Beauty Independent revealed 27 Beacon Awards winners and honorees across founder, brand, retail, investor and product categories during a two-hour virtual ceremony Wednesday, including serial entrepreneur David Chung, Merit Beauty founder Katherine Power, clean fragrance brand The 7 Virtues and scalp care brand Jooy.
Other 2024 winners are sexual wellness brand Unbound for best campaign, skincare brand Glow Recipe for best brand, fragrance brand Future Society’s Optimal Habitat Fragrance Enhancing Primer for formula innovation, investment firm Top Knot Ventures for seed and small growth investor and growth equity firm Prelude Growth Partners for large growth investor. Among the 2024 honorees are biotech-powered haircare brand K18 for reference deal, Bluemercury for brand booster, This Is Beauty for audience educator, Silver Mirror for service maven and Ayla Beauty for assortment innovator.
Merit Manufacturing and International Products Group (IPG) sponsored the 2024 Beacon Awards program. The winners were selected from a pool of 119 nominees chosen by Beauty Independent’s editorial staff in July before being evaluated by 23 beauty industry expert evaluators assembled into committees to judge the nominees and pick the winners. Expert evaluators decide the category winners unanimously. Some of the most hotly contested awards categories were best packaging, product technology innovation, brand launch, best campaign, best social media and product skincare launch.
Carol Hamilton, a Beacon Awards expert evaluator and group president, acquisitions and West Coast headquarters at L’Oréal, presented the entrepreneur year of the award to Power, who’s had a founding role in Who What Wear, Avaline, Versed and Merit, and noted standout beauty entrepreneurs share a few qualities that Power is synonymous with. She said, “They have to be super smart, scrappy, fiercely determined and most of all courageous.”
Power called Hamilton a “dear friend” and was moved when she presented Power’s Beacon Awards win. “Being an entrepreneur has been one of the most fulfilling experiences in my life,” said Power. “I love it so much that I just can’t stop doing it. I think anyone here today that has experienced this journey knows what I mean, and I’m just honored to be recognized for what is such a difficult, but rewarding journey.”
Dave Kimbell, CEO of Ulta Beauty and 2023 recipient of Beauty Independent’s industry icon award, presented this year’s industry icon award to Chung and lauded him for a career-long impact on the beauty industry with a wide portfolio of accomplishments.
“From his early days as a cosmetic retail entrepreneur to helping global brands through his contract manufacturing and R&D lab, Englewood Labs, to creating one of the industry’s most loved prestige skincare brands, Farmacy Beauty, along with the groundbreaking work he’s leading today as the founder and CEO of iLABS and owner and chairman of mental wellness company Amare Global, David Chung is indeed an icon.”
In addition to Kimbell and Hamilton, Lisa Price, founder of Carol’s Daughter, Carla Ruiz, SVP of global M&A at Shiseido, Vasiliki Petrou, former CEO at Unilever Prestige, AJ Addae, cosmetic chemist and founder of Sula Labs, and Ju Rhyu, co-founder of Hero Cosmetics were expert evaluators.Testimonials from Beauty Independent subscribers were considered in the evaluation process.
Beauty Independent was established by parent company Indie Beauty Media Group in 2017 and introduced the Beacon Awards program in 2020. The full list of Beacon Awards 2024 winners can be viewed here. Beauty Independent has begun accepting suggestions for Beacon Awards 2025 nominees.
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