Manufacturing and placing cosmetic products on the market is not a bed of roses… At the Journée de la Beauté organized by CEW on July 4, 2018 in Paris, Laurence Wittner, editor of CosmeticOBS, was invited to provide an overview of the context in which manufacturers and formulators work today… and of the multiple constraints they have to deal with.
Cosmetics are not just dream and beauty. Laurence Wittner mentioned the three main sources of pressure weighing on the sector straight away:
• Market pressure: consumer expectations and the new context in which information is relayed
• Regulatory pressure: impacts on ingredients and new standards
• Pressure of supervisory authorities, which is particularly strong on personalized cosmetics, labelling, nanomaterial characterization, the surveillance of prohibited ingredients…
Market pressure
It is essential for cosmetics brands to take into account consumer expectations and requirements. And to say the least, there are quite a lot today.
Concerned consumers
How can consumers be described today? ‘They are concerned!’ Laurence Wittner said. About many issues…
• Naturalness
Although the notion of naturalness is not well-defined and often ill-understood (if you are not convinced, just have a look at the rather approximate public understanding of organic labels), many people believe that ‘Nature is right’, and that ‘if it is organic, it is good’. So, if it is not, consumers’ trust may be more difficult to gain…
• Environmental protection
Laurence Wittner took the example of the ‘unwanted microbeads’: if environmental awareness is increasing and can be felt in all sectors, it is also …
