Inside Antipodes – Elizabeth Barbalich
Elizabeth Barbalich is the businesswoman with a science degree who started skincare range Antipodes because she wanted her skin to feel as good as her body did when she nourished it right. She talks about plants, plastic and being New Zealand’s pioneering natural brand, with Metropol editor Nina Tucker.
Behind the big beauty brand and multi-million dollar business that is Antipodes is a down-to-earth founder who still remembers her first day at Linwood North Primary School, and the long, winding road that led her there. Elizabeth Barbalich – the visionary who made skincare natural and effective with her New Zealand founded, owned and made brand – spent her formative years in Christchurch.
“I remember my mum or my dad walking me down the road to school from where we lived, and it seemed like it went forever. It was a really long journey for a school child,” Elizabeth says. Her father was a Presbyterian minister and her mother a school teacher – both community-centric individuals focused on the needs of others. “They were impressive people. They sacrificed the fancy things in life for something they felt was more purpose driven.”
When Elizabeth was around seven, her family moved to Ashburton. She recalls her childhood with a warmth I become quite familiar with as our conversation continues. “When you look back, what an incredible upbringing for a kid. We lived in a really basic brick house, three bedrooms, one bathroom, backed onto a big field. I had a horse because the owner of the paddock behind us allowed me to graze my horse there, and my parents could afford to pull together that kind of activity for me. It was great because you’re part of a community that really cared about you,” she remembers. “I went to Ashburton College which was fantastic.
I really made the most of being in a rural kind of environment.”
Despite a brand of more than 50 individual products now stocked in around 2500 retail stores, Elizabeth’s life at home looks largely the same to what it did back then.
Moving to a 12-acre block from Central Wellington in 2023 has been like a return to her childhood. “It’s almost like going back to the 70s. On the weekends, I’ve got a pair of jeans and some gumboots on. We’ve got two horses so we ride the horses. We’re off-grid in the fact that our neighbours have chickens and are sustainable manuka beekeepers. So we swap skincare for their eggs and honey. It’s quite cool,” she says.
Her green business values guide her at home too. “We’re really trying to live a sustainable life, so we’re trying to make the property plastic free. All of our waste food products go to the animals and we try to recycle as much as we can. It’s so refreshing.”
Full circle moments feel more common these days, Elizabeth says. “What’s interesting about how things have evolved is that one of our key suppliers for some of our plant oils is Midlands Seeds, who are still located in Ashburton. They do a lot of our cold pressing for us. It was nice to come full circle like that. You always lean back into parts of your past.”
After 21 years of building, hustling, and backing herself, Elizabeth finally finds herself in a phase she’s excited about and genuinely enjoying. “We’re growing rapidly. We’ve got a lot on the go.” In mid-2026, Antipodes took its first step into haircare with a natural-origin, professional-grade range that brings a skin-first approach to the scalp and hair powdered by plant bioactives and premium botanicals. Originally, the range was only available in around 600 hotels worldwide, but demand pushed Elizabeth into pursuing the product for retail. But each big step comes with real world risk. “The business is 100% privately owned, so the bills sit in my lap. There’s always that element of healthy tension, I guess you could say, you’ve got to keep getting the sales to survive.”
From startup to million-dollar sales
Perhaps it’s the ‘startup’ mentality Elizabeth swears by that’s secured Antipodes longevity in a fierce – and saturated – skincare market. So much so that when I ask Elizabeth of her ‘I made it’ moment, this is her response: “Oh my god! I never think like that.” She says her expectations are too high.
“I never have a meeting that’s more than 30 minutes.
That’s long enough. Everyone comes prepared. They have an agenda,” Elizabeth says of her small-but-mighty team from their boutique Wellington headquarters. Inside, forward-thinking is forever at the forefront. “We’re constantly iterating. How can we improve? What do we need to communicate differently? What can we learn from data? If you operate with that startup mentality, you’re more creative. You’re more agile. You’re careful with how you spend and you know your money because you never know when the tide goes out,” she says.
“We celebrate the small wins as a business. It’s great to get all the sales data around how we’re performing but we celebrate things right through to the end customer, where people contact us and we’re thrilled because our product made a difference to their confidence.” It’s about reminding yourself of your roots. “As you get bigger, you can lose that connection to who you design these products for in the first place,” Elizabeth says.
Who that is is a mother with a science degree who went through a “transition” period after having three children in quick succession (Elizabeth would recommend spacing it out more). She had spent eight years working for the American company that introduced the technology for keyhole surgery, providing verbal and technical assistance to surgeons in the operating room. “I went from a very intensive environment there to having my first child. I went back to work after six months.” By her third child, Elizabeth reluctantly left.
“I was constantly exhausted. I wasn’t coping with motherhood and everything that went alongside that. My health suffered because I wasn’t sleeping. I’d gone from a corporate role to being at home. I didn’t like it,” Elizabeth recalls. “It’s a turning point, when you have children. A transformational period where you think I’ve got to eat well and look after myself and my children.”
Searching for something to channel her boredom became a focus on holistic health. “I started researching natural skincare and studying naturopathy. Then, I looked at everything I was doing as an individual. I went from processed foods to slow and plant-based eating, got rid of the microwave, threw the television out.”
