Executive interviews

Sway: the startup personal care brand making armpits pretty

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Sway: the startup personal care brand making armpits pretty

By Deanna Utroske

Rebecca So founded Sway in 2017 with a collection of underarm care products. Since then, the brand has grown to include skin care, body care, and more. But still at the heart of Sway is a mission to make pits pretty.

Cheekbone Beauty: socially conscious business in action

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Cheekbone Beauty: socially conscious business in action

By Deanna Utroske

“Cheekbone Beauty is all about empowering and enhancing the lives of Indigenous youth,” Founder Jenn Harper tells Cosmetics Design in this video interview, which goes on to explore the Canada-based color cosmetics brand’s vision, financing approach, and...

ITA helps Italian Beauty win in the US market

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ITA helps Italian Beauty win in the US market

By Deanna Utroske

The Italian Trade Agency partners with legacy and startup brands across categories to help bring the best and latest in Italian cosmetics, personal care, and grooming innovation to consumers here in the States.

Indie Beauty Up Close: Amy Carra launches Delight Beauty for UBP

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Indie Beauty Up Close: Amy Carra launches Delight Beauty for UBP

By Deanna Utroske

Universal Beauty Products is a privately owned portfolio of brands mostly in hair and men’s categories. Amy Carra joined UBP a little over 2 years ago; and the company’s new Delight Beauty skin care brand is the result of her work.

Cosmetica Laboratories opens innovation hub in California

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Cosmetica Laboratories opens innovation hub in California

By Deanna Utroske

In late September, the Canadian beauty maker cut the ribbon on a new product development facility meant to bring the company closer to indie beauty brands innovating for the future of cosmetics and skin care. Cosmetics Design editor Deanna Utroske recently...

Evio Beauty: community, color cosmetics, and cannabis

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Evio Beauty: community, color cosmetics, and cannabis

By Deanna Utroske

At the start of the current indie beauty movement, Brandi Leifso launched a makeup brand called Evelyn Iona. She has since relaunched the business as Evio Beauty, partnered with Aurora Cannabis, raised millions through seed funding and strategic partnerships,...

TBH Kids: fun, functional personal care for tweens

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TBH Kids: fun, functional personal care for tweens

By Deanna Utroske

Kids grow up. And today, they’re growing up with text messages and social media and free-from personal care products. These are the tweens and teens that Risa Barash is reaching with her latest venture TBH Kids. Cosmetics Design spoke with Barash at IBE...

D’Alchémy: a natural skin care brand inspired by medieval chemists

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D’Alchémy: a natural skin care brand inspired by medieval chemists

By Deanna Utroske

Polish beauty entrepreneur Anna Mamczur is on a mission to build a brand with the best anti-aging product in the world. She founded Phenome Organic Skincare in 2009 and D’Alchémy just 2 years ago. At Cosmoprof North America last month, Cosmetics Design...

Why is Lubrizol pursuing indie brands?  a Cosmetics Design interview with Brandon Ford, Chief Accelerator Director at Lubrizol

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Why is Lubrizol pursuing indie brands?

By Deanna Utroske

The global cosmetics and personal care ingredient supplier hired a chief accelerator director in 2017, invested in One Ocean Beauty in 2018, and this week the company is exhibiting at Uplink Live in New York City. At this year’s BeautyX Capital Summit,...

My Magic Mud: the indie beauty brand using dirt to get people clean

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My Magic Mud: the indie beauty brand using dirt to get people clean

By Deanna Utroske

This week, My Magic Mud is exhibiting at the Indie Beauty Expo in New York City. But Cosmetics Design caught up with CEO Jessica Arman last month in Las Vegas, Nevada, to learn how this dirt-based beauty brand that launched with a single product—a tooth...

The future of hair care is texture. Is your business ready? a Cosmetics Design interview with Romina Brown, President of Strategic Solutions Intern...

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The future of hair care is texture. Is your business ready?

By Deanna Utroske

Consumer demographics are shifting here in the US and globally. And before long, formulators, manufacturers, brands, and retailers will focus more on the characteristics and curl pattern of hair than on any given consumer’s ethnicity. Cosmetics Design...

Yubi Beauty: because there’s more than one way apply makeup

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Yubi Beauty: because there’s more than one way apply makeup

By Deanna Utroske

Adiya Dixon Wiggins has reinvented the most common of beauty tools: the makeup brush. “Yubi slides onto your fingers to become an extension of your hand,” explains Dixon Wiggins in this video interview with Cosmetics Design, filmed at the recent Cosmoprof...

Colombian men's hair care line launched featuring CBD

LATAM Beauty Brand Profile: Barba Roja

Colombian men's hair care line launched featuring CBD

By Simon Pitman

Colombian-based barber and hair care brand Barba Roja was platforming its newly launched new hair care line featuring CBD at last week's Expo Belleza in Medellin. Cosmetics Design caught up with the founder to find out more.

In Conversation: Cosmetics Design interviews indie brand leaders, PART 2

In Conversation: Cosmetics Design interviews indie brand leaders, PART 2

By Deanna Utroske

One of the best ways to learn is to listen. Last Friday’s Editor’s Spotlight item here on Cosmetics Design was a compendium of 8 video interviews with indie beauty brand founders. Today we’re adding 8 more conversations with entrepreneurs and innovators...

