These days, it’s practically become an adage that the beauty industry doesn’t need another brand. Yet at a moment when artificial intelligence is accelerating speed to market across industries, new concepts can be created almost as quickly as someone can type a prompt.
Against the backdrop of the AI boom, for the latest edition of our ongoing series posing questions related to indie beauty, we’re asked 14 brand founders, manufacturers, product developers, consultants and more the following: If you had your druthers, what would you like an entrepreneur to build to improve the beauty industry? What company, technology or service could make a meaningful difference in how you do your job?
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Maeva Heim Founder, Bread To me, the beauty industry certainly isn’t lacking in ideas for new brands to bring to market. I think what’s lacking is specific infrastructure around actionable knowledge sharing.
There are two gaps that stand out to me. The first one I’m calling the founder intelligence layer. Outside of informal mentorship and basic knowledge sharing, most indie founders are still making major strategic decisions (pricing, distribution, launch timing and much more) based on gut feel and fluffy advice.
What I'd want someone to build is a genuine decision-support layer for beauty founders from beauty founders. The knowledge sharing and true operational advice is different when it comes from a founder, and some kind of platform that you can plug into easily, especially before you have a broad founder network, could be game-changing for starter brands. It would give actionable strategy to the person who is building without a full team behind them, which is most early-stage founders.
The second is financial literacy. I think the lack of funding in early-stage beauty is a separate conversation, and outside of venture capital, there are definitely funding options for indie beauty founders. I think the gap that we’re not addressing or talking about is financial comprehension.
Most early-stage founders I speak to can't tell me what the interest rate on their line of credit actually means for their cash flow or what their retail margin means for their bottom line. They're signing agreements they don't fully understand because there's no accessible resource that speaks their language or addresses the nuances of a beauty business.
What I'd love to see built is something that closes that gap, some kind of financial education layer designed specifically for beauty product founders that helps them make smarter decisions with the options in front of them. I think AI is the perfect lever to finally make this happen.
- Joe Schrank Founder, The Cosmetic Manufacturer
The beauty industry still operates with a shocking amount of guesswork for how advanced the world has become. A lot of brands, manufacturers and suppliers are still functioning like it’s 2000, while tech is evolving fast enough to completely change how this industry works.
The problem is not that data doesn’t exist. It’s that too few people know how to use it, share it, or build with it. The bar for data in beauty is still embarrassingly low, and as a result, too many decisions are made on instinct, assumptions and branding rather than real predictability.
If I could choose one thing to bring into this industry, it would be software that can truly predict product success and product fit at the individual level. That means understanding what a product actually does, who it is most likely to work for and why. Once beauty gets there, consumers stop confusing price with efficacy, brands stop wasting money on bad bets and the entire industry gets smarter.
- Corey Miles Owner, Niche Skin Labs
I envision a tabletop appliance that can test micro, shelf-life stability and PET with just a small amount of product. This innovative device would provide instant results, significantly streamlining the research and development process.
By reducing the time required for testing, it would enable faster decision-making and accelerate time-to-market for new beauty products. Such an advancement would not only enhance efficiency in product development but also empower formulators to focus on creativity and innovation, ultimately benefiting both the industry and consumers.
A dedicated packaging cleaning service would be a game changer for R&D labs by targeting the significant waste generated from the myriad of bottles used during the sampling process. This initiative would ease disposal challenges and save valuable time for companies, especially those opting to clean their own containers. By offering a streamlined approach to cleaning and reusing, the service would reduce waste and foster eco-friendly practices across the industry.
- Charlene Valledor President, SOS Beauty
It would be great to have a tool to help brand founders understand the real-time financial and environmental impact of their brand. If there was an easy way for brands to model out the costs and carbon footprints at each decision point in a development timeline, from what formula they choose, where they choose to fill, how many deco treatments on the package, how the product is being shipped from the manufacturer, all the way to how it’s getting to the end consumer, it would really change how brands develop.
Tools like this are probably used within supply chain at large multinational groups, but they’re not available to the typical startup brand, and they’re certainly not available at the product development stage. I think brands would be much more conscientious if they were able to see this information early on in the ideation process.
- Shannaz Schopfer Founder and CEO, The Beauty Architects
It has become almost fashionable to say the beauty industry does not need another brand. In reality, the industry will always have room for better products. What consumers no longer need is more noise. They are looking for solutions that are effective, purposeful and that genuinely improve how they care for themselves.
