What’s unique in Berlin’s #BeautyTech
Recently on January 24th, the BeautyTech MeetUp was held in Berlin, Germany for the first time. It featured a variety of startups striving to operate in flexible new ways and output creative new ideas.
BeautyTech opened big this year by holding its first meet-up in the emerging start-up capital of Europe.
The German chapter is lead by Elnura Ashimova, founder and CEO of popular online community marketplace for yoga, Yoganect.
Over 70 entrepreneurs, investors, movers and shapers of beauty, fashion and tech industries attended the two panels and fireside chats.
Beauty from within
Alongside talks on trends and the future of AI, AR, and data analytics, a common denominator among BeautyTech meet-ups, the German panels put a spotlight on food tech and wellness.
What we put inside our bodies may have the biggest impact on our external appearances and beauty, after all.
Speakers included the CEO of ONO Labs Chanyu Xu. ONO Labs is a food tech company that produces supplements which match the needs of women who experience a multitude of physical and emotional changes from pregnancy, childbirth to lactation.
These supplements are derived from natural components that avoid creating waste.
Claire Ralston, CEO of MERME Berlin, a vegan skin and hair care company also shared her expertise to the panel.
Her company creates products with nutrients and healing power extracted from plants. She shares that cosmetics that penetrate the skin are absorbed into the bloodstream and can have a significant impact on the body. Her test samples are offered in full sizes so the user can feel the full effect.
Start-up sustainability
The thousands of start-ups that call Berlin their home thrive mostly because the city provides a multi-stakeholder ecosystem that allows the founders to easily develop and execute their ideas.
One of the biggest challenges that start-ups face (particularly those who are in e-commerce) is how to navigate the EU’s GDPR or the General Data Protection Regulation.
BeautyTech Berlin recognized this and had Andrea Schmoll of law firm Osborne and Clarke sit in the panel with beauty tech founders.
Schmoll’s law firm supports beauty tech companies with their legal affairs and holds a webinar series called “Fashion and Luxury Law Academy”. They make sure that their clients can scale globally, create new distribution channels and at the same time, adapt to this new and very complex data privacy law.
Gender disconnect
Though Berlin is one of the most progressive and open cities in the world, gender balance still poses a problem.
The beauty and fashion industry are still mainly occupied by women, while VC and funding environment are represented by men.
In a blog posted by Ashimova about the event, she wrote, “Because at times, within male-dominated VCs it is hard to explain the nature and technicalities of makeup & skincare brand which in turn makes it difficult to see the potential of the business idea.”
The diversity of the city, however, remains one of its strengths.
The significant presence of immigrant communities of Berlin has attracted big beauty brands like L’Oreal to test and research global market trends.
At the Berlin BeautyTech Meet-up, they tried to replicate this diversity with panel speakers from the US, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Turkey, and Australia.
*BeautyTech is a global community of founders, innovators, entrepreneurs, funders, and users who support each other in creating the future of beauty and fashion through technology.
Founded by former Lancome CEO Odile Roujol in her house in San Francisco in 2017, BeautyTech now has 12 chapters around the world including New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and Seoul.
Recently, BeautyTech changed its logo to FaB or Fashion And Beautytech.
Text: Christine Roque
Original text (Japanese):Naho Iguchi
