How to Create a Bestselling Beauty Product in 2026

0:00AJ Addae:This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. Spring calls for a wardrobe refresh and Nordstrom has the best styles of the season. From dresses and denim to standout tops and accessories, find the trends and essentials that feel right for you. Discover new arrivals from brands you love like WAIFE, Princess Polly, Mango, Adidas and Free People. Plus, free shipping and returns and free styling appointments make everything so easy. Shop in stores at Nordstrom.com or download the Nordstrom app. Hey business besties, welcome back to Female Founder World. It's Jasmine, I'm the host of the show and today I'm chatting with AJ Ade.

0:36She is the founder, chemist and CEO behind Sula Labs. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Today I want to chat a little bit about building Sula Labs and your story. I think it'll apply to anyone who has something to formulate because that is what you do and I think it's one of those areas that's like really hard to Google and you need expertise and it can be expensive to get that expertise. And I just wanted to have you on to tell us all of the things all about it. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. And I also wanted to especially thank you because I think usually I'm talking about like science and like building things, but I'm not typically invited to talk about like the entrepreneurial steps to building Sula Labs.

1:16So I appreciate that. I mean, I'm very interested in how this all came to be. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about Sula and what you've created. Yeah, so Sulu Labs is a lab. It's an R &D lab that specifically formulates and clinically test products for beauty brands that have customers with melanin-rich skin and texture-rich hair. We pretty much run the gamut in terms of the different types of formulation types and as well as the ways that you can substantiate claims or just do a little bit of analytical testing on your products. And you're based in LA? Yeah, we're based in LA. And what brands have you worked with?

1:51Oh my goodness. Tell us that. Hi, and Rusta. Well, some of the ones that I think that people will recognize. I mean, most recently, we did some work with Tracee Ellis Ross's beauty brand, Pattern, which was a hair care brand, but they just launched Body, and we helped support that launch through some clinical testing and claim substantiation. Soft Rose, Kwani Burnett. She's in the community. Yep. Sephora Accelerate 2024, three, honest, two, one of the years. Recently, yes. We did some work formulating products for her hair care brand. And I mean, there's been so many. Dr. Rose Ingleton, MD, you know, we helped launch that vitamin C.

2:27Dr. Nano Beauty, we launched her line. Just John Legend, we worked on testing his products. So there's been a lot in our portfolio. That's awesome. Yeah. How did you get started taking back to 2021 when things were getting off the ground? 2021, I was actually working in formulation and clinical testing at a contract manufacturer and their partner brand that at the time was just embedded into much of the manufacturer's work. And they were kind of in like the medical grade space, which for all of my scientists out there, we know that it's not really a regulated term, but typically medical grade products tend to have a lot more claims testing behind them.

3:04So doing all the clinicals, think like SkinCeuticals, SkinMedica, Obagi, that type of world. And, you know, I was also formulating sunscreens. And that was also really interesting because there's a lot of, you know, in America, sunscreens are regulated as a drug and a cosmetic. So there's a lot of extra hurdles that you have to cross in order to make the sunscreens get out into the world, but also to make them cosmetically elegant. So I was doing a lot of that. And I think it just really sort of picked at me over time that I feel like a lot of since this is 2021, this is in the DTC boom, like kind of towards the end of that sort of.

3:39And it was really bothering me that a lot of the messaging post 2020 towards brands that cared about melanin rich skin and textured hair was just through the marketing, like through the models and through the messaging. But it didn't really feel like a lot of the R &D spanned towards that. And I realized through my job that a lot of that inclusivity work starts in the science and actually at the bench before it touches the bottle, before it touches the models and the marketing. and I caught on to that early which led to me quitting my job. Wow okay so 2022 is kind of when things really started going and you started with the Griff on Me what was that all about?

4:21Yeah so I remember I was talking to my friend Adrian shout out to you Adrian and he was telling me I really want to raise some money for Black History Month. We were framing it as Black Futures Month right like what can really do for not only our black future but the collective black future Right. And what I was building, I think, and what I'm still building, I think really lends itself to building a better black future and inclusive future. I was like, you know what? You're right. Let me raise some money. I just started a business, too, a couple months ago. So they started GoFundMe saying this is our mission.

