How do I create a new cosmetic product?

Beauty is something the world cannot get enough of, and there’s always room for more. But anybody undertaking the creation of their own brand in fragrance, cosmetics or styling products has their work cut out for them. Initially, they must find their target customers and understand those customers’ needs. Equally, they must develop content for social media and consider what steps they will take to grow their business once they establish it. The panelists for the Mastermind Session “Creating Products for The Beauty Industry” will give you their best advice on how to create a beauty product and launch your own brand!

10 Tips on How To Create a Beauty Product

Find a white space

Finding your place in the beauty industry is incredibly important. “Make sure you’re relevant, make sure you’re filling a need,” said Caroline Frabrigas. She is the co-founder of Scent Invent Technology and the CEO of Scent Marketing Inc. The latter is a family business she inherited from her late husband. “My family business is a love story; it’s legacy, it’s passion,” Caroline said. She started her career in beauty at Estée Lauder and Chanel, where she learned a lot about the industry.

It is essential to understand the unique DNA and the characteristics of the brand you are working on in order to define its backstory: “You really need to dig deeper and understand what’s missing and plug into that within the competitive landscape.” You can do that by assessing brands you admire, looking at their products, their packaging and pricing, among other things. Then you can set a perception map and do research to discover where that open space in the landscape is. According to Caroline this exercise is crucial, and every brand should practice it.

Research consumers’ needs and interests

Award-winning beauty entrepreneur Abby Wallach is the co-founder and CEO of Scentinvent Technologies, a fragrance and beauty innovation company reengineering how consumers use and wear perfumes. “We had a mission and a vision for the creation of new forms, new functions. Our fantasy when we started was to offer the consumer new ways of experiencing fragrances, new textures, new formats; new delivery systems without alcohol, without oil. And now that vision has become a reality, which is very exciting,” said Abby. She explained that their product was not easy to create; it took a long time to understand the consumer’s ideas and interests.

Figure out what products you want to put on the market

Professional makeup artist, hairstylist, beauty expert and product developer Marc Harvey has worked in the beauty industry for more than 13 years, partnering with top brands such as L’Oréal and Bobbi Brown. He decided that everyday women should have access to and an understanding of airbrush makeup applications. “That was my thing: introducing beauty innovation because that is what airbrushing is.”

Marc wanted to create something that everyone could benefit from, himself and his mother included. This is what led him to create MHB (Marc Harvey Beauty) Cosmetics. For Marc, the most important thing to him are the ingredients he puts into his creations. “I wanted to create something where everyone felt like ‘Oh wow!’” The focus, according to Marc, should be more about the product you are applying to your skin rather than the method you use to apply it.

Find something different

Mary Santorella, who has over 25 years of experience in the fashion and beauty industries, worked as a press/media correspondent for Christian Dior, Estée Lauder, and others. For her, you have to focus on the 3 Bs, which are “brand, branding, and branding identity.” Succinctly put, the 3 Bs are about how the market perceives your brand. In other words, “Branding is consistency and flexibility and what you’re doing to differentiate your brand from the pack,” said Mary.

Protect your brand

Attorney Shirin Mohaved  specializes in helping fashion and beauty brands legally launch their brand and said that legal documents are vital to protect yourself and your brand and avoid disaster. “A legal disaster can end up bringing down a very great business for simple mistakes that were not addressed in the foundation,” Shirin said. Consult an attorney right from the beginning of your business idea so that you’re protecting your brand and avoiding costly mistakes. 

YOU are the brand

Marc Harvey explained that you have to create the brand by yourself and with your energy. “Making sure everything still has that energy and that it’s from you because YOU are the brand,” he said.

Have an interesting story

Brands use social media such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube to promote their products in today’s world. For Iain McLean, an experienced DP, Director, Advertising Creative Director and producer, this is a great marketing strategy, especially for starter brands. Iain has worked for big brands like L’Oréal, Maybelline and Covergirl, and also the all-natural makeup line Shy Girl Los Angeles. In his words, “We took it, and we elevated it, and we turned it into an all-natural vegan brand that was in the nude ranges, primarily targeting African Americans and Latinos.”

Iain has worked with Marc Harvey on his brand and said that it took a couple of years to build it. In addition, your brand needs to have an interesting backstory. This is imperative, according to Iain. “The biggest problem I see is cutting through the volume that’s out there,” he said.

Find the right influencers

Dee Riviera, CEO of DCG Public Relations, explained that you need to reach out to other people working in the beauty industry. Makeup artists and influencers, for example, will tell their community about your brand on social media. “You’d be surprised how effective that is because they have real people following them.”

Be different

When first entering the beauty industry, you have to be different: “Interestingly, many corporations are looking for innovative, interactive, experiential events,” said Sue Philips, an internationally renowned fragrance expert who has worked for over 30 years in the fragrance industry. She launched her career by establishing her global consultancy Scenterprises Inc. in 1990. More than ten decades ago, Sue created the first Custom Fragrance Studio, The Scentarium. “I thought, ‘Why not customization for fragrance?’ and I started to develop fragrances and custom fragrance initiatives,” Sue said. She recently changed her brand name to Sue Phillips Fragrance.

Be educated

Vera Moore is the CEO and President of a successful family-owned business, Vera Moore Cosmetics. For her, the key to creating beauty products is education, because you need to figure out what the skin’s needs are. As she expressed it: “Skincare is the foundation. makeup is an accessory.” Vera was one of the first black actresses on national television, performing on NBC’s “Another World” where for ten years she portrayed “Linda Metcalf”. She saw that there was a massive void in the market for quality products for women of color. “I knew who I was, and that’s my foundation. This is why I did it. It was all about self-esteem, it wasn’t about lipstick. It was about breaking barriers, leveling the playing fields” which led to the birth of Vera Moore Cosmetics.

