Sustainable cosmetics: ‘Marketing is as misinformed as consumers sometimes’, says Re-Sources founder

Founded in September 2020, Re-Sources offered online multimedia educational modules on formulation and packaging in sustainable cosmetics. Covering an array of topics within these two fields, the courses featured insight from experts in the field and ran for six weeks with the first cause launched just last month.

Sustainable cosmetics education to back-up marketing claims​

Eva Lagarde, CEO and founder of Re-Sources, said the platform had been designed for marketeers in the beauty space specifically.

“Marketing directors and managers are always targeted by influencers; the backlash is always on marketing. And I think marketing is as misinformed as consumers can be sometimes, because they’re not packaging technologists or cosmetic scientists so they can have a limited view on what’s at stake,”​ Lagarde told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.

“I’m targeting them because I want to train them (…) I think they have a lot of pressure from the companies to perform and create good products but they don’t always have all the education. I want to give them the arguments to substantiate their claims,”​ she said.

For years in beauty, Lagarde said marketing and product developers had not typically collaborated and that had to change, particularly as the conscious beauty movement gained ground.

‘We need to move from fast marketing to educational marketing’ in conscious beauty​

For industry, she said the conscious beauty movement required a closer look at product sourcing, resources used during manufacturing, and communities involved in the supply chain meaning transparency and traceability were key at marketing level. Internal collaboration between beauty marketers and product developers, therefore, would help get messaging on these issues right and make efforts clearer for consumers.

“We need to move from fast marketing to educational marketing. We need to work with cosmetic scientists to back up our claims,”​ she said.

“…We need to have marketeers educated first about products; give them something digestible.”​

From this point, she said it was about teams slowing down development processes and avoiding any fast decision-making from concept to shelf.

“I honestly believe [industry] is moving too fast. I think they should take a step back, hold on tight and take longer.”​

Lagarde said that all of this was ultimately the goal behind the Re-Sources online platform – to inspire internal collaboration in beauty companies on sustainable developments throughout all phases of product development.