In Conversation: Cosmetics Design interviews indie brand leaders

In Conversation: Cosmetics Design interviews indie brand leaders

By Deanna Utroske

Innovative cosmetics and personal care startups have been making headlines here on Cosmetics Design for years. But not all of our conversations with indie brand leaders are included in the weekly Indie Beauty Profile column. To highlight brands and innovations...

Genemarkers launches gene expression test for CBD

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Genemarkers launches gene expression test for CBD

By Deanna Utroske

At this year’s NYSCC Suppliers’ Day tradeshow in New York City, Anna Langerveld, president and CEO of Genemarkers, was talking with attendees about her company’s latest offering, a test that skin care makers can use to help develop CBD products with the...

HCT Group launches recyclable color cosmetics packaging at Luxe Pack New York 2019

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HCT Group launches recyclable color cosmetics packaging

By Deanna Utroske

At this year’s Luxe Pack New York event it seemed as if everyone was showing some sort of greener, cleaner beauty packaging. To meet the growing demand for environmentally friendly packaging, HCT has begun making compacts in recyclable, recycled, and...

Biossance: the beauty brand that biotech built - an interview with Caroline Hadfield

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Biossance: the beauty brand that biotech built

By Deanna Utroske

Caroline Hadfield is no stranger to the beauty industry. She’s held executive positions with LVMH, Sephora, and The Body Shop. And most recently she’s built a beauty brand from within a biotech firm. Cosmetics Design sat down with Hadfield earlier this...

AEM Lab debuts unique marine mud at in-cosmetics Global

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AEM Lab debuts unique marine mud at in-cosmetics Global

By Deanna Utroske

214 million years ago a meteorite hit what is today Québec, Canada; between then and now, the Earth has turned the mineral-rich space rock (sea water and the impacted, surrounding soil) into mud and clay with a unique composition and an array of skin...

Financial Freedom: a conversation with Makeup America! founder Randa Fahmy - US National Debt - CSR - cosmetics - social purpose - women

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Financial Freedom: a conversation with Makeup America! founder Randa Fahmy

By Deanna Utroske

Makeup America! is an indie color cosmetics brand proudly building a business around the value of made-in-America beauty products and a social mission of paying down the US national debit—a unique mission which Fahmy hopes other brands will take up and...

This is what mindful beauty looks like. Cosmetics Design editor Deanna Utroske in conversation withTiila Abbitt of Aether Beauty

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This is what mindful beauty looks like.

By Deanna Utroske

At IBE LA last week, Āether Beauty founder Tiila Abbitt spoke with Cosmetics Design about environmentally sustainable beauty packaging, how international trade relationships affect recycling in the US, her brand’s approach to ingredient sourcing, and...

Gallinée showcases the latest in microbiome skin care at IBE LA 2019

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Gallinée showcases the latest in microbiome skin care at IBE LA

By Deanna Utroske

In 2015 Marie Drago founded a new kind of personal care brand, one that promised to be “revolutionary skincare with a patented complex of pre, pro and postbiotics to support your skin's microbiome.” At this month’s Indie Beauty Expo event, Cosmetics...

Geltor shows bio-tech collagen at in-cosmetics North America

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Geltor shows bio-tech collagen at in-cosmetics North America

By Deanna Utroske

The new bio-design company is focused on developing proteins for consumer-facing industries like cosmetics and personal care. And at this month’s in-cosmetics trade show in New York City, the Geltor team was talking up its first ingredient, N-Collage....

Caswell-Massey: an on-trend indie brand that’s centuries old

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Caswell-Massey: an on-trend indie brand that’s centuries old

By Deanna Utroske

At the recent BeautyX Summit in New York City, Cosmetics Design spoke with Caswell-Massey CEO Nicolas Arauz about how a brand launched in the 1700s fits into the current indie beauty movement, the work he’s doing to simultaneously conserve and update...

Next generation sustainability and what it means for the beauty industry, Beauty Heroes founder Jeannie Jarnot

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Next generation sustainability and what it means for the beauty industry

By Deanna Utroske

At BeautyX in New York City last month, Cosmetics Design caught up with Beauty Heroes founder Jeannie Jarnot to learn more about her passion for Going Blue—a term that describes how forward-thinking businesses are taking steps to give back and actually...

Alkaglam refillable mineral spray puts skin care chemistry in consumers’ hands

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Alkaglam mineral spray puts skin care chemistry in consumers’ hands

By Deanna Utroske

Indie brand founder Michelle Vidal patented her spray technology after years of researching the composition of thermal springs around with world and testing canned facial mists already on the market. At last week’s IBE New York event, Cosmetics Design...

Why soil health is pivotal to producing the highest grade botanicals

Regenerative agriculture, Part II

Why soil health is pivotal to producing the highest grade botanicals

By Simon Pitman

Regenerative agriculture is slowly making inroads into the consumer mindset but still remains a mystery to most. To get to grips with the concept this article takes a look at the most important element: the soil.