This New Indie Beauty Manufacturer Wants To Support Sustainable Beauty From The Ground Up

To help the planet, Marc Desmarais wants to change the beauty industry he was born into.

The Toronto resident and son of Claude Desmarais, owner and president of beauty packaging company CYD Packaging Inc., has been working behind the scenes in the industry for more than two decades in product development and innovation positions, but it wasn’t until he held a director role at makeup production facility in Asia that he really woke up to how much stuff the industry churns out. The industry is estimated by market research firm Euromonitor International to generate over 120 billion units of beauty packaging annually.

“It blows your mind when you start to physically see all of those products sitting in a warehouse. That was sort of my aha moment,” says Desmarais. “When I came home, I started looking into building a brand, but then the pandemic hit, and I put it on ice. I had an R&D space I rented to develop other brands’ ideas and consult to pay my bills. It was the pandemic that took me away from the idea of creating my own brand and led me to realize what was missing from the market.”

Blue Beautylab specializes in working with indie beauty brands with sustainability missions seeking production runs of roughly 300 to 3,000 units. It’s housed in a 4,500-square-foot facility in Toronto. colnihko - stock.adobe.com

What he realized was missing from the market is a manufacturer geared toward emerging beauty brands with sustainable missions—and he’s established such a manufacturer, Blue Beautylab, to fill that market gap. It specializes in production for brands seeking roughly 300- to 3,000-unit runs, but is preparing to enlarge its capacity beyond those run sizes in the future. As it gets off the ground, Blue Beautylab has three clients headquartered in Canada. However, it anticipates its client roster will include American brands going forward.

“Most labs are built for huge industrial production and start at 5,000 to 10,000 pieces, and most of what they use for the base materials for their products is synthetic- and petrochemical-based,” says Desmarais. “You do have niche manufacturers focused on natural and organic, but we wanted to set ourselves apart by focusing on sustainability. When something is natural, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better for the environment.”

Desmarais describes Blue Beautylab’s target clients as brands with entry-level prestige to luxury products, not classically drugstore fare. About 80% of its business to expected to be from skincare and body care production, and the remainder from color cosmetics and haircare production. The manufacturer handles anti-aging, hydration, facial oil, solid serum, exfoliation, face and body wash, micellar water, deodorant and retinol alternative products. It has a library of eco-conscious formulations that brands can tap.

“You do have niche manufacturers focused on natural and organic, but we wanted to set ourselves apart by focusing on sustainability. When something is natural, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better for the environment.”

“We have a slightly different model than most labs. The clients we are working with, we produce their entire product line from A to Z. We couldn’t take on 50 different clients with the amount of work we do for one client,” says Desmarais, adding, “We built this to maximize flexibility to start. We have a plan in about two to three years to open a second facility that would be bigger for bigger industrial scale production, but that’s not something we need to do from day one.”

Housed in a 4,500-square-foot space at a former cold storage facility, Blue Beautylab uses a heat pump system for heating and cooling that saves energy compared to a traditional electric system. It’s strong in cold manufacturing processes rather than hot manufacturing processes, a strength that diminishes its energy output.

Blue Beautylab is keen on fostering biodiversity by encouraging the beauty industry to move away from its reliance on ingredients that undermine it, particularly coconut and palm oil. Both ingredients are associated with deforestation devastating to animal populations in their countries of origin, mostly Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

“Most of the green and sustainable silicone alternatives we see on the market today are derived from palm and coconut,” says Desmarais. “What about all these other plants growing in different parts of the world? How do we shift to raw material sources not dependent on specific regions such as rainforests?”

To diversify beauty ingredient lists, Blue Beautylab is leaning into upcycled ingredients like ingredients stemming from byproducts of other industries. Desmarais points to byproducts of the olive oil industry as advantageous for beauty, for example. It’s also leaning into biotechnology ingredients resulting from fermentation processes in labs and locally cultivated ingredients. He says, “We look at the food supply chain and how we are making sure we are not necessarily competing with it.”

Blue Beautylab co-founder and chief innovation officer Marc Desmarais

Beauty brands are incorporating upcycled, biotech and local ingredients in their formulas today often at very small percentages that have little positive impact on the environment. Desmarais thinks that can be improved. “What we are trying to hone in on is working with different upcycling and biotech companies not just to have one ingredient, but to have emulsifiers, thickeners and active ingredients so we formulate an entire product that doesn’t use as many virgin resources as a traditional cosmetic product would.”

Not surprisingly given Desmarais’s father’s company, which sells metal-free pump, mono-material and biomass packaging, Blue Beautylab has turnkey packaging resources with an eye toward sustainability available to its clients. Desmarais foresees refillable packaging and potent multifunctional products rising in the beauty market. He says, “Having one product that can outperform four products is a sustainable approach I believe in.”

Two to three years into Blue Beautylab’s business, Desmarais forecasts it will hit $5 million in revenues and be ready financially to branch out to a second facility. He will consider reevaluating his personal plans to launch a brand, too. Five years into Blue Beautylab, he envisions transporting its model to Europe and possibly Asia. Desmarais says, “Instead of having to consolidate your global production for one product, having these satellite facilities will allow you to produce quantities for Europe or Asia without having to ship products around the globe. Therefore, you’ll lower your carbon footprint.”