Case.Bringing innovation power to the customer with ‘Beauty Studio in a Bag’ and ‘Beauty on the Road’

In beauty and personal care, speed and differentiation are critical. Brands are under pressure to launch new products quickly while still delivering strong sensorial profiles and credible claims.

IMCD’s Beauty Studio concept was created to support this need. The studios, nested close to IMCD’s Beauty & Personal Care laboratories, offer ready-made formulation chassis, one-to-one consultations and rapid prototyping to help customers move from idea to sample in a short time. They also support smaller customers who may not have advanced in-house R&D capabilities.

To make this offer more accessible, IMCD created ‘Beauty Studio in a Bag’, portable kits that are a mobile extension of the physical Beauty Studios in markets such as France, Italy, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Germany, Indonesia, Türkiye, Thailand and the United States.

Each ‘Beauty Studio in a Bag’ contains a curated selection of formulation bases across skin care, hair care and toiletries. They showcase different textures, skin feels and application formats. With support from IMCD experts, customers can evaluate and customise these bases in real time, using digital selector tools to tailor formulations to their needs.

The ‘Beauty Studio in a Bag’ removes access barriers for customers who cannot easily travel to a lab, accelerating co-creation and strengthening engagement in project development.

"The Beauty Studio concept is about making formulation tangible and fast. The 'Beauty Studio in a Bag' takes that one step further. We can sit with customers in their own environment, select a chassis, personalise it and deliver a prototype in a very short time. It turns innovation into a shared, hands-on experience."

Angie Ellis

Business Unit Manager, Beauty & Personal Care, IMCD South Africa

In Mexico, the idea of taking innovation on the road was extended further with ‘Beauty on the Road’. A ‘Beauty on the Road’ Pink Van travels between Mexico City, Querétaro and Guadalajara, bringing together customers and principals for dedicated innovation events in key beauty hubs. Over one trip, the team can showcase ingredient innovations, live formulations and market insights to a large number of customers, reducing the need for multiple separate events and travel.

Miriam Rodriguez, Business Unit Director for Beauty & Personal Care at IMCD Mexico, explains: “These events, along with the Pink Van, create a high‑impact format that strengthens relationships and sparks new project opportunities. They also demonstrate a more efficient way to engage the market by concentrating activities into a single, shared route.”

Together, ‘Beauty Studio in a Bag’ and ‘Beauty on the Road’ illustrate how IMCD adapts its commercial and technical offering to customer realities. They highlight commercial excellence as something practical, customer centric and scalable.

Commercial excellence

IMCD combines premium customer service, technical capabilities and a deep understanding of customers’ challenges. Our commercial teams listen closely and stay close to market needs. Our technical experts and laboratories support formulation, testing and validation. Our digital and operational capabilities keep supply chains reliable and efficient.

Bringing innovation power to the customer with ‘Beauty Studio in a Bag’ and ‘Beauty on the Road’

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