European Brands Look To Indie Beauty Expo New York As A Launchpad Into The U.S. Market

Indie beauty is truly a global movement, and that’s never been more evident than at this year’s Indie Beauty Expo New York.

The trade show, held Aug. 22 to 23 at Pier 36 in Manhattan, features a larger contingent of international brands than ever, the majority of which are European. While coming to America presents an enormous opportunity for international indies, infiltrating the crowded U.S. market is notoriously tough. In advance of the show, European brands exhibiting at IBE explained why they’re taking the plunge now and shared the challenges they’ve encountered to date.

“The U.S. has so much potential when it comes to indie beauty brands,” says Laura Rudoe, founder of Evolve Organic Beauty. “It is such a geographically large market, with a wide range of interests and tastes, which provides indie brands with much larger niche audiences than they might find elsewhere.” The U.K.-based Evolve has dipped it’s toe into the American market by shipping directly to the States off its website. “We received a lot of interest from end customers that way, and we knew it was time to launch into physical stores in the U.S.,” says Rudoe.

The brand partnered with clean beauty destination Credo in May, but is still in the early stages of working with additional U.S. retailers. Rudoe says, “We believe it is important to build organic customer demand initially, focusing on early adopter customers who have a natural and organic lifestyle and working with partner retailers with that customer profile.”

OrganiCup, a company from Denmark that makes sustainable menstrual cups, has had a similar path to the U.S. It detected an increase in the number of American customers on its e-commerce platform before making the stateside plunge. “It is just now that we started to focus on building physical distribution and e-retailers in the U.S.,” says founder Gitte Dalberg-Larsen. “So far, we have focused mainly on the Nordic countries and Western Europe, but now we think the time is right to try the U.S. market.”

Dalberg-Larsen believes Americans’ growing concern for the earth will help OrganiCup be successful in the country. “Compared to disposable menstrual hygiene solutions, menstrual cups make a huge difference in terms of saving waste,” she details. “In the U.S. alone, 12 billion pads and 7 million tampons pollute landfills annually.”

Some of the European companies showing at IBE have more experience playing in the American market than others. French nail product company Nailmatic, for example, has been in the U.S. for a year-and-a-half. After U.S. retailers like ABC Carpet & Home and J. Crew expressed interest in carrying the brand’s wash-off nail line for kids, Nailmatic set up a headquarters in New York instead of dealing with the customs and shipping fees that come with being located outside the country.

“We could sense the potential and we decided to give it a go and settle in the U.S., and seize this opportunity,” says Marine Crouzet, managing director for North America. The brand has since expanded to include a women’s nail line called Pure Color free of 10 potentially harmful ingredients such as xylene, formaldehyde, DBP, camphor and toluene. It launched in July and will be a big focus for Nailmatic at IBE.

Parodi Professional Care is another European brand with history in the U.S, having been here since 2015. “When I founded the company, I was living in Geneva, Switzerland, but I was born and worked extensively in the U.S.,” says founder Linda Gillette Parodi. “I was fortunate to begin with a knowledge of how the American beauty business works, so I knew that this would be the best market for us. From Geneva, I had access to top French and Swiss cosmetic chemists and laboratories. This formulation strategy has provided a point of differentiation for Parodi from other brands sold in the U.S.”

Despite being from the U.S., Parodi admits the American market comes with unique obstacles. “Obviously, the size of the U.S. market compared to European countries presents a challenge,” she says. “Effectively reaching our target market within the States is challenging—and costly.”

Still, Parodi’s experience is slightly less fraught than Nailmatic’s and its other European brand peers. “Doing business in the U.S. is extremely different, more so than most people expect,” says Crouzet, commenting that linguistic nuances can be hard to master. “I’m finally getting all the different meanings of the word ‘interesting.’ Cultural differences can be so tricky and can quickly escalate from something benign to a major issue, most of the time due to a misused word, phrase or simply entirely missing out on the subtext.”

Both Nailmatic and Parodi have found it helpful to tap American employees. “Because of the geographical distance to the U.K., it is critical to have on-the-ground support for our retail partners,” says Parodi. “We have built a U.S. team of in-store trainer and demonstrators in key U.S. cities to deliver this. This was not easy to do from the U.K., but we chose to invest in this to make our entry into the U.S. market a success.” Crouzet adds, “Working almost exclusively with Americans has enabled us to gain so much time and energy, as well as move forward in a more efficient and timely manner, simply because I had people that would explain and understand the cultural verbal and work subtleties that I was not familiar with.”

Another pain point European brands face prior to arriving in America is pinning down the correct people to communicate with at stores. “It’s been very hard to get the right contacts when you are so far away,” says Anzhelika Kroiss of Andmetics, an Austrian brow brand. Identifying those contacts is a big reason many European brands are involved with IBE. Take German makeup brand L.O.V. “The U.S. market is faster and fiercer than in Europe,” says Katharina Hartwich, digital brand development expert for the brand’s parent company Cosnova Beauty.

The reason for L.O.V.’s participation in the expo is twofold. “On one hand, we want to connect with discerning cosmetics consumers who know what they want, need and like, and are interested in discovering new indie brands. We want to meet them, get to speak to them and gather more insights into the needs of these consumers,” says Hartwich. “But, on the other hand, we are interested in meeting U.S. business contacts to support our launch here and European contacts to enhance our existing E.U. business.”