Beautypro on innovation & sustainability for travel-retail

UK skin care brand Beautypro’s On The Glow product set was recently crowned “Star Beauty Product of the Year” at the TFWA (Tax Free World Association) travel-retail show in Cannes.  

The award-winning product is a curated selection of the brand’s best-selling sheet masks.  

Perhaps what stood out most about the innovation was its well-thought-out eco-credentials. The sheet masks are packaged in eco-friendly, biodegradable pouches and they are presented in a slim airline-trolley-friendly box, complete with an innovative security seal, which has eliminated the need for shrink wrap.  

We spoke to Beautypro’s cofounder and product development director David Herdman to find out more about this particular innovation, as well as what’s coming next for the brand.  

Innovating for the travel-retail channel ​

Beautypro started out as a professional beauty brand for salons and spas and launched into the UK market via various retail channels in 2015.

Nowadays its products are sold in the majority of mass-market beauty product retailers across the UK, including Sainsbury's, Boots and Tesco, as well as on ecommerce sites such as ASOS and LookFantastic. 

But Herdman shared that travel-retail is also a prominent sales channel for the brand and said that it is sold on over 30 airlines, including Emirates, Virgin and Singapore, as well as in cross-border stores in South American countries such as Argentina. 

When the skin care brand began it had a special focus on sheet masks, but it has since evolved to sell other products, including various high-tech beauty devices.  

Herdman said that the brand also puts a focus on developing exclusive products especially for the travel-retail industry.  

One example of this is the aforementioned, award-winning On The Glow set, as well as its Beauty Pro LED Wand, which it developed in a special colour with a slimmer packaging option just for the travel-retail industry.  

It also offers some of its facial serums in alternative sizes, or paired with other products especially for travel, in smaller more portable boxes.

Creating a tamper-proof box for airlines ​

Herdman believed that one of the reasons the brand won the recent award was because this product was sold in an innovative tamper-proof box.  

"A lot of travel retailers want everything shrink-wrapped for security, to keep the product clean, and to stop the box from being damaged. However, a lot of airlines would prefer to remove the plastic for sustainability reasons,” he continued.  

“It’s just a normal standard box,” he said, “but because of its shape, you can't open it again without physically ripping the box, which would therefore hinder people from attempting to sneakily open the box, take something out and reseal it.” 

“I think that was key in some of the airlines taking that set,” he continued. “And I think this focus on sustainability was key for the award as well.” 

The three products inside are the brand’s three best-selling face sheets, which are made from bamboo, with water-free formulations.  

Herdman said sustainability has always been key for the brand, but noted how it has also adapted and sometimes reformulated or repackaged products to become more eco-friendly. 

For example, sheet mask pouches normally have plastic in the foil, which Herdman said can take up to 500 years to biodegrade, which propelled the brand to switch to a material that will instead biodegrade in five years’ time. 

"It uses paper and a food-grade plastic that has been pre-programmed with microorganisms to start breaking down in five years’ time, so it doesn't leave any micro plastics,” he explained. 

Herdman also said that the brand has had a strong environmental focus since it first launched.  

Just some examples include: the warehouse being run by solar power; packing tape is made from paper, not plastic, and using paper infill instead of plastic.  

It has also adopted over one million honeybees in the Cambridgeshire countryside and planted over 20,000 trees with a partner charity. 

Skin care ingredients from plant sources ​

Beautypro’s products are made in Korea and Herdman noted that there seems to be another K-beauty resurgence on the horizon. “More and more people are talking about it again, which is amazing,” he said.  

As the brand is vegan, the ingredients in formulations, such as vitamin C, hyaluronic acid and retinol, are from plant sources.  

“Our vitamin C comes from blueberry and uses citrus extract,” he explained. “It’s water free, so we use distillation and the fermentation of those raw ingredients and don't actually add any water into those formulations.” 

The hyaluronic acid comes from soya bean and the retinol comes from a seaweed and sea kelp, which means it can be used in the daytime without photosensitivity if skin is exposed to daylight.  

The brand’s bestselling product in the UK market is Wonderbalm, which Herdman designed for his mother, who is a sheep farmer and had suffered from psoriasis from frequently washing her hands after touching sheep’s wool.   

“I wanted to create something for my mum that was vegan and non-greasy to help rehydrate and nourish her skin,” said Herdman.  

“After five days of trying the product, the itchiness and dryness had gone.” 

The brand was also visionary in terms of its use of personalisation, as 15 years ago it launched Hydrotest: a skin analysis device that told you the oil and hydration level of skin in five seconds.  

It has since then launched more beauty devices, including its full LED face mask, which is now one of its biggest sellers now.  

Future expansion plans​

In terms of future expansion plans, Herdman said that the UK market is still a main focus for the brand, and that it has just launched into Tesco stores.  

He’s generally found supermarkets to be a great sales channel for the brand, stating that “grocers and skin care, they just really work for some reason.” 

Herdman also shared that the brand’s focus is to now go into even more retailers and to expand its global reach via more travel-retail. 

“Consumers are more aware now of their skin when they are travelling; when aboard a plane or going on holiday to another climate,” he said. “With this environmental impact on the skin, it does change and therefore you need more skin care products.”