4:51This is what we do. And, you know, we raised a little bit of money, I think about a thousand something dollars for over a couple of weeks. but then one day I get an email I've actually never talked about this one day I get an email from Greg one of the founders from you to the people and he said hey like I would love to talk about what you're doing we hopped on a call he heard about it he's like this is super cool so how's 5000 and I was like what do you mean how's 5000 he said how like can we give you that and I was like sure and you know I'm really grateful for that because I feel like that helped me understand that we were doing something right at the time because youth to the people that was pre-acquisition and then a couple days later topicals allow me day from topicals also donates a thousand and that money really stretched us for several months at the time so thank y 'all both if i haven't already said that and then what happened with the honeypot cart yeah so later that year literally a couple months later, the Honey Pot Co.

5:56I remember they had changed some things in their formulas. I think they were also gearing up for acquisition or something of the sort. And one of those things was preservatives. And it sparked a lot of online discourse about why we use preservatives. Are they safe? Should we trust preservatives? Which I'm here to tell you all you should. We need them. We need them. If you're going to be buying anything off a shelf, it has a preservative in it. Yeah. And we could talk about this later when building a brand, but also if you're keeping it in your shower, right? You wanted to have preservatives, which these products you would keep in your shower for their feminine wash.

6:29And, you know, I started a thread on Twitter saying, here's why we need preservatives. Here's why we should trust them, kind of explaining it. And it gained a lot of traction. And days later, they reached out saying, hey, we really liked the way you explained about our product. Not only would you mind like creating some content with us on this kind of, you know, educating on the science behind it, but also coming with us to Essence Fest this summer to do some science communications on this topic and it was great. I met Bea and the team and they were super wonderful and that also helped sort of fuel as a partnership the growth of Sula Labs.

7:03I want to kind of understand between those early days, you get a little bit of money together, you actually like this becomes a business to now where you've worked with some really established brands. What were some of those things that you were doing during the last couple of years to kind of build this up as a true business? early on people saw me as a formulator as an alchemist really like we can contact this girl to make some things and I realized that I had something there like the business proposition was really important like it wasn't just that you can find anyone to make something right but someone that specializes in your product's goals and at the time there were a lot of brands that had that goal and you know we'll also talk about the climate of beauty later but I think over time what really helped was moving the needle from just someone who can formulate products to a team of people that are actually really well versed in this subject and really well versed in the research behind the subject, the subject being melanin-rich skin, textured hair, which then later became inclusivity, right?

8:04The thesis became how do we develop products that actually address what we now call inclusivity gaps in beauty? And those inclusivity gaps, we believe, start in R &D. So I obviously couldn't do that all myself in 2022. You know, I brought on a team member that we still have today. She came from decades of, you know, experience behind hair care brands, right? And color and everything like that. And, and scaling, making a product scalable, which I think a lot of brands don't really see from a farsighted perspective when they're just starting out. So that was really helpful. And that helped us change from just being able to help someone start out to those that are already doing things and they want to be able to go the distance.

8:45And then I think two years later, we also brought on a derm, which, you know, accelerated our capabilities into clinical testing. And that drew on my previous experience of claims testing and how to really understand how to make compelling claims, but also design experiments that test some of the endpoints that are most important to those with melanin-rich skin and textured hair. So yeah, I mean, it wasn't a smooth walk in the park. and it's not still a smooth walk in the park but I think we've definitely established ourselves from not just formulators but to an R &D powerhouse in this space that's amazing I want to ask you in a minute we're going to get into the the stuff that people need to know when they're formulating but first I want to talk about trends and and the beauty space so you must get a lot of brands coming to you with I want to create this and be able to connect the dots of like oh this is an interesting thing that lots of people are asking for yeah what are you seeing like what kind of shifts are you seeing in the space?

9:39Yeah. Oh my goodness. I mean, I don't realize that something is a trend until like many of our intake forms are asking for a thing or repeat customers are saying, Hey, like this retailer is asking for a thing. And that's why at the end of the year, every year we talk, we do like a Spotify wrap sort of, and it's like, these are the things people are asking for. And later on, they actually end up hitting the shelves. So some of the things that I've been seeing I saw the blush thing from months prior you know how like now people are doing blush and like also lip and just a bunch of fun ways to incorporate color into skincare and like makeup hybrid that was definitely something we were seeing like end of 2023 going into beginning of 2024 just as intake inquiry and then one thing we've been seeing a lot this year has been face mist and essences and toners really light fluid ways to deliver you know efficacy and we saw that with road launching right uh and there's some things I'm suspecting we're seeing right now what do you think it is tell me okay so one thing that I I really caught on to is I guess hair care brands venturing into other things so for example Amika I think they bottled the fragrance of like one of their of their hair care products that people know and love pattern going into body care right so these really established hair figures but then also textured hair really having its own k18 moment and olaplex moment i think hair care is definitely a really really and fragrance really booming categories that we're seeing in intake forms and i have a lot more but i know we don't have all day i mean i want to hear though do you have do you have more because i would love to know i think people are really curious about like because you see this stuff coming through yeah months or years before you actually see it on the shelf and a beauty publication is going to be able to report on it right you're seeing it from the the the founders coming up with these concepts yeah beginning yeah like body care definitely saw that yeah like yeah I mean even things like veering into really niche aspects of body care like multitasking deodorants that aren't antiperspirants, but, and also, you know, foot care.

