Contract manufacturer Voyant Beauty has established Atelier by Voyant Beauty, a formulation and manufacturing business unit designed for high-growth independent beauty brands.
The new unit is led by Voyant chief innovation partner Lorne Lucree, an industry veteran and former head of innovation and development at R+Co and IGK owner Luxury Brand Partners, where he commercialized over 400 products during a six-year stint. It will provide participants access to sales, social media, demographic and channel data to inform product development as well formula ownership, flexible payment terms, a credit line, and the capacity to scale formulation and filling.
Owned by Wind Point Partners, Voyant handles skin, body, hair, fragrance and home product production, and has around 4,000 employees and 15 manufacturing facilities in the United States, Canada and Europe encompassing in excess of 5 million square feet. It can be difficult for emerging brands to navigate such a sizable enterprise, and Lucree, who’s worked with more than 40 contract manufacturers in his beauty career, detected there was an opportunity for Voyant to address the specific demands of emerging brands and set them up for long-term success.
“With the launch of Atelier by Voyant Beauty, we are evolving our service model beyond just being an innovation solutions provider,” he says. “Now, we see our role as a growth partner to indie brands, providing the capabilities and supply chain expertise they need to become a more attractive acquisition target.”
Although Voyant describes Atelier by Voyant Beauty as an “accelerator business unit,” it’s not an accelerator similar to Sephora Accelerate or Ulta Beauty’s MUSE Accelerator. Lucree is quite familiar with accelerators as he is the product development expert for the fall edition of Ulta’s accelerator program. He says Atelier by Voyant Beauty is “not an accelerator—that would imply servicing only one facet of growth: speed to market.”
To inform the creation of Atelier by Voyant Beauty, Lucree spent 50-plus hours interviewing operations, product development and innovation executives at growing independent beauty brands to identify the issues that hamper them prior to their products getting on virtual or physical shelves. “They need capacity, they need additional formulations because they’re most likely looking outside of their core categories,” he says. “They need supply chain and operational expertise to help to solve supply chain disruption.”
Atelier by Voyant Beauty’s sweet spot is brands that have recently scored external funding. Often, these brands have been depending on smaller contract manufacturers, but are hunting for a manufacturer that can support larger orders they’re receiving or hope to receive from major retailers.
“It’s an inflection point where they’re naturally looking for another partner,” says Lucree, adding, “They’re expanding, they’re going global. What they’re facing, and this was actually repeated over and over again, is that they made a choice when they started because it was who they could work with, but now they’ve outgrown that choice.”
Lucree will act as a contact for brand founders at Voyant to remedy a frustration nascent brand founders have that no one at manufacturers is listening to their concerns. He says, “That’s a piece that’s unique from what our current Voyant offering is. It’s essentially like a concierge that guides you through our network, but the result is exactly what you need for frictionless growth.”
At Atelier by Voyant Beauty, Lucree elaborates, “We can now map an indie brand’s journey—including growth, annual revenue, and key decisions and needs at each level of funding—from seed through to acquisition, giving us the unique ability to service these brands more intelligently and effectively see their future.”
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