Three Events in One Day: Notes from a Closed Clean Beauty Evening in New York
Our founder Natalie Vaulin finished her New York day at NYFW Clean Beauty and Medicine, a closed evening at the iLa Spa inside The Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue. It was the third event of a single Thursday, after MakeUp in New York at the Javits Center and the CEW Beauty Expo on West 18th Street.
The invitation came from Ewelina Aiossa, founder of TOPICAL SKIN, whom Natalie met earlier that week on the show floor at MakeUp in New York. That is usually how these rooms open. One conversation at a booth turns into an evening that was never on the calendar.
The evening was hosted by Rucha Dave of GL0W, with Collagen Bar as partner, and it was built around two panels. From Lab to Launch brought together Dr. Glenicia Nosworthy, Kaiya Williams of KAW Management, Ewelina Aiossa and Karen Ballou of Immunocologie. The State of Clean Beauty followed with Diana Seo of Collagen Bar, Shannon Loga, Nasreen Bhatt, Karen Ballou and Lynn Power.
Why a contract manufacturer sits in a room like this
A closed evening works differently from a trade show. Nobody is standing a booth, and the conversation moves faster because of it. Founders say out loud what they are struggling with, and the people across the table are the ones who have already been through it.
For us it is early intelligence. The questions asked in a room where clean beauty meets clinical language are the questions that reach our lab a season later, written into a formulation brief.
What we are bringing back to Clearwater
Three questions keep repeating. How a claim is substantiated with documents rather than adjectives. What the word clean actually has to mean on a label that a dermatologist will read. And how a small launch run can still meet retail standards without pricing the brand out of its own shelf.
If you are building a clean beauty brand and working through any of these, we are happy to talk it through.