11:52I'm seeing a lot of, yeah, like the skinification of all these other types, scalp care, definitely saw that. So, and also still seeing those things. So free ideas, guys. Is there anything that you think is slowing down? Yeah. I think traditional barrier care is slowing down for sure. Which does that mean? Like, you know, there was that that point in time where everyone was like, this is a moisturizer, you know, and it's good for your barrier. And our barriers are stressed like that. I feel like was a very 2021, 2022, even as far as 2023 peak season. But now I'm seeing less of that. I'm seeing more of those kind of I talk about this a lot.

12:32The Rxification of simple skin care. Right. Like making the fact that spate trends, which if you guys don't know, spate is like an intelligence. Trans Agency, and you should definitely sign up for it. But the fact that ketoconazole, which is a prescription strength, like dandruff material, is even being searched as much as it is from consumers is what's signaling the fact that people want more Rxification, like prescription strength performance from some of these problems that they're seeing, because traditional skincare products may not be cutting it for a lot of people. Interesting. Yeah, I think people, I think also as like we see the beauty industry even just aesthetically it's kind of like injectables and treatments that maybe used to be reserved for a very select number of people who had access to like a plastic surgeon or whatever yeah now it's kind of table stakes for people to have Botox or filler or whatever and so I think when they look at skincare they want a similar kind of effect like before and after effect yeah products before and after effect or at least evidence i was like recently judging a beauty awards and like i saw a lot of really great brands in a category but what ultimately moved the needle for a specific brand to win was just the sheer amount of clinicals that they had which one can say like okay well that costs money and like all these things which it does but just really interesting to hear how much we're approaching towards that rxification but also i have a lot to say about the fact that i'm not sure that it's always realistic, right?

14:02To achieve such results in such a shorter time period. Like there was a time where it was okay to have 12 weeks or okay for product developers to request 12 week data in a clinical study, right? Especially for hyperpigmentation for skin tone evening products, like 12 weeks, realistic for you to even your skin tone. Now folks are requesting four week data right and I'm like okay y 'all we these aren't drugs yeah and yeah there's a lot to be said about how we're asymptotically approaching a specific standard of evidence that may not always be realistic to beauty products because they're not drugs but formulators just have to get you know we we always have to meet the burden of proof so wow that's what I spend all my time doing okay let's talk about clinical trials and testing what uh for beauty brands out there who you know they want to just like meet the bare minimum let's start there the bare minimum of claims testing what do they need to be doing before they want to be able to for example be stocked at like a Sephora or an ultra one of these big retailers that are demanding like this like more more testing before you can go on shelf yeah so there are really expensive ways to do this and then and that's usually the whole clinicals like the 12-week data the derm you know 50 increase in hydration how much how expensive is that to do oh like over like that over ten thousand dollars i would say for a really yeah for a really good or you could do a regimen which i always like to recommend right if you really don't have the money for one skew do the two that you want to sell as a bundle right and say like okay this uh skin tone evening product and this barrier care product worked really well together and this is the evidence that's why you should buy it but like So easier, lower cost ways to do that is for the love of God, just hire a researcher to go into the ingredients and understand the ingredient data, right?

15:56There's a lot of great data on licorice root extract. And that's where it started to emerge as something that's great for skin tone evening because there's a lot of great research on it. So just having someone really parse through your ingredients and your formulation and give you claims based off of that is a really good way to do it from a small scale. Now that could get tricky because just because there's 1 % lactic acid doesn't mean it's going to work as well as something with 10 % lactic acid. But just really, really auditing the quality of what you already have without doing anything new.

16:28So just to clarify, like basically you're saying you could do your own research and clinical trial, like trial studies, or you can look at the existing research for the ingredients that you're using and kind of leverage off that research. And that's kind of enough. That's one like really bare minimum way to do it. And really that work should be happening during the R &D phase too. Yeah. Because that can inform how much you need to add or something of the sort. But that's the barest. And then sometimes I feel like brands are skimping out because I see they have really awesome ingredients in their I.L., their ingredient list.

