Swapping sofas for skincare: How MADE’s co-founder plans to renovate the beauty industry
The skincare industry is begging for transparency — here’s why
In desperate need of diversity
It’sclear that sustainability and transparency play a vital role inTypology, but it soon becomes apparent that building a diversebusiness, although often challenging, is also at the forefront of Li’s mind.
“When we founded MADE inLondon, we were all Parisian expats, and withLondonbeing such a multicultural city, it was fairly straightforward to hire a diverseteam. InParis, it’s a little bit trickier to do that,” he notes.
The city’spopulation, he adds, is different. “You don’t have so many internationalpeople— perhaps because of the language barrier — so it’s harder to hire a diverseteamunless you make that proactive choice, and we have,” he says.
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Currently, Typology employs 28 people in its Paris office. According to Li, theteamis made up of 14 nationalities, severalethnicities, educationalbackgrounds, religions, and sexualities.
“This key when building abusinessis not only to enrich ourcompany culturebut to identify our blind spots as abrand. I needpeoplewho have different viewpoints and come at problems in different ways, based on theirexperiences. We did not want to follow the status quo of other beauty businesses based inPariswhich have very French and, or, Parisian teams,” he says.
Indeed, the beauty and skincare industry is notorious for its lack of inclusivity. It often caters to a predominantly whitecustomer, something that becomes a detriment to otherraces.
To put this into perspective, L’Oréal, a globalcompanywith 12,000 US employees,counts 8%who identify as black at the executive level in America.
At Revlon,only 5% of employeesat the director level or above are black. Only6% of leadership rolesat Sephora are filled by blackpeople.
Li won’t fix the beauty industry’s diversity problem alone, but it’s important for entrepreneurs and founders to ensure they are doing whatever they can to offer equal opportunities across the board.
Drawing inspiration from gaming
On the business side, Li says he’sexperimenting with the structure of the newbusinessinorderto remain agile and innovate quickly — especially after he saw first-hand how easy it is for product development and decision making to slow down as abusinessgrows.
Instead of looking at other skincare or beauty brands, Li and histeamhave taken inspiration from Supercell, a Finnish mobilegame developmentcompany. Specifically, Li and his employees have focused on thedeveloper‘s ‘chapter structure’ — consisting of small, independentteamstypically made up of aproduct managerand technician who act autonomously to develop newproducts.
“This is the opposite approach to large beauty brands that spend years and millions ofdollarsdeveloping newproducts,” he says.
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That the beauty industry is ripe fordisruptionis notnewsto many, and while several other direct-to-consumerbrandshave emerged in recent years, Li believes there are plenty of opportunities.
“Yes, this is an incredibly competitive and crowded area — we’re up against independents and newcomers plus the big budgets of the establishedbrands,” he says.
“For us to really stand out, we have focussed on innovation and quality. We have developed a largeportfolioofproductsthat didn’t exist before within a very shortspaceof time. For instance, our TEN range where allproductshave 10 ingredients or less takes a lot ofexpertiseto create.”
