Ecrinal

Ecrinal is a care range for nails, eyelashes and hair made by Laboratoires ASEPTA, an independent, family-run dermo-cosmetics manufacturer based in the Principality of Monaco. The laboratory introduced it in 1972, twenty years after launching its hand-care brand Vita Citral, as a line devoted to what French pharmacists call the phanères: the nails, hair and lashes that grow from the skin [12]. Ecrinal remains one of five ranges in the ASEPTA portfolio, alongside the foot-care brand Akileïne, its sports offshoot Sports Akileïne, the facial-care brand Coup d'Éclat and Vita Citral.

The range is sold chiefly through pharmacies and parapharmacies [4]. Its formulas are built around a patented lipid complex called ANP® 2+, which the company says is designed to support the growth and renewal of nails, lashes and hair. The products are designed and manufactured in Monaco [10], and the brand is active, with a current catalogue of nail, lash and hair products.

No individual founder of Ecrinal is named. The range was developed in-house by Laboratoires ASEPTA rather than by a single creator, and its origin is best understood through the story of the laboratory that made it.

That story begins at the Monte-Carlo Casino. According to the laboratory's own account, at the end of the 1930s croupiers who spent long hours on their feet on the casino carpets asked a Monaco pharmacist, Henri Adam, for a cream to ease their aching feet. Adam developed a formula based on yarrow (achillée in French), a soothing plant, and the foot-care brand Akileïne was born.

The years after the Second World War were slow for the young company, since few people had money to spend on comfort products. Its founders gradually persuaded pharmacies on the Côte d'Azur to stock the cream, and later pharmacies in Paris and Strasbourg, creating demand for an unusual product in a sluggish economy.

Diversification came step by step. Laboratoires ASEPTA added hand care in 1952 with Vita Citral, and in 1972 it launched Ecrinal as a new range for the care of hair, nails and lashes. The owner's history page does not give 1972 as a number; it says the new range arrived "twenty years" after Vita Citral [9]. The Monaco Economic Board, in a profile of the company, gives the year explicitly [12].

Ecrinal belongs to Laboratoires ASEPTA of Monaco, which both makes and distributes the range. No change of ownership of the brand is documented. The laboratory describes itself as independent and managed by the families of its founders, and it manufactures its dermo-cosmetic ranges in Monaco.

The Monaco Economic Board's profile traces how that family control passed between generations. Georges Mas, son of the co-founder Henri Mas, became managing director in 1990. Anne-Marie Noir, daughter of the co-founder Paul Lacroix, became managing director in 1994 and later took over her father's role after his death in 2002. The two co-managed the company, continuing to develop its brands [12].

Accounts of the laboratory's own beginnings differ in two respects. On the founding team, ASEPTA's French history page says the company grew out of a meeting between Henri Adam and Paul Lacroix, whom the upheavals of the Second World War had brought to work in Monaco in January 1942, and that the founding team was completed by Henri Mas, a childhood friend of Lacroix [9]. The Portuguese distributor's site names only Paul Lacroix and Henri Adam as the founding team [2]. On the founding date, the owner's page dates the founders' meeting to January 1942 without giving a formal founding year, while the Monaco Economic Board states that the laboratory was founded in 1943 [12]. The same distributor site says the Akileïne brand was patented in 1947. These questions concern the parent laboratory, not Ecrinal, whose 1972 launch is not in dispute.

The launch year of the sister brand Coup d'Éclat is also given differently: 1977 on the owner's page and 1978 in the Monaco Economic Board's profile.

According to ASEPTA, the laboratory today employs more than 200 people, produces more than six million units a year and is present in more than 60 countries on five continents. It says this reach rests on a network of distributors, backed by subsidiaries in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Tunisia and Canada. In Portugal, the range is distributed by Laboratórios Expanscience, whose Portuguese subsidiary publishes the Ecrinal website there [2].