17:04And they just never said that like the really cool data behind this ingredient, right? They're selling based off of the claims that they think are going to happen for the entire product but you actually have a really great ingredient that's that's you know doing the legwork for this product and you should call that out you should have someone look through your ingredients and and call that out so you can scream it from the rooftops are there any kind of phrases or words that you just should not use on beauty packaging yes so there's i like to categorize them in buckets there are words that you shouldn't use without evidence such as hypo allergenic right or an easier one dermatologist tested if it really wasn't dermatologist tested And it doesn't need to be dermatologist tested by you.

17:44It just needs to be dermatologist tested as an ingredient. Well, I mean, if a product, there's a difference between ingredient claims and product claims, right? Like for an ingredient claim, niacinamide, love her. Not everyone loves her, but we love her. And there are claims that you can associate with niacinamide just off of the sheer fact that so many other great studies have shown the strength of niacinamide. But then there are product claims, right? Your product may have niacinamide. It may have glycerin. It may have ceramides and you need to be able to determine the strength of your product.

18:15You can like use evidence from niacinamide alone, evidence from ceramides alone, evidence from glycerin alone. But sometimes it gets to a point where you should test your product, like you're finished good and communicate those claims. So when you say dermatologist tested, you really want that on the product versus the ingredient. But I mean, there's a lot of words that you can't say. Like technically you can't say hyperpigmentation. I see a lot of it because that is a chronic skin condition. And to imply that your product treats a chronic skin condition, positions it as a drug. The same is true for acne, right?

18:51You want to actually say things like improves the appearance of skin tone unevenness or decreases the frequency of blemishes and breakouts, but not treats acne or not treats hyperpigmentation. Even sensitive skin friendly is a regulated claim. Interesting. Claims like UV protection, there's specific testing for that. Claims like water resistance, there's specific testing for that. So be really careful about the things that you say and please have someone look over it really. I want to ask a little bit about the process of formulating a product. So somebody comes to you, a founder comes to you and they're adding a new SKU or they're launching and what happens?

19:34How long does it take and what's the first step? So there's actually a lot of research that needs to be done. I think obviously there's market research, which is usually actually beyond the scope of a really hardcore like chemist. I think that's something that a product developer is really well suited for, which there is a difference, by the way. And, you know, that research entails, you know, what else is on the market? How much those things cost? What ingredients are in those? which also determines the cost, the scale of those brands. So for example, if Naturium is putting out 10 % azelaic acid products, azelaic acid is expensive.

20:12It's also Naturium, which is owned by Elf. So maybe they can do that. But can you do that at the scale that you're at? So those are the kinds of things to like really understand. And I think that actually involves a marketer. It involves a chemist. It involves the founder, right, to understand their portfolio. You want to really nail down unit costs. So people come to us saying we want this to cost$2 to$3. and I look at the brief and it says you want azelaic acid, you want salicylic acid. Those are really expensive ingredients. So this cannot cost two to three dollars unless you're doing these at really, really high volumes or something of the sort.

20:46So there's a lot of economics that structures a beauty product. Then there's packaging, right? Maybe you want to do something, a really simple oil, which tend to not always be that simple, but maybe you want to do a simple oil, but you want really luxurious packaging. So you have to add that into your unit cost. And those are all of the questions that I really recommend people really sit on before approaching a chemist. Because I've seen it happen and I've experienced things where we get to the bench and then maybe the product is best suited from a unit cost perspective in one way, but it doesn't really suit the vision that you had initially.

21:23And so nailing down the briefs, They always say that if you don't have a great, great, great brief that's super nailed down and backed by all this evidence, then you're going to really suffer and have a lot more iterations in the actual formulation stage. That's really interesting. I want to, you mentioned something before about a scalable formulation. What does that mean? And what does that involve? Yeah. So, I mean, usually when you're starting out, you're probably producing at lower volumes. Let's say 1 ,500, 5 ,000 units. obviously the more you scale like the higher amount of units you produce the lower your unit cost tends to go typically it trends that way and so you want to be able to build your product to withstand different volume scenarios maybe you want to make minis one day maybe you want to be producing at 50 ,000 units one day and to be honest there's no perfect way to do this like not every product can withstand every you know scenario and situation but you want to have that foresight like what you start off with is not where you will be in a year especially if there are things like tariffs and ingredient costs rising and stuff like that we talked about preservatives and how they actually you do want them in products yeah they're really important i want to talk about like this idea of clean beauty and like balancing this idea of clean beauty with efficacy and like just safety and where you think this space is going because I feel like there's been a lot of like muddled terms yeah and people are confused talk to me about it so before I say anything let me preface I am not biased I worked at Credo Beauty at one point okay you know so yes I know I know the stuff I know the clean standard I know the rigor so clean beauty I've seen tends to cost more from a formulation perspective.

