NYSