KEY POINTS:
Alan Mackenzie has taken more than 40 flights in the past month, can rattle off the retail price of his products across 15 countries and is thinking in 15-minute time slots about packing up his suite at Auckland's Hyatt Hotel before heading to Queenstown for the weekend.
With his quickfire talk about cost control in the face of global recession, he comes across as the typical corporate manager, but most don't interrupt their patter to drop FGM into the conversation.
No that's not FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods), which with the preceding spiel is what I thought he said. It stands for female genital mutilation and it's one of the horrors MacKenzie is working to do something about. This slick Scot, who comes across more canny operator than charity crusader, is determined to use his commercial acumen for a good cause.
He's the founder of Organic Surge, a range of affordable products marketed as delivering "impressive results without chemical overload".
The company uses a chunk of its profits to fund orphanages and baby and women's rescue centres in Kenya and Uganda.
It was there that MacKenzie first saw the spin-offs from FGM, with young women victims abandoned. Now he's using his company profile to make sure other people don't overlook that and other issues blighting African lives.
Organic Surge has been available in New Zealand for a year and all bar the even cheaper soaps cost the same $19 an item.
The fresh and fruity fragrances are a drawcard, with peach and almond soon to be added and the skincare to be supplemented by a haircare range.
No surprise really, given that MacKenzie, a noted interior designer turned hair salon owner, first developed a sensitivity in his chain of hair salons, that eventually led him to found Organic Surge.
"My hands got really bad with all the chemicals."
Lifestyle stresses exacerbated the problem, to the extent that he couldn't use products like sunblocks without nasty skin eruptions.
Now he insists on testing every product himself.
Asked why Organic Surge has taken off, he says: "Because it's affordable and it delivers."
MacKenzie, ever the businessman, realised he could produce for the average person the type of product that was currently out of reach. "It's everyday affordable. Women don't have their husbands saying: 'How much was this'?"
The secret he says is lower profit margins, tight budgeting, no fancy packaging (though the plastic used is recyclable) and limited advertising - and that only in his home market.
A small staff in Wick, in the north of Scotland, do the business and MacKenzie fronts it by frequent trips to mainland Europe, Scandinavia, Asia and Canada. This is just his second trip to New Zealand.
He'd rather be checking progress on his human investments in Kenya, a place he admits he didn't much like on his first visit. "I was a spoiled brat."
The sight of a woman selling her baby for about a third the price of the Wayfarers he was wearing really hit home as he and his partner had been unable to have their own family.
They later adopted two teenage Kenyan boys - the older is about to graduate as a doctor - but through choice they're in the background of MacKenzie's aid efforts in Africa.
There, he backs an orphanage that is home to 180 children and supports schools with 600 and 500 children each. There are also rescue centres, including one for girls who've suffered from FGM gone wrong. Providing education and options is one way to make the cruel practice that can cause death or lifelong pain less appealing to the poor families that marry off their girls to much older men who insist that they be "prepared" for intercourse by crude surgery to remove the clitoris and labia, before they're sewn up in unhygienic rites.
Changing cultural practices isn't easy and neither is direct development aid.
MacKenzie has tried sourcing organic herbs and oils from Kenya, but says it's a bit of mission, what with droughts and difficulties in getting certification. So he's cast the net wide for ingredients, concentrating on minimal processing of plant and vegetable matter.
He uses no bleaches, parabens, sulphates or chemical fixatives, but does use carefully screened additives. This means his shower gels are 99.69 per cent natural.
To guard against product contamination he will use a touch of preservative, but it's there to ward off germs.
"Some products you put a fingernail in and they have germs."
Mackenzie is more interested in effectiveness than perfection, in results rather than holier than thou ideals.
"We use natural where natural is best."
His motivating force is making a difference and he sees his business and stories like this about it as a means to an end.
"The most tangible way I can help is to make a lot of money and give it back."
* Organic Surge is available in leading department stores and pharmacies. To find out more about the company and its work in Africa, visit www.organicsurge.com.