23:13Only, I mean, clean means a lot of things, right? So people tend to tell me what clean means to them. And for some founders, that means being sourced in these specific ways, which tends to be more expensive. For example, if I want to source jojoba oil from the golden mountains of California, that's going to be way more expensive from buying it from Jedward's or from makingcosmetics.com. Shout out to them. But, you know, those are the things that tend to add up to the price tag of clean beauty. Other things that I think tend to be a little bit more of a risk when you veer into clean beauty are shelf life.

23:49If you are going to Erewhon and you're getting a smoothie and you leave it out on your desk, it's going to go bad at some point. Similar sort of aspect to clean beauty, right? So if you don't like preservatives, you're going to have an Erewhon smoothie effect. There's no way around it. And you're probably going to spend more on opaque packaging that, you know, helps is double walled and is really great in these temperatures. Like there are a lot of opportunity costs that I see to clean beauty. And I don't think that that it's a bad thing. If you have, if you plan your economics around your product to build those things in mind, but that's typically an area where I see just a lot more shelf life risk and a lot more cost risk.

24:31However, I do think that I will say, I think it's a great thing to care about the planet. And I think that as a community, we need to really align on certain ways that we can do so without, you know, really making it difficult on the founders to carry out their mission. What about, what about ingredients like in hair care, sulfates and tell me about that and whether we should be using it or not. So just want to be clear, guys, I'm a chemist. I'm a chemist, so I, I like chemicals. Okay. I spend a lot of time around them. I spend a lot of time inhaling silica last week. It wasn't great. Yeah, I think every chemical has its merit in some aspect, like in some aspect.

25:12I think every chemical has its reason for why it's done. Maybe it's a cost thing. Red 40 just costs a lot less than water-soluble clean dye that looks really great on your ingredients list. The same is true for things like sulfates, parabens. I think there's, these are ingredients that have had a great cost benefit at some point, but science matures, customer expectations mature and now they're kind of becoming outdated in some ways but it doesn't mean that they don't serve their cost benefits so i mean i'm down for sulfates in my shampoo but i know my customers don't always like sulfates in their shampoo and i just let them know this cleaner alternative may just cost more or maybe we should produce at this volume to kind of work around that i'm flexible personally i just like to tell people how that impacts their unit costs and maybe their shelf life but I mean I'm not against parabens I'm not against sulfates personally I don't really care for them the last thing I want to ask you AJ is for a resource recommendation something that's been helping you as you've been building your business or even just something that you think would help other beauty founders as they're building theirs yeah see I knew you were going to ask this question but I still don't know the answer are you someone who like do you like to read a book do you listen to podcasts like you mentioned something really great before about like a subscription or something that people should check out.

26:31What was that? Oh, Spate. Yeah. Shout out to my friends at Spate. Yeah. They literally publish a newsletter, you know, every couple of days where it's like, this is what's trending in GreenWise, like year over year, like volume search. Really good if you want to know what's trending. But I mean, sign up for a lot of those newsletters. They're actually informational. The Substack Revolution is here and our Substack is here too, which actually has a lot of good information. I love that. But the Sula Labs report. But I like podcasts actually like these. I actually, I listen to female founder world and I listen to like how I built this.

27:04And I listen to, I mean, Los Angeles, you know, the fat mascara, all of those things, really hearing just what founders go through. Now for me, to be honest, I haven't really heard a similar business to mine. And so there's that. But those, I think hearing it from the founder and just hearing their problems has always been really helpful for me because I also want to know the founder's problems, right? It helps me structure my services. It helps us structure the best way to help them win. I just wanted to end the show with a quick shout out to all of our paid Business Besties subscribers. For$12.99 a month, you get access to a weekly live call with mentors who we handpick from this podcast community.

27:46These are founders who have been on the show experts and operators that are helping to build their businesses. And we want to give you access in a small group setting on live calls every single week so that you can get the mentorship and advice that you need to take your business to the next level. In addition to the live calls and the community, you also get access to a big database of workshop recordings, group coaching call recordings, templates, contact lists, and just all of the tools and resources that you need to make this business a success. Head to bestie.femalfounderworld.com or the link in the show notes to sign up now.