If you can dream it, you can make it — or at least that's what Volition Beauty believes. We understand the feeling of frustration when your beauty products don't quite get it right. The same advice that works with bad relationships works with cosmetics and skin care — sometimes things just don't work out. If you've been wishing for cool, exotic ingredients to try, potent formulas that zap away persistent skin problems, or just something that gets the effing job done, then it's time to follow that age-old adage: "If you want something done, do it yourself." And now, there's a new company that will not only make your dream beauty product, it'll pay you for your idea, too.
Since it seems too good to be true, you're probably wondering how the hell this sort of concept works. Well, we had a chance to speak with founders Brandy Hoffman and Patricia Santos a couple weeks ago at a preview of some potential new products, like a DIY sheet-mask machine, and asked them.
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In a nutshell, consumers submit an idea for a product they want made. Hoffman and Santos pick the ideas they think have the most potential and are the most interesting. They work with the person who submitted the proposal to fully realize the product, and then start the production process.
"We start briefing [the lab] on the product, and sometimes the innovators want to be involved and on those calls," says Hoffman, "but at a minimum, if they don’t [want to be], we make sure they get the samples, they share those samples with real women — not paid participants — to give us focus-group information. And when we get that information, we rework [the product], reformulate it.”
Once everyone has signed off on a product and it's guaranteed to be safe, Volition puts it up for "campaign." That's when the Volition community gets involved. People vote on the best products, and the winners are put into production to be sold to the general market. As for the genius who had the idea in the first place? “We actually pay them if the product is successful. We share with them a percent of the revenue."
For a brand that appears to have a novel, money-making idea, it's still fairly new and under the radar. “Our website went up in September [2015], our first campaign won in November, and we started shipping in December.”
Almost a year later, and Volition Beauty has a six-product line and campaigns currently in process for a Neroli Complete Crème, Custom Gel Masks, Hydrasurge Rubber Masks, and a Maple Hydrating Mask.
“We fundamentally believe women...know what they want,” says Hoffman. Now, all that's left to do is to prove her right. If you’re interested in helping a campaign make it to retail, or want to play product formulator, head over to Volition to get the full experience. And tell us in the comments what product you would create and why. We want to hear those brilliant ideas, so we can say we knew about them before they were cool!
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