Triumph & Disaster

Triumph & Disaster is a New Zealand grooming and skincare company founded in 2011 by Dion Nash, a former international cricketer [7]. Built around men's grooming, it combines locally sourced indigenous ingredients with globally sourced natural actives, and frames its products around ideas of ritual and preparation. The company remains active, operating regional direct-to-consumer sites across New Zealand, the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Argentina.

The brand takes its name from Rudyard Kipling's poem "If", and specifically the line about meeting "Triumph & Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same" [5]. According to the company, Nash first received a framed copy of the poem from his father at age thirteen and later returned to it as the foundation of the brand's outlook — treating success and failure with the same composure.

Dion Nash played as a fast-medium bowler for New Zealand between 1992 and 2001, taking 93 Test wickets [6]. After his cricket career he moved into business, and in 2011 he founded Triumph & Disaster to address what he saw as a shortage of effective moisturisers made for men [6]. Editorial coverage traces the idea to his years as an athlete, when exposure to sun, wind and sweat drew his attention to skin care. The founding year is consistently recorded as 2011 across independent sources, with trade press placing the launch in April of that year [8].

Triumph & Disaster describes its approach as using "the best of science combined with the best of nature to produce naturally derived but scientifically engineered products that work" [5]. The company positions itself under the tagline "Natural Skincare Foundry" and says its products are built from three pillars it names as ritual, character and fate. Its stated mission is to run a sustainable business and "leave the world a better place than we found it" [3].

Much of the brand's identity rests on New Zealand and Pacific ingredients. Formulas draw on indigenous materials such as horopito oil, ponga fern extract and kawakawa, blended with ingredients sourced elsewhere including clay from Australia, jojoba extract from Mexico and tamanu oil from Polynesia. The company frames grooming as a set of rituals rather than a chore, an idea it links directly back to the Kipling poem.

The range spans face care, hair care, beard products and body care, alongside tools and accessories. Product names lean on the brand's literary and cultural references — the Gameface Moisturiser, the Ritual Cleanser, the Coltrane Clay and the Ponsonby Pomade among them. According to a 2020 Forbes feature, the Gameface Moisturiser and Ritual Cleanser rank as the brand's bestsellers [7]. Trade press has also highlighted the Rock & Roll Face Scrub and the Fibre Royale hair product, the former described in coverage as an "absolute game changer" [8].

Sustainability is central to how Triumph & Disaster presents itself. The company published a formal Sustainability Roadmap in 2021 and says it works with a New Zealand circularity team on "circular by design" thinking [4]. It states that it does not test on animals, phrasing the position as "we still do not test on animals (other than ourselves)" [4], though it names no third-party cruelty-free certifier. Packaging initiatives include sugarcane-derived plastic tubes for parts of the range, which the brand describes as a renewable source. On palm oil, the company acknowledges limited use, arguing that common alternatives would require substantially more land for the same output. In its 2020 Forbes interview, Nash emphasised ingredient traceability and supplier accountability as part of the brand's sustainability focus [7]. No B Corp, Leaping Bunny or PETA certifications are documented.

The brand has drawn coverage in men's and lifestyle media, with Forbes publishing a 2020 feature on how a former cricketer built a sustainability-focused grooming brand and expanded it internationally [7]. The trade outlet Spa and Beauty Today ran a "Behind the Brand" profile examining its nature-derived grooming rituals [8]. No industry awards are documented.

Triumph & Disaster is an active, multi-region brand. After more than a decade of continuous operation it runs seven regional storefronts and, according to its 2020 Forbes profile, does roughly 80 percent of its business through exports, with New Zealand, China and Australia among its key markets and a growing presence in the United Kingdom and Europe [7].