Elizabeth felt bulletproof. She wanted to take it one step further. “There’s lots of good brands that have come out of New Zealand, but back then there was nothing that was hitting the mark in terms of efficacy, scientific processing, testing, and being 100% natural.” Her science degree meant she could not just quickly, but effectively reverse engineer formulations; determine the active ingredients, decipher the skin physics. “It took my mind off having three young children.” Seven formulas later, Antipodes was born.
A calculated risk taker
“It was number eight wire stuff. I didn’t have any money. It’s not like I came from this wealthy family and they handed me some cash and said ‘here you go, good luck.’” Elizabeth sold the house she’d bought in Auckland straight out of university to get the business off the ground. “I’m a calculated risk taker. I’d rather take a risk than not, and find myself thinking ‘what if?”
Her first five years were a hard graft of getting into department and health stores. “Health store owners understood what I was trying to do and they appreciated that so much thought had gone into the formulations and testing.” With New Zealand’s high concentration of health stores, Elizabeth became an “ambassador” for her brand: training, doing demonstrations, stocking the shelves, and planograms. Those years were the stepping stones to the multiple market and five-million global reach Antipodes holds today.
“It’s been a long road. A hard slog,” says the one-woman engine.
“I didn’t want to give up any shareholding of the business, I didn’t want to sell off any of the business, I didn’t want to be controlled by anyone,” Elizabeth says. “I want to show my children you can build a life by sticking to your values and beliefs.”
__________________
Quick fire questions
Where’s your favourite spot to while away a few hours in Canterbury?
Lyttelton. C4 Coffee Co, they do an amazing eggs Benedict with spinach and the coffee is great. I love the alternative vibe.
If you could only have one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Pacific Rose apples. I eat about six apples a day.
Beside the six apples, what does a day of plant-based eating look like?
I go through a lot of stress with this business, so I can’t deal with that. I owe it to my body not to feed it anything other than for fuel and energy, not just to fill up, so I rarely eat starchy carbs.
I like my breakfast because I tend to do my run or gym at around 5.30am and then it’s a raw juice, beetroot, spinach, carrot, ginger, apple, celery. Or, I’ll deviate into eggs. I do have eggs. And given I’m postmenopausal, I do have fish in my diet once a month for protein. At the moment, I’m really into omelettes, with salad, lots of fresh tomatoes, beans. My go-to lunch is soup, like vegetable soup or roast pepper soup. I don’t tend to snack except for nuts, and then for dinner I get a Woop bag. I get a vegetarian food bag, and my partner likes eating the extra cheese. When you’re eating a plant-based diet, you can’t just come home and open the fridge and go ‘Oh, I’ll have some lettuce for dinner.’
What’s your guilty pleasure?
I love a good glass of pinot noir. Actually, a brand called Porters Estate, who happens to be an ex-lawyer of mine. He lives in Martinborough and produces the most exquisite pinot noir, but only a very small harvest so a couple hundred bottles a year. If you can get your hands on a bottle, it’s incredible.
What are you watching and reading right now?
I’m watching the tragic story of Chernobyl on HBO for a second time. I’ve just picked up another Catherine Quigley book, I love her style of writing. I’ve also picked up Shantaram, which is a story about an Australian guy who escapes from prison and goes to live in India and ends up being a slum doctor. It’s the most incredible book I’ve ever read. It’s a true story and I try to read it every two years.
What song can you listen to on repeat?
Bohemian Rhapsody.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Just get on with it. Keep calm and carry on, from my mother.
Did you have a beauty and skincare routine as a kid?
Absolutely not. My mother was very practical: wash your face. But to be honest, using skincare wasn’t a thing, it wasn’t on the radar of anyone at that time. I think the closest you came to it would be using sunscreen or a fake-tanning product.
Why Antipodes?
New Zealand’s people and New Zealand as a place is often referred to as the Antipodes. I felt that it was such a great word to encapsulate the essence of the brand, the spirituality, the fact we focus on New Zealand botanicals, native plants. I was also looking for an ‘A’ word for the business name too because, you know, in marketing and directories, it’s good to be at the top of a list.
How do you feel about greenwashing?
Frustrated from the perspective that the consumer is the one who’s getting cheated, right? It’s a murky area, it’s really confusing. You’ve got brands like Antipodes sitting in their 100% natural and/or certified ingredients space, but there’s very few. At the other end of the scale, you’ve got synthetic brands with petroleum-based man-made ingredients. Then in the middle, a massive category of brands that are primarily synthetic with a sprinkling of natural so they lean into the natural story and that’s what confuses the customer. I know I can deconstruct a formula, but how would a person outside of this world remotely understand? It just makes me more determined. I tell the team we have to lean more into our values, ethos… our customers will find us.
What are your must-haves: beauty, skincare, and clothing?
My must-have in beauty is a good natural fragrance. I love Abel, a Wellington brand. In terms of skincare, I do change my routine up but my Maya water-based serum and Baptise serum from the hydration range. Clothing, I’ve got so many, but it would be an absolute kick-ass pair of jeans. I can’t live without them.
