What's New in Beauty Manufacturing?

From clean beauty to customized projects to new biotech offerings, beauty manufacturing trends are constantly changing. This month, we checked in with two manufacturers, Lady Burd and BiotechXBeautyLabs, to better understand what they're seeing on the ground. 

Lady Burd regularly updates its catalog of offerings, including a new hair gel stick.Lady BurdLady Burd regularly updates its catalog of offerings, including a new hair gel stick. The product adds instant hold to any hair style and is ideal for flyaways or slicked back bun looks. 

Yet, while the manufacturer has a wide array of formulations across categories ready to go, owner Samantha Burd notes, "We’ve seen a major shift in our business towards custom formulation, whereas we used to do more private label or color matching."

She adds, "We’re so flooded with custom formulation requests that we’ve had to extend our lead times, and we are in the process of hiring a new chemist to keep up with the demand."

Samantha Burd, owner of Lady Burd, notes, "We’ve seen a major shift in our business towards custom formulation, whereas we used to do more private label or color matching."At the same time, Burd explains, "This has been coupled with the continuing increase in requests for clean beauty formulas," as well as an uptick in lip products, which is no surprise given the strength of the category in the last year.

Elsewhere, Debut has unveiled its biotech cosmetic contract manufacturing business, BiotechXBeautyLabs, which is designed to "make biotech accessible to all beauty brands," per Joshua Britton, founder and CEO, Debut and BiotechXBeautyLabs.

"BiotechXBeautyLabs is the only cosmetic contract manufacturing business that offers novel biotech ingredients to the beauty industry via formulations that power innovation based on clinical performance," says Britton. "We deliver superior clinical effects and performance and novel claims without any investment into the science by the brands. Using cutting-edge biomanufacturing processes, biotechnology is establishing itself as beauty’s newest frontier."

The manufacturer is poised to offer innovation across categories.

Debut has unveiled its biotech cosmetic contract manufacturing business, BiotechXBeautyLabs, which is designed to "make biotech accessible to all beauty brands," per Joshua Britton, founder and CEO, Debut and BiotechXBeautyLabs.Debut/BiotechXBeautyLabs"BiotechXBeautyLabs specializes in topical skincare but we work across a variety of beauty categories including body, hair and scalp," says Britton. "We provide access to the highest-performing biotech ingredients discovered by parent company Debut. BiotechXBeautyLabs offers end-to-end services for our clinically-tested custom formulations in as little as nine months for 5K units (and above), and white label products in just five months."

The manufacturer is tapping into the realities of a crowded marketplace and an increasing need for brands to differentiate themselves.

Britton explains, "Brands want true product innovation that enables them to stand out in a crowded market. Many of the brands we work with want to create peak-performing formulations backed by science, not marketing. We see this across skin science, hair and body."

He adds, "The winning brands will be those that deliver next-generation biotech-enabled products with superior performance. As such, biotech is redefining personalized care and novel claims. We believe the current set of active ingredients, such as kojic acid and retinol, will become obsolete and entirely new ingredients that we have only dreamt about will become mainstream over the next five to 10 years."

Britton continues, "There is a huge pressure on brands to show improved product performance, so they are ramming a ton of different ingredients into their formulations, whether it’s niacinamide at 5% or vitamin C at 15% or 20%. That’s just not the optimal way to formulate. With biotech, we can deliver new and superior active ingredients at lower concentrations, so skin sensitization is eliminated. All of BiotechXBeautyLabs' ingredients and formulations are 95% bio-based. Performance is the key driver, underpinned by rigorous sustainability standards."

So, how would Britton describe the mood of the industry in the back half of 2024?

"We are seeing programs ramping up," the executive explains. "Many smaller to medium-sized brands are being incredibly innovative and aiming to break industry molds. At BiotechXBeautyLabs, brands can access tens of millions of dollars of research when they formulate with us, delivering tangible results that make consumers look and feel better."

Britton concludes, "New product development for launch in spring 2025 is already underway. More and more projects are heading into formulation development and optimization. Longer term, we believe that future growth in beauty will be powered by indisputable science. Biotech unlocked growth in pharma driven by potency, purity, performance and safety, and these same benefits are driving growth in beauty, albeit at a much more rapid pace due to a more favorable regulatory environment."