“The Beauty Studios concept is built on an innovative and collaborative approach, providing formula customization services. This accelerates time-to-market for solutions tailored to local needs while optimizing clients’ time and resources,” explains Anne-Sophie Gardes, EMEA Regional Technical Director – Beauty & Personal Care at IMCD, to Premium Beauty News.
An international network
Within this international network, each laboratory has its own specialty, tailored to the specific needs of each market. France, for instance, serves as the center of excellence for both skincare and sun care products, while the UK specializes in haircare and Italy is the group’s center of excellence for make-up.
IMCD’s Beauty Studios are part of a co-creation approach. “While most cosmetic ingredient distributors have application laboratories, IMCD wanted to take it a step further by providing a VIP service that enables customers to significantly accelerate their development timelines,” continues Anne-Sophie Gardes.
A flexible co-creation process
With this in mind, the IMCD Beauty & Personal Care teams position themselves at the very beginning of the creation phase of a formula, that of prospective research, where the risk of failure is at its highest for the brand.
When a brand starts from scratch, selecting ingredients, developing initial test formulas, evaluating them, and then choosing the best ones can take several months. After that, safety, stability, and efficacy tests must be conducted, along with the confirmation the formula can be produced at an industrial scale.
“That’s why a development from scratch generally requires a minimum of 18 months. Our bet is that with solid frameworks, it’s possible to significantly cut this time,” explained the technical director.
The formulation chassis — simple yet robust formula bases designed to be easily adapted to various product types – are at the heart of the co-creation process proposed in an IMCD Beauty Studio. In Paris, over 70 skincare chassis are already available. This expertise is shared with other IMCD laboratories worldwide, which can adapt and tailor them to the specific needs of their respective markets. And a range of chassis for sun care products was unveiled at the in-cosmetics Global trade show from 8 to 10 April 2025 in Amsterdam!
Meeting all expectations
Each studio enables the creation of prototypes in a reduced timeframe, sometimes in just a few hours. Clients can leave with prototypes straight from the lab, an approach that significantly speeds up the product’s time-to-market.
“Our ingredient portfolio, combined with our cutting-edge technical expertise, allows us to offer numerous formulation solutions to meet the diverse demands in this field, including the most complex ones,” explained Maud Chapis, Marketing Director, Beauty & Personal Care at IMCD Group.
But Beauty Studios do more than just formulation: they also offer product performance evaluation services.
The French team thus offers an evaluation of sun care products, including tests for SPF and water resistance. The aim is to ensure the stability and effectiveness of sun care products, whether formulated with chemical or mineral filters, using rigorous and recognised evaluation methods, such as in vitro tests compliant with ISO standards. This service saves valuable time by validating formulations before proceeding to final testing.
And soon, artificial intelligence
And the results are delivering! The positive response from brands has encouraged IMCD to continue developing the Beauty Studios, whose network keeps expanding, with new centers planned across all regions.
And since innovation is an endless process, IMCD is now working on greater integration of artificial intelligence into its co-creation processes. Here again, the aim is to speed up the development phase while taking into account the issues of compliance, confidentiality and reliability.