Ecrinal is positioned as a pharmacy care range rather than a fashion or colour brand. On the owner's range page, ASEPTA describes its formulas as expert and regularly optimised, and says Ecrinal relies on exclusive, patented actives with results it calls "scientifically proven" in stimulating the growth and strength of nails, lashes and hair [10]. No study is cited alongside that claim on the page.

The same page stresses tolerance. The company says its nail and lash treatments, whether used as a short course or all year round, are designed to respect the natural physiology of nails and lashes. The Portuguese website frames the range under the tagline "Cuidados profissionais em casa", meaning "professional care at home".

The brand's broader outlook is inherited from its parent. "Quality and innovation" has, according to the laboratory, always been its motto, and it presents itself as a partner to modern dermo-pharmacy through its patents and innovations. ASEPTA's stated commitments include using only the ingredients that are needed, tracing the origin and quality of its raw materials, and putting every product through safety and efficacy studies. The laboratory says clinical and dermatological studies are carried out and supervised by qualified specialists, and that each product is tested under real conditions of use.

Ecrinal is organised around three areas of care: nails, lashes and hair.

The nail and lash line on the owner's site lists thirteen products. For nails, these include a gentle nail-polish remover for fragile nails, two hardeners for soft and brittle nails (one of them vitamin-enriched), an emollient cuticle gel, and a repair serum with ten precious oils for dry, damaged nails and cuticles. A growth and resistance treatment is aimed at nails that are brittle, split, yellowed or bitten. Several products double as polish: a bitter-tasting varnish meant to discourage nail biting, an anti-ridge base coat for ridged and damaged nails, a whitening treatment varnish for yellowed or stained nails, and a line of coloured polishes formulated with silicon and tea tree for normal or fragile nails.

On the Portuguese website, the featured nail products include the repair serum with ten essential oils (Sérum Reparador 10 Óleos Essenciais), the bitter varnish against nail biting (Verniz Amargo Stop Unhas Roídas) and the anti-ridge base coat (Verniz Base Antiestrias). That site offers the nail and eye lines only; the hair line appears on the owner's site.

The lash products centre on a fortifying lash gel with ANP® 2+, intended for eyelashes and eyebrows that are fragile, short, thin or sparse. It is joined by a fortifying black mascara with the same complex and a long-wearing eye pencil for sensitive eyes.

The hair line lists eight products, which ASEPTA presents as an anti-hair-loss programme. It includes an anti-hair-loss treatment and ampoules for excessive hair loss and thinning hair, separate fortifying lotions for women and men intended as follow-up care, a nourishing mask for dry and damaged hair, fortifying shampoos for women and men, and an ultra-gentle family shampoo suitable for children from the age of three. All eight carry the ANP® 2+ name.

The technology behind the range is the company's own. ASEPTA describes ANP® 2+ as a patented lipid complex, meaning a blend of fatty compounds, intended to promote the growth and renewal of nails, lashes and hair [11]. The laboratory adds that including THIO-LIPESTERS®, another of its ingredients, in the complex boosts that growth effect. More broadly, the laboratory says its research programmes on its own active ingredients were sponsored by Oséo-Anvar, the French agency that supports the commercial development of research [3]. The distributor's site adds that the patents behind the Akileïne and Ecrinal ranges are exclusive to the laboratory and are formulated by teams of chemists and pharmacists.

No third-party certifications are documented for the range.

Ecrinal is an active brand. The owner's website currently lists thirteen nail and lash products and eight hair products under the Ecrinal name, and the Portuguese Ecrinal website operates as a working online shop for the nail and eye lines. No dated brand-specific news or product launches were found.

The range continues to be made in Monaco and distributed through pharmacies and parapharmacies, both directly by Laboratoires ASEPTA and through distributors abroad. According to the laboratory, it has established itself as a leader in French pharmacies through Akileïne, Sports Akileïne and Ecrinal, with Ecrinal covering nail treatments in particular.