Gallinée founder: ‘You can feel it’s the year of the microbiome’

At the end of March, CosmeticsDesign-Europe attended our sister site NutraIngredient’s flagship annual conference Probiota 2022 in Copenhagen – an industry event dedicated to all-things probiotics. And during the conference, Marie Drago, founder of microbiome beauty brand Gallinée, joined an expert panel to discuss the future of the skin microbiome.

Drago said there was strong consumer engagement in this space but also a lot of industry innovation taking the category into new niche areas, such as oral microbiome care, feminine care and scalp care.

We caught up with her after the panel to find out more about Gallinée and the company’s plans to stretch into these new areas of opportunity.

“At the moment, we are quite busy with international expansion. You can feel it’s the year of the microbiome; there’s a lot of new markets opening,” ​Drago said.

‘You are not limited to one category anymore’​

The brand Gallinée started six years ago in skin care, she said, but now offered a range of microbiome beauty products in oral care, scalp care and ingestibles – a broad portfolio that was important for this category.

“I think it’s a new thing of beauty that you are not limited to one category anymore, so, you can explore,”​ she said. “And if you’re a microbiome brand you can explore even more because wherever there’s bacteria on your body, it makes sense to help them.”​

Interestingly, for Gallinée, Drago said the best-seller products were outside of skin care.

Asked how important consumer education was when working in niche categories beyond skin care, she said it remained key to the Gallinée business model but information on the microbiome wasn’t always the “first line of communication” ​with consumers.​

“I have to say that more and more I see the consumer is interested with the results more than the method of action (…) it’s much more centred about what the product can do for you.”​

Collaboration towards ‘standardised definitions’ will be key​

On the industry side, Drago said collaboration and more “standardised definitions”​ would be key to future success of the beauty microbiome sector.

“I think everyone wants this field to succeed so it’s quite easy to collaborate together.”​

On the future, she said there was plenty to be excited about in terms of product development and innovation, particularly in designing “new solutions to old problems” in beauty.

“Everything where it was anti-bacterial, first-line of defence in beauty, I would totally try to rethink [and consider] pro-bacterial,”​ she said.