JUVE reported that BCG Baden-Baden Cosmetics Group had bought the natural-cosmetics line, then called "Dr. Scheller – Das Naturprodukt", from DSN Cosmetics of Eislingen, a company belonging to the Russian Kalina Group [9]. The purchase was structured as an asset deal and followed a competitive bidding process. According to JUVE, Kalina had owned Dr. Scheller for six years, the natural-cosmetics division generated about five million euros in annual revenue, and the sale marked Kalina's complete exit from the German cosmetics market. Dr. Scheller Cosmetics AG was dissolved as of 30 June 2011, with its brands passing to Coty and to BCG Cosmetics GmbH and its production going to Weckerle Cosmetics Eislingen [7].

Under its new owner the brand was gradually reshaped. Before 2022, the range was organised into ingredient-pair series such as Argan & Amaranth, Distel & Chia (thistle and chia) and Mandel & Calendula (almond and calendula). In 2020 the German singer Ella Endlich, a winner of the television show The Masked Singer, became the brand's ambassador, according to the company.

In November 2022, Kosmetiknachrichten reported a full relaunch carried out by BCG Baden-Baden Services GmbH [8]. The new range comprised 12 new formulas, four modernised existing products and two bestsellers left unchanged. The series names were dropped in favour of what the company calls a "Mix & Match" principle, in which each product is built around clearly labelled single active ingredients that can be combined freely. The brand's ambassador page notes that the overall range became smaller in the process.

Dr. Scheller has belonged to BCG Baden-Baden Cosmetics Group GmbH since the 2011 acquisition. The group lists Apotheker Dr. Scheller among its brands [10], alongside the thermal-water skincare brand Sans Soucis, Biodroga, the vegan natural-cosmetics line Bio:Vegane, a private-label business and the dog-care brand Ylva&You. BCG describes itself as drawing on more than 80 years of experience in skincare.

The legal picture is less straightforward. The legal notice on the brand's website names a different operating company, 7Garden Cosmetics GmbH, at the same Baden-Baden address, Im Rosengarten 7 [5]. The 2022 trade coverage of the relaunch, meanwhile, credits BCG Baden-Baden Services GmbH. The descriptions are not necessarily contradictory, since a group can list a brand in its portfolio while a separate company operates its web shop, but no public source explains how 7Garden Cosmetics GmbH relates to the BCG group.

Dr. Scheller presents itself through the figure of the pharmacist. Its products carry the word "Apotheker" (pharmacist) in the brand name, and its tagline translates as "natural cosmetics that work". The company describes its formulas as resting on three pillars: extracts of traditional medicinal plants, care oils familiar from the pharmacy, and what it calls modern "power" actives aimed at anti-ageing results. Every product, it says, is formulated specifically for mature skin.

The brand pairs this with a "100% free from" policy. According to the company, its certified natural cosmetics contain no silicones, mineral oils or parabens, and the skin tolerance of every product has been confirmed by dermatological testing. It sums up its values in three words: competent, authentic and sustainable.

In price, the brand sits at the drugstore end of the market. Besides its own web shop, which delivers only within Germany, it names the drugstore chains dm and Müller as its retail partners, with dm also carrying it in Austria.

The foundation of every Dr. Scheller product, according to the brand, is its own Heilpflanzenessenz, or medicinal-plant essence, made from pot marigold (Calendula officinalis). The company explains that fully opened flowers are gathered, the orange petals are carefully plucked, and the essence is extracted from the petals. It points to the plant's long use in traditional pharmacy and its reputation for being gentle and soothing on the skin.

The range covers cleansing, serums, moisturisers, eye and lip care, hand care and masks, plus a small "medical" skincare line with a cream for sensitive skin and a repair ointment. The brand lists its bestsellers as the Anti-Falten Argan Tagescreme and Nachtcreme (anti-wrinkle argan day and night creams), pure castor oil, a firming caffeine eye cream and a protective lemon-balm lip balm. Other products include an intensive argan serum, pure argan oil and a detox mask made with healing mud (Heilmoor).

According to the 2022 relaunch coverage, the anti-wrinkle day cream combines argan with paracress, hyaluronic acid and squalane, while the night cream uses argan, valerian, plant-based collagen and shorea butter. The relaunched range also included a tinted day cream with SPF 15 based on mineral UV filters, a soothing mallow cream-gel and a nourishing thistle cream balm.

The company says it researches and develops its products in its own laboratory and manufactures all of them in Germany, and it runs a factory outlet at its Baden-Baden address. In 2020 the women's magazine dfm repeated the brand's claim to be the first to design an AHA, a type of exfoliating acid, for natural cosmetics in a way that still earned NATRUE certification [12].

Alongside its NATRUE and COSMOS certifications, the brand states that all its products are registered with The Vegan Society in the United Kingdom and carry its vegan label [1]. The company also says it has never carried out animal testing since the brand was created, and that its products contain no gluten.

Dr. Scheller describes the whole brand as climate-neutral through a partnership with the consultancy ClimatePartner. Under that arrangement its emissions are analysed and reduced, and the remainder is offset by supporting the construction and operation of wind energy in Brazil. Its packaging, the company adds, is produced in an environmentally friendly way.

In November 2020, dfm reported that the brand had collected three distinctions that year. The German Society for Consumer Studies (DtGV) named Dr. Scheller "Deutschlands beste Marke" (Germany's best brand) in the quality category. The Argan & Amaranth Anti-Falten AHA Nachtserum, a night serum, won the face category at the 11th Healthy Living Award. The third was a "good" rating from the consumer-testing magazine ÖKO-TEST for the brand's anti-wrinkle day cream, which came about only after an earlier, lower score.

In its December 2019 issue, ÖKO-TEST rated the Argan & Amaranth Anti-Falten Pflege Tag only "befriedigend" (satisfactory). The magazine found no faults with the ingredients, but the company had been unable to provide evidence for the anti-wrinkle effect it advertised [11]. Dr. Scheller then submitted product-specific efficacy studies, in which a test laboratory used 3D measurement of the skin surface and recorded improvements in 20 women after four days of daily use. In June 2020 ÖKO-TEST raised the rating to "gut" (good). It noted, however, that the study could not show any advantage over ordinary moisturisers, because no untreated area of skin had been included for comparison.

Dr. Scheller is an acquired brand that remains on sale under its owner, BCG Baden-Baden Cosmetics Group. Its web shop was active in 2026, the year in which the company's about page marks four decades since the 1986 founding. The products continue to be sold through the brand's own shop and through the dm and Müller drugstore chains.