National Starch Personal Care gears up to formulators

The company unveiled its Beautiful & Beyond technology to showcase formulated hair care and skin care products, while also debuting its Dermacryl C film-forming polymer for color cosmetics. National Starch Personal Care director of marketing, Penny Vanemon, says that the company is changing the way it does business in an effort to better support the ever-evolving and fast-changing needs of personal care formulators. "Because the market rewards consumer product companies for having the right product ideas on the store shelves at the right time, the personal care industry is looking for new ways to lower product development times and improve the success of their products with consumers,"​ said Vanemon. She went on to say that, on top of constant investment to stay one step ahead of current formulation technology, the company had also gone further by investing in consumer research to find out what the current trends emerging in the market place are. "When we find a new trend, we can go back to the laboratory and prepare a technology offering that allows customers to develop new hair or skin care products without delay,"​ she added. The two new technologies that the company has most recently announced are as a direct result of this emphasis on both current market trends and keeping ahead of new formulation technology. Describing Beautiful & Beyond as technology that aims to 'help companies tap into the 24-hour a day lifestyle trend', the company says that this will help design formulations that deliver increasingly long-lasting performance for a variety of skin care and hair care products. This technology has been developed on the back of market research that shows 80 per cent of consumers in both the US and EU believe that long-lasting skin care products are a key consideration, while for hair care products the figure was 75 per cent. Dermacyl C, on the other hand, is said to be a new, easy-to-handle film forming polymer aimed at use in eye make-up such as mascara and eyeliners, as well as other make-up products such as blusher, eye shadow and foundation. Key to this technology's development is the fact that it allows for the make-up to last longer, while enabling it to be easily wiped away afterwards. Likewise, the company also chose to highlight the launch of its new, more personalized website to the US market, a feat that was first achieved last month in Paris, during the In-Cosmetics expo. The company says that the new site is easy to customize around the specific needs of individual formulators, and can be located at www.personalcarepolymers.com​.