If I could encourage entrepreneurs to build something meaningful today, it would be companies that sit at the intersection of beauty, wellness and longevity. There is a growing expectation that products should not only deliver immediate visible results, but also contribute to long-term skin health, scalp vitality, emotional well-being and overall quality of life. This requires serious technology, credible science and a more holistic understanding of consumer needs.
We are likely to see greater opportunity in areas such as advanced delivery systems that enhance performance over time, diagnostic tools that help individuals better understand their skin and lifestyle impacts and intelligent routines that simplify rather than complicate self-care. Technology that supports consistency and habit formation can be just as valuable as a breakthrough ingredient. In this context, artificial intelligence should be used to personalize guidance, anticipate needs and help consumers make better decisions, not simply to accelerate the launch of more products.
Behind the scenes, entrepreneurs can also make a meaningful difference by developing platforms or services that help brands innovate more responsibly. This includes tools that improve formulation precision, reduce development waste, support ingredient transparency and enable more thoughtful sourcing and production practices that respect both people and the planet.
Ultimately, the next generation of beauty companies will succeed by helping consumers take better care of themselves in a comprehensive way. The future is not about faster launches. It is about smarter innovation that connects performance, well-being and long-term impact.
- Sophie Blowfield Global Brand Consultant and Host, The Beauty Sessions
If I had my druthers, I'd want an entrepreneur to build a technology that helps founders understand the real difference between community and audience before they launch, not after they've already spent six months building the wrong thing.
What I mean is this: Right now, most founders optimize for vanity metrics—follower count, likes, impressions—because that's what platforms surface and what feels measurable. But those numbers rarely translate to actual brand affinity or sales. I've seen brands with 10,000 genuinely engaged followers outperform brands with 500,000 passive scrollers, and it happens because they've built real relationships from day one.
The technology I'd love to see would analyze early brand positioning, content strategy and audience signals to help founders identify who their true community is and how to actually build with them, not just broadcast to them. Think of it as a diagnostic tool that flags when you're chasing reach instead of resonance before you waste time and budget on the wrong strategy.
On the service side, I'd love to see more accessible fractional leadership models specifically for indie beauty brands. Most founders can't afford a full-time CMO or brand strategist, but they desperately need that caliber of thinking at critical moments: pre-launch, during fundraising, before a major retail partnership. A well-structured fractional model would democratize access to world-class strategy for founders who are bootstrapping or in early stages.
The beauty industry doesn't need another SKU. It needs better infrastructure to help the right brands, the ones built with intention, integrity and genuine community, actually survive and scale.
- Fred Khoury President, Above Rinaldi Labs
If I could see one thing built for the beauty industry, it’d be a platform that connects lab innovation with real-world testing, prototyping, stability checks, regulatory vetting and small batch consumer feedback in one workflow. At Above Rinaldi, we’re already using AI to optimize formulations, predict ingredient interactions, flag compliance risks and forecast scale-up challenges before a formula ever hits the bench.
A system that brought that intelligence to more brands and tied it directly to market validation would change the game. Ultimately, I’m less interested in another “cool brand” and more in tools that make innovation faster, smarter and less wasteful for labs, brands and consumers alike.
- Megan Cox Founder, Innacos Labs
The question asks what I'd like someone to build, but I think the more pressing conversation is about what's being lost as AI reshapes how entrepreneurs approach product development, specifically the role of expertise. We're seeing a clear pattern in our lab: founders are arriving with concepts that were built almost entirely through AI-assisted research, and it shows. Not because the ideas are bad on their face, but because they tend to converge on the same trends, the same ingredient callouts, the same formulation briefs.
When everyone is pulling from the same large language model, you get a flattening of creativity. The "niches" AI identifies are the ones the internet has already surfaced. They're not the gaps that years of hands-on formulation experience, regulatory knowledge and manufacturing problem-solving reveal.
More critically, AI has begun replacing the role of the cosmetic chemist in the entrepreneur's process, not in the lab, but in their decision-making. Founders are using ChatGPT as a formulation advisor, then arriving at our door with specifications that are impractical or physically impossible to execute.
