Surviving COVID-19: Indie beauty brand co-founder discusses pandemic’s impact on business operations

As detailed in a report from market research firm Statista, after years of steady growth, the global cosmetics market dropped by 8% in 2020 – a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic. For indie skin care brand Cotarde, the pandemic was a particularly devastating blow, as the company produced and marketed products specifically for travelers.

Today, Cotarde is still a thriving company in the skin care space, and in this exclusive CosmeticsDesign interview with Danuta Dudek-Pellon, PhD, MSc, Co-Founder and Researcher at Cotarde LLC, we gain insight into the ways the brand was able to navigate the pandemic and pivot into a different space within the beauty care industry to survive COVID-19.

CDU: Can you explain what your business looked like before the 2020 pandemic?​

Dr. Danuta Dudek-Pellon (DDP)​: We launched Cotarde in 2017 after 3 years of R&D as the first skin care brand entirely dedicated to travelers. We had quite a ride in the sense of the level of the response to our brand, with three major international awards for the brand within the first year of operating, and an award for every single product we launched since.

We became one of those rising stars, one may say. This, together with influencers' and journalists' coverage, had brought us some great corporate partners we ended up working with.

We partnered with Athleta, which is part of the GAP group, and focuses on active women's needs. We had a US-wide marketing campaign with Delsey (second biggest luggage maker), and the incredible partnership with Albea as we made our steps into the airline industry with the first fully compostable products.

We offered our products online and directly to hotels, small boutiques and the airlines.

Our customers loved Cotarde for its unique designs combined with our eco-conscious approach (it was a hot topic in the travel industry at the time), and of course the multifunctional products that were targeting their needs as they moved through the day.

I personally wanted a product that would help me look good no matter where I was or what time zone I was in. That's how it all started in the first place.

CDU: What was the fallout from the 2020 pandemic for your business?​

DDP​: The pandemic changed everything. Not only for us, of course, as it came out as a total shake up in the industry, in the way we were doing business, but also for the prospects of it, especially when you were related to any sort of travel.

Suddenly, there were no contracts to look at, and certainly no contracts to sign. Everything stopped. What's worse, our business partners, almost all of them, started shutting down, had restructured, moved on to different areas of business, or sold out.

Apart from losing the sales channels and the consumer interest, you also lose your backbone - the supply chain. The speed of change was hard to fathom.

The silver lining was that we got out of it with no further commitments, and as such, were able to move on relatively smoothly. Had the pandemic hit us a few weeks later, it would have been even more dramatic for us as a company, as we were planning a major production scale up at the time.

CDU: What has happened to the Cotarde brand since the 2020 pandemic? What have you done to build it back up and how successful has that been?​

DDP​: By the summer of 2020, we knew the situation was not going to change anytime soon, and we had to find our way as COVID was still wreaking havoc all around. Our way out of it emerged sort of naturally.

Although COVID had stopped people from moving, it accelerated certain skin issues, and people's personal interest in fixing them up. Many wanted to feel better while in lockdown, and/or look better on Zoom.

Someone asked me if I had something for the skin problem they had. I said "No, I don't ...but I can get it for you". And that's how we started the personalized skincare that targets people's individual needs.

Our journey has morphed into our customers' journey - from me wanting to fix my skin situation to helping my customers fix theirs. Also, contrary to the usual approach taken by the brands nowadays focusing on social media, we physically reached out to our loyal local base of consumers - mainly on the Eastern coast of the US.

This traditional way allowed us to effectively scale up this part of business, and today, we are working on it fully. We are planning the release of our best-sellers (those formulas that our customers need and ask for the most), but the individual approach is here to stay.

CDU: What did you learn from the 2020 pandemic as a beauty brand owner?​

DDP​: Having in mind that we were across the border between the beauty and travel industries, the impact for us was particularly strong. In the years leading to it, we'd build our dynamic startup from zero all the way up, only to get down super-fast again. It was difficult to comprehend.

But, at the end of the day, it turned out to be a rather humbling experience. We emerged more mature, and I'm grateful we had the ability to survive this strange period. We are lucky. In the end, we emerged as a much closer-to-consumer business, not just B2C online brand.

I always wanted to have a well-functioning business, small or big. Now, after everything we've been through, I'm even less interested than before in being one of the hyped-up, trendy brands out there. It's unsustainable in most cases, and a lot of brands (and brand owners) simply burn out. 

CDU: How do you plan to move forward with your business in the future? How different is your vision now?​

DDP​: I want to build it one step at a time, without the chaos that hype can bring in. I want to ensure our feet are on the ground (pun intended) and each customer well served.

One thing that has not changed in our vision is our eco-consciousness. I feel the responsibility for every product we launch. I want them to be built precisely, whether the formulation or the packaging, with a lesser chance of potential waste in the form of mindless production, massive returns or frequent product relaunches.

Our journey is closely intertwined with the lives of our customers. We adapt our formulas to their needs, and we offer an option of re-using the packaging to minimize the waste.

As a brand, we will soon reveal a new way to get the exact product you need. As a producer, we want to make a visible difference for those who use our products, while we significantly reduce our impact on the environment. I feel the weight of this commitment.