Men’s grooming and skincare supplies…

John Cafarelli (bio), Founder/President of Ernest Supplies (skincare and grooming products for men), joins Julie Fredrickson (Co-Founder and CEO of Stowaway Cosmetics), Stephanie Betzler (Digital Strategist at Trendalytics), and Rob Sanchez (Business Strategist, COO MouthMedia Network).

Unique packaging, company origins, and skin-healthy snacks

Cafarelli reviews how men want to interact with skin care as much as women, how he worked to build and formulate for the unisex lifestyle and the active and healthy individual. He provides some skin-healthy snacks, discusses the intriguing and award-winning gel on-the-go pouch packaging which was the result of a failure, the ability to grab shopper attention in the 1.2 seconds, creating a very transportable military-ration-pack-like design, and minimizing product waste. Going from private equity in fashion, healthy living, and multi unit retail to running a beauty line. How meeting a cosmetics formulator at the largest natural products show and creating a product just for Cafarelli led to building Ernest Supplies.

Moving past failure, achieving multi-functionality, and pursuing SPF

Taking failures and turning them into a successful skincare brand, the downsides of doing things differently, how feedback can hurt, considering the beauty customer not wanting something expensive and only wanting a product that works, the difference in insistence on multi-functionality for men vs. women with more products, hydrating the skin, the magic of Hyaluronic acid, how it is all ultimately chemistry, why it is tough to squeeze multi-functionality out of a formula, understanding gives and takes, and the give and take with the “formula guy”. How the seeds of designs for products start with Cafarelli, building mattifier into moisturizer, and the process of working with a chemist to achieve an end. How every formula must be compliant in advance with the EU Cosmetic Initiative, and how every formula is the same in US as EU. Cafarelli reveals that a daily moisturizer with SPF in it with unique bells and whistles in high development, and talks the costs and testing expenses associated with that type of product when entering into FTA regulated product territory.

International ingredients, Friday Night Legos, and working the arms

Locating ingredients with special properties, looking around the world for great products and ingredients, such as in South Korea and Japan, the challenge and the need to educate customer, particularly men. Personal questions in “Hitting the Pan” cover personal indulgence, a “date with myself”, Friday Night Legos, and working the arms.

The post 004 – John Cafarelli of Ernest Supplies – Being On-the-Go-Pouch Handsome appeared first on Beauty Is Your Business.