Brands and Industry suppliers of every size are expanding their international approach to all things beauty.
It’s not surprising that COVID-19 and the global economic upheaval brought on by the pandemic continue to cause great concern in the cosmetics and personal care industry.
But last year at this time, we saw beauty motivated toward local solutions: brands brought fulfillment in-house, manufacturers and formulators were inclined to source ingredients locally, packaging made in the same country where beauty makers are headquartered was is high demand.
The Beauty Industry’s Global Structure Remains Intact
The importance of global beauty, however, never went away. And it’s even more apparent now that the need to be local everywhere is the need to be international. Which is why we are seeing new and continuing expansion from startup beauty brands, from ingredient suppliers, from packaging companies, and from product manufacturers.
Indie and startup brands are forging ahead and launching in new markets. blendSMART, a US-based brand best known for its rotating makeup applicator brush launched in Taiwan late last years and has plans to continue expanding in the Asia market.
Two skincare that I’ve been watching for some time, which both happen to be from France, have just arrived here in the States. L'Odaïtès, a skin care line formulated with date-derived ingredients, recently launched in the US, thanks to a partnership with marketing and sales agency Beauty Anthologie. Kadalays, a skin care brand that Founder and CEO Shirley Billot has built around upcycled banana ingredients, launched here in the US late last year. It’s worth mentioning too that Kadalays won Brand of The Year in the 2021 Blue Beauty Awards, presented by INNOCOS and Beauty Heroes.
Sourcing and Supplying Beauty Inputs Globally
Another good example of international beauty in our current moment is Canada-based Du Nord Skincare. This brand took full advantage of the opportunity to build business relationships virtually in 2020. Du Nord Skincare’s founder Ursula Snyder met with suppliers at in-cosmetics global, selected new ingredients sourced from around the world, and reformulated her product line with these new and more sophisticated inputs.
And speaking of ingredients, Colonial Chemical, a specialty surfactants maker headquartered in Tennessee, began building an ingredient manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia at the start of 2021. Like many countries, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia incentivizes companies to buy locally produced goods and materials over imports.
Gattefosse, a specialty chemical maker based in Lyon, France, is on track to open an ingredient manufacturing plant in Texas. In a press release issued in December, Eric Brun, CEO and President of Gattefosse in the US and Canada, cited a “local presence” in the US market as a key reason for the expansion.
And if we turn our attention to the production of finished goods, New York City – based contract manufacturer MANA Products in partnership with Meiyume, and RPG recently announced the formation of The Vertical Beauty Alliance, an international partnership that will see MANA serving more brands in more countries with its color cosmetics, skin care, and hair care capabilities.
So even though consumer demand has shifted, shipping delays persist, and much of the world—those fortunate enough to still be working—continue to do so from home, beauty is a global experience and it remains a global business too.
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this DUviews item was originally posted to LinkedIn and now appears on DeannaUtroske.com