What I learned during my first year working as a chemical engineer in the beauty industry

I remember being so curious about how each individual beauty brand came up with their own formulations. How many scientists were involved? How long did it take them to actually launch new products? I wondered if everything I was doing for my own small business at all resembled what was happening in the big-name beauty companies. Well, I was definitely surprised by what I learned.

Most beauty brands, which are small to medium-sized, contract their formulations and the manufacturing of their products. This helps to keep costs low and product expansion and innovation high as maintaining a production facility is expensive and doesn’t allow for as much flexibility in product type. The only time it truly makes sense for a beauty brand (like L’oreal) to have their own production facility is if they are producing the same hero products by the millions.

There is some level of collaboration regarding the formulation and the manufacturing that happens between the beauty brands and the contract manufacturers, even for things like packaging, as some brands are quite innovative and unique with their packaging, but this level of involvement and creativity really depends on the beauty brand itself and whether or not they hire internal engineers like me ;). As far as timelines go, you can expect 2-3 years from concept to shelf. Nuts!

Some brands even use what we call a “white label” concept which is something I learned about when I was researching how to make my own products. Essentially, a contract manufacturer will make generic products that the brand will then purchase and market as their own. This helps to keep costs very low while still establishing a brand name and presence in the market.

This discovery was both a slight disappointment to me, as I always romanticized having a factory someday and wanted to learn the reality of what that would take to build, but was also very opportunistic because it meant that as the process engineering manager, I was required to travel to most of the company’s contract manufacturing sites which are located all over the world! Being a huge traveler and a total geek when it comes to manufacturing cosmetics and skincare, it felt like this job was made just for me.