You can find more fashion and beauty business resources on Fashion Mingle.

Successfully launching a new beauty product is a complicated process. Whether it’s your first launch or your 20th, your team must follow the right steps in the proper sequence. Product managers, designers, formulators, marketers, and customer service teams must all work together to ensure success. Over the years, we have refined the process into the following 10-steps.

1. Make sure you have a market looking for a product and not a product desperately seeking a market.

All too often, companies (of all sizes) launch a new and exciting product into a market that isn’t well defined. Taking shortcuts on the preliminary market research that helps you identify and understand your target market will cost you. If not planned well and implemented correctly, you could face months or years of missteps, sunk costs, and lost competitive advantage.

Fast answers rarely give you the results and data foundation you need to build a credible story. You need to have a crystal clear vision of how your product will address a need in your market. Not just a “nice to have” requirement, but the kind of urgent need that will have your product pushed up to the top of a buyer’s list. Things that can be done to answer these questions include market research studies, focus groups, customer interviews, win/loss studies, and discussions with market analysts.

2. Understand the full revenue impact of your new product or service.

Often, a new product introduction can slow down or halt current sales cycles because customers choose to wait for the new product vs. purchase the available version. Make sure you fully understand the revenue impact, which encompasses the revenue erosion from other product lines and the ramp up time expected for the new product to generate enough revenue to replace what was coming in from the existing product line.

3. Market test. Market test. Market test.

It seems obvious, right? But, do you know how many companies “skip” this vital step in the launch process? It’s because there have been development delays, and they opt to skip the test to get out the door on time. Just remember, haste makes waste, and you may end up alienating right customers with these practices.

Beta testing gives you the chance to work with customers who are fully aware they are using new version products or services. In most cases, your company ends up developing a strong relationship with that customer, which has additional benefits for you. A market test also enables you to address product flaws in product and packaging before release and gives you a more robust product once launched.

4. You have developed referenceable customers.

The first thing your distribution channel will need to help you execute this product launch is reference sites. This assistance makes the sales process much smoother, and in many cases, will speed adoption rates. However, references are a luxury at the early introduction stage of the launch, and there is no guarantee they will be ready. A beta test phase (see the previous step) can help you address this issue. Many times, happy test customers will end up being reference sites. If not, make sure you develop a plan to handle reference requests if a reference site is not available, i.e., a customer on an older product version.

5. Your channel is informed, trained, and ready.

Sales training is a must for a successful product launch. The channel will carry your new message and product to the market. Not only do they need to know what it’s all about, but it’s marketing’s job to make sure that they have all the materials they need to be successful. Start with:

• What is the product?
• How does it address a business need?
• Is there any differentiating technology?
• Are there any differentiating features and options?
• How does the product compare to competitive offerings and market standards?
• Where are the holes and recommendations for getting around them?
• Developing sales kits with a set of tools to address the informational needs of the channel is highly valued. Recommended tools include feature/advantage/benefit charts, FAQs, PDF files and hard copy brochures, a breakout of needs by industry and more.

6. You have a customer communication plan.

Customers need to be among the first to know about product plans and launches. The last thing you want to do is raise fear of product abandonment or concerns that your focus has changed. This worry is why customer communication plans need to encompass the following:

• Upgrade/migration issues
• Pricing or licensing issues
• How the new product is different from the current products/versions
• Why they should consider upgrading/migrating

7. The support organization is trained and ready.

It’s always best to get your support organization involved as early as possible; don’t wait until the last minute to get their input. They should be intimately involved with the beta process so they can prepare their organization for the new release. They can often put their experience to work by helping with such issues as implementation design methods. Also, customers will want assurance that there is a long-term support plan for their existing product and will want to understand the implications of moving to a new product, the time-frames, and if there is an end-of-life plan for the products currently in use.

8. Create clear, concise messages that will support your go-to-market strategy.

Build new messages that appeal to market needs, as discovered in step one. Make sure the messages do a good job of identifying a problem and presenting your solution and the benefits. This task sounds more comfortable than it is. Make your solution simple to articulate and easy to understand. Hold back your desire to over-explain. Just focus on the compelling facts that will help persuade someone to look at your product.

• What problem/s are you solving?
• How does your offering solve them?
• What are the benefits?

9. “Try before you buy”: Test new messages before taking them to market.

After you have set the initial foundation for your message, it’s time to take it for a ride. It’s essential to try it out and get feedback from outside influencers like analysts and customers. You will quickly gain an understanding of how your message is received and where you need to make adjustments.

10. Create a buzz around your product before and after the launch date.

To jump-start momentum, you should plan to create buzz and excitement just before the launch by conducting a press tour and introducing influential editors and analysts to your new product or service. This strategy may result in coverage that could go a long way.

Also, you should plan a lead generation campaign that will coincide with the launch date to build interest and excitement in your local market. These campaigns should focus on educating the market about your solution to establishing credibility and bond with the needs of that audience.

And finally, don’t forget that a new product launch doesn’t end at the launch date. The most successful campaigns have established long-range communication plans to give your product wor service the visibility and consistency it needs to gain market share and mind share.

Ideally, you should plan a minimum 6-month horizon to get ready for the launch day. Think of your launch plan as the foundation for the future of that product or service. If you find that prep time is pressing, make sure you prioritize deliverables that will ensure your success, i.e., working with beta customers, and push out sales tools and other deliverables that will not impact your effectiveness if you create them post-launch date.

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