When we explain the constraints—ingredient incompatibilities, stability limitations, regulatory thresholds, manufacturing realities—there's a growing tendency to interpret that as unwillingness rather than expertise. The tool told them it was possible, so our professional judgment becomes the obstacle.
This isn't just frustrating for formulators; it's a real problem for the industry. Cosmetic chemistry is a discipline built on experience, intuition and an enormous amount of trial and error that no model has internalized. When founders skip that collaboration in favor of AI-generated briefs, they lose the most valuable part of working with a lab: the back-and-forth that transforms a concept into something that's stable, safe, manufacturable and genuinely differentiated.
So, if I had my druthers? I'd want to see a shift back toward respect for specialized expertise, not as a rejection of AI, but as a correction. AI is a powerful brainstorming tool, but it cannot replace the chemist who knows that your ten-active serum will destabilize at month three regardless of emulsifier choice or that the texture you're envisioning isn't quite achievable with the preservation system and strict clean standards your target market demands.
The entrepreneurs who will build meaningfully differentiated brands in this environment are the ones who use AI to ask better questions and then bring those questions to the people who actually know the answers for a gut check or to better understand.
What the industry could genuinely use is better infrastructure connecting founders with qualified formulators earlier in the process (and perhaps even figuring out how to best qualify those formulators in a way that's easy to understand and transparent to founders, as we don't have a consensus on what variables to judge or how for formulator expertise) before the brief is locked in, before the concept deck is finalized, before the AI-generated conviction becomes immovable. That's where real innovation happens, not in the prompt, but in the conversation.
- Fatima Ramadan Founder and Principal Consultant, Vault Beauty Labs
It’s no secret that AI is the future across every industry, and beauty is no exception. As an entrepreneur, cosmetic formulator and product developer, I find myself thinking a lot about how it can be applied to the way we actually create. There’s a real opportunity to build platforms that can generate formula compositions in a way that starts to mirror real-life development.
In theory, this could dramatically speed things up, allowing scientists to refine and tweak formulas digitally before even stepping into the lab instead of going through the multiple (sometimes dozens of) batches that come with traditional trial and error.
To take it one step further, imagine integrating a machine that can actually prepare those samples! That kind of bridge between digital formulation and physical execution could completely change the pace of development. It would bring a level of speed, consistency and scalability that just doesn’t exist today.
That said, it does raise an interesting tension. As much as this could streamline the process, it also shifts the role of the formulator, not to mention raises real concerns around job cuts, especially as larger corporations are already laying off left and right. It also risks losing some of the craft that goes into creating truly great formulas.
Big picture, the upside is hard to ignore. It has the potential to move innovation forward at a pace we’ve never seen before. The future of beauty innovation may not replace the human touch, but it will redefine how quickly and intelligently we get there.
- Marisa Plescia Founder and Chief Cosmetic Chemist, FemChem Beauty
There are already many AI tools and software platforms emerging that can help formulators and contract manufacturers with formulation development, documentation, regulation and data management, and this space will likely continue to grow. However, what I think is especially important is that these tools allow for a high degree of customization.
Many formulators, labs and manufacturers already have established processes, development philosophies and internal workflows that have been refined over years of experience. Effective technology should be able to adapt to those existing systems and support the way different teams already work. A platform that can flex around the needs of chemists, regulatory teams and manufacturers, while still improving efficiency, documentation, and collaboration, could make a meaningful difference behind the scenes.
Ultimately, tools that respect the expertise and working styles already present in the industry, while enhancing efficiency, will likely have a far greater impact.
- Andrea Buratovich Strategic Account Manager, Indigo Private Label Cosmetics
If I could see an entrepreneur tackle one thing in beauty today, it would be building a centralized, AI-powered platform for formulation and product development. Something that connects ingredient suppliers, labs and brands while giving real-time insights into stability, scalability and regulatory compliance could dramatically reduce trial-and-error in prototyping.
For small indie brands especially, this could mean faster development cycles, fewer wasted samples and more confidence in launching innovative products.
- Kristaps Birmanis Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Selfnamed
I believe in a world where companies can offer solutions for any client, and the client has the real-time agency to choose. To achieve this, two specific innovations would be game changers:
On the backend, I’d love to see streamlined AI-driven stability testing. Imagine a tool that uses predictive modeling to tell a lab in seconds if a formula is stable and ready for production. This would turn traditional trial-and-error into a real-time digital stress test.
