Vitalife

Vitalife is a German skincare line built around olive oil and sold mainly through pharmacies. It is a business unit of IMP GmbH, a company based in Neuss [3], and serves as the in-house brand of APO DIREKT, IMP's pharmacy-distribution arm [1]. The range is small: a traditional Aleppo soap made in Syria, offered as a bar and as a liquid soap, and an "Olivenbutter" (olive butter) line of body cream, face cream and shower care.

No founding year or founding story has been published for the brand. Vitalife remains commercially available and is presented by its owner alongside a wider catalogue of pharmacy products, although no dated launches or brand announcements have appeared since late 2020.

Vitalife has no standalone website. Its public presence consists of a few product pages within the APO DIREKT site, which calls it the company's own personal in-house brand ("Eigenmarke"). The name is written variously as Vitalife®, VITALIFE® and, in one image caption on the parent company's site, VitaLife.

When the line was launched is not publicly documented, and no founder is named for it. The parent company has worked as a pharmaceutical wholesaler since October 1998, but that date belongs to IMP GmbH rather than to Vitalife. Johannes Schneider is listed as managing director and shareholder of APO DIREKT and IMP GmbH [5]; he is not described as the brand's founder.

Vitalife belongs to IMP GmbH, whose full name in trade material is IMP International Medical Products GmbH, with its seat in Neuss [12]. Through APO DIREKT, IMP supplies pharmacies with health and care products under many names, among them SATINA and MARDOUW skincare, Parodont dental care and MELORA manuka honey. Vitalife is the line it presents as its own.

The parent company has collected business recognition of its own. Its news page refers to a Financial Times listing of European "growth champions" for 2017 [9], and its corporate site shows a "Wachstumschampion" (growth champion) award from the German magazine Focus for 2019 [10]. Both distinctions were given to IMP GmbH as a company, not to the Vitalife products.

The company frames olive oil as a long-standing staple of skin care. Its product pages describe the oil as a valuable care ingredient that helps dry and cracked skin, and say that its "antibacterial effect and many vitamins protect the skin" [3]. In trade material, IMP adds that the fatty acids in olive oil closely resemble the skin's own natural oils, which it says lets the oil absorb well and hold moisture in deeper layers of the skin [12].

Positioning rests on the pharmacy channel rather than on a consumer-facing brand identity. The products are described as being of pharmacy quality, and they can be ordered either directly from APO DIREKT or through pharmacy wholesalers [1].

The centre of the range is the Vitalife ALEPPO soap, a 200 g bar the company calls a 100% natural soap. Its listed ingredients are olive oil (94%) and laurel oil (5%) [4]. The company presents it as a classic block soap suited to hands, body and face alike. A 500 ml liquid version, described as a traditionally made natural product from Syria, contains 20% laurel oil.

IMP's own account of how the soap is made leans on craft tradition. According to the company, the soap is boiled several times "on new water", and a soap master checks the finished soap by "tasting" it. The bars are then stamped with the maker's seal and left to rest for at least nine months in semi-open vaults [12]. A second trade notice says the base is first cold-pressed olive oil, turned into soap at 95 °C, and that Aleppo soaps are traditionally used as supportive care for eczema, psoriasis and atopic dermatitis [13]. The company describes the soap as suitable for all skin types, including small children, free of artificial fragrances, and fully biodegradable because of its natural composition.

Some of the soap's product claims go further. The product page states that its pH of 8 to 9 "stimulates the body to excrete acid and toxins through the skin" [4]. No supporting evidence for this is published with the product.

The second part of the range, the Olivenbutter line, has three products: a 500 ml body cream, a 75 ml face cream with vitamin E, and a 500 ml shower care wash. Vitalife labels the line "dermatologically tested", but no test report is published on its product pages [4]. According to the brand, the products contain no animal ingredients and no colourants. The face cream is described as free of mineral and silicone oils, while the body cream and shower wash are said to contain no petroleum-based ingredients. Unlike the Aleppo soap, the Olivenbutter products list perfume among their ingredients. Vitalife says the face cream gives the skin "a youthful, fresh and healthy appearance".

No third-party certifications are documented for any Vitalife product.

Vitalife is active. As of 2025, the APO DIREKT homepage still presents it as the company's own brand, and the full range is listed with German pharmacy product numbers and recommended retail prices [1]. Its documented distribution runs through German pharmacy wholesale and APO DIREKT's direct ordering.

No new products or brand announcements dated later than November 2020 have been made public. In practice, the brand's current activity consists of keeping an established range on sale rather than expanding it.