Q&A: Beauty manufacturer launches cloud-based product development platform
As more and more applications for AI-integrated technology in the beauty and personal care industries are developed, companies like Prime Matter Labs are harnessing these innovations to improve the efficiency of their product development processes as well as the UX for their customers.
This month, Prime Matter Labs (PML) has launched Element as a solution for many common pain points that brands need to navigate when bringing a new product to market. To learn more about Element, including how the platform works, the R&D behind the platform’s launch, and how Element uses AI to better adapt to the needs of cosmetics and personal care product companies, we interviewed Aaron Paas, CEO of Prime Matter Labs for his insights.
CDU: Can you share some brief background about your professional experience, the company, and your relationship with the cosmetics and personal care product industries?
Aaron Paas (AP): Over the past 20 years, I’ve worked with consumer-packaged goods and technology brands across every stage of brand and product development from ideation to launch and scaling growth.
I started my career at Procter & Gamble where I spent a decade working on brand and product development before joining Etsy. At Etsy, I spent most of my time helping the team build tools for sellers and went with them through their IPO.
I left Etsy to start my own Natural Personal Care brand and in the development process of that brand, I realized that there was a huge opportunity to create a better manufacturing partner for the brands being built today.
I was lucky enough to meet the team at Monogram Capital and we immediately clicked on our shared view of wanting to build the contract manufacturing platform of the future. In January 2020 we closed the deal with Prime Enterprises, a 40-year-old contract manufacturer in Miami and began working together to build Prime Matter Labs.
Over the past four years, we’ve worked tirelessly to build a development and production partner that has a deep understanding of and empathy for the incredibly difficult pathway of turning an idea into a high-quality, scalable product in our industry.
As CEO at PML, I’ve been able to build a company and a team that always looks “through the brand lens” and seeks to bring solutions that are brand-obsessed, not manufacturing-centric. Element is just the latest manifestation of that plan and the most ambitious piece of our roadmap to realize our vision of making contract manufacturing better for brands!
CDU: Can you explain the PML Element platform and how it works?
AP: Element is the first-of-its-kind software platform that acts as the backbone of a brand's product development and production process with Prime Matter Labs, from concept to creation to production and delivery, in one centralized location. Element was designed to help our brand partners reach their goals with an unprecedented level of transparency, connection to their projects, and collaborative communication between their internal teams and their team at PML.
Element's user-centric platform provides customers the ability to access the platform anytime, anywhere, and track the development of their products in real-time. Customers will eventually be able to perform all major tracking, approval, feedback, and communication tasks directly within Element, virtually eliminating major industry pain points that plague the manufacturer and brand relationship today.
CDU: What major industry pain points does the Element software seek to resolve?
AP: In the past, the process of bringing a product to life was opaque, confusing, and disconnected between the customer and manufacturer. Element helps to solve these issues by providing a central platform that facilitates communication, collaboration, customer service and project tracking for brand partners, their teams, and the Prime Matter Labs team.
Element establishes a single central location for all project documentation and communication, simplifying the process for both teams to stay updated on project status, share feedback, and access documentation readily. It also aids brands in complying with recent MoCRA updates.
By condensing timelines, reducing errors, and seamlessly connecting previously isolated processes, Element enables our partner brands to operate more efficiently and profitably.
CDU: Can you share some insight into the R&D process behind the platform's launch?
AP: Leveraging technology to drive the industry forward has been a core focus area of the company strategy since we started on this most recent phase of the journey in 2020. Our VP of Software and Technology, Adam Price, was one of the first new leadership hires back in 2020 and has been leading our software R&D process ever since.
Since we’re the only company in our industry to have a dedicated, in-house software engineering team, we are able to build our platform through a first-hand view on the challenges and opportunities that exist in the industry.
Through countless hours of research with our employees, the team identified the need to build robust, user-friendly internal tools solving some of the biggest challenges that our teams faced, including streamlining processes and development by building an intelligent formulation tool leveraged by all PML’s chemists to build better formulas for their customers.
Having these internal tools in use by our employees for the past two years has allowed us to create a customer-facing platform that adds immediate value because of the depth of the available data.
CDU: How does Element incorporate AI into its platform to better serve the needs of cosmetic and personal care product manufacturers and suppliers?
AP: PML’s software engineers are using AI-powered development tools to help build and modify code efficiently to adapt to customer needs. The company has a robust roadmap for Element with a spotlight on new features, products, and solutions, including additional AI tools to help leverage proprietary data to create completely new solutions aimed at inspiring innovation, reducing costs, and accelerating the product development process.
CDU: What’s next in terms of R&D for PML, and for future innovation in this space?
AP: The company has a robust roadmap for Element with a spotlight on new features, products, and solutions, including additional AI tools to help leverage proprietary data to create completely new solutions aimed at inspiring innovation, reducing costs, and accelerating the product development process.