On the consumer side, for DTC, the “perfect world” is a hyper-curated, personalized formulation service where exact ingredients are blended on-site based on a customer’s real-time needs. Think of it as an AI-powered 'vending machine' for skincare.
The second innovation isn't truly possible without the first. We need the speed of AI-verified chemistry to make instant, personalized production safe and viable.
- Jamika Martin Founder, Flora Studios and Rosen
Consumer side, I say whatever people respond to and just have fun with it. Most of the beauty industry isn't cutting edge technology; it's brand and marketing. I honestly think, if founders can continue to drive interest around anything they launch and build a life out of it, kudos to them, even if it's a non-groundbreaking product or formula.
On the founder side, I think there's still a bit of a gap between AI usage and how helpful it can really be for consumer founders or even the manufacturing side. Efficiencies, processes, cost cutting, etc., there are a lot of tools you can train yourself on and piece together now to help, but I think there's a huge opportunity for a super-efficient, founder-forward tool here, a one-stop shop for improving your supply chain and margins, for example, or checking marketing spend, scale and ROI.
Leave the creative and product development to the humans, but let computers really clean up some processes for us.
- Joe Anthony Founder, Pensive Beauty
If I could wave a wand, I'd want someone to build an independent, standardized testing and certification infrastructure for nano-delivery claims in cosmetics. Right now, the gap between who can validate nano-scale claims and who is making them is enormous. L'Oréal publicly discloses its four nanomaterials and subjects them to SCCS safety evaluation. The EU requires [nano] labeling on packaging and mandates REACH registration for nanomaterials.
But, in the U.S., there is no equivalent requirement. The FDA classifies most skincare as cosmetics, which means brands only need to demonstrate basic safety, not efficacy, and certainly not particle-level characterization. The result is an industry where any brand can borrow the language of nano-delivery, encapsulation or advanced delivery systems without ever running a DLS measurement, a zeta potential reading or a Franz cell diffusion study to prove any of it is real.
Your own publication noted in its 2025 manufacturing trends coverage that companies like Allure Beauty Concepts are pushing advanced encapsulation and delivery systems. That's real work. But for every manufacturer actually doing nano-scale characterization, there are dozens of brands slapping "nano" or "advanced delivery" on marketing copy with nothing behind it. Consumers have no way to distinguish between the two, and neither do most retailers.
And there's a deeper problem that even the validation gap doesn't capture. Even when companies are doing legitimate encapsulation work, liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, polymeric carriers, those nano-scale vehicles are almost always being dropped into traditional HLB-based emulsion systems that the industry has relied on since the 1950s.
The carrier might be nanometer-scale, but the architecture it's suspended in is still a macro-scale emulsion with 10 to 100 micrometer droplets. The nano-carrier gets trapped in a delivery chassis that defeats its own purpose. As far as we're aware, Pensive Beauty is the only company globally building a fully modular, sub-200 nm tri-domain architecture that replaces 1950s HLB logic entirely rather than just layering nano-carriers on top of it.
And this isn't just a product we sell. NanoBase is being adopted into the curriculum at a triple-accredited institution, where it's being taught alongside legacy HLB theory so that the next generation of formulators understands both paradigms and can see where the science is actually headed. When academia starts teaching something next to the established standard, it stops being a product and starts becoming an industry inflection point.
An independent testing and certification body, something like a UL or NSF certification but for cosmetic delivery systems, would start to expose this disconnect. It would give formulators and brands doing legitimate work a credible third-party validation path that doesn't require a six-figure R&D budget. And it would raise the floor for the entire industry by making it visible when a "nano" claim is just a nano-carrier sitting inside a legacy emulsion that never gets it where it needs to go.
This is different from what I do at Pensive Beauty. I build nano-delivery architectures. I don't test or certify other people's claims. But as someone who does this work every day, I'd welcome an independent body that holds everyone, including me, to a measurable, science-backed standard. The brands doing real work have nothing to fear from scrutiny. The ones borrowing the language without the science are the ones who should be concerned.
The beauty industry doesn't need another brand. It needs infrastructure that rewards real science and makes it harder to fake or copy.
If you have a question you'd like Beauty Independent to ask brand founders, manufacturers, product developers, consultants and more, send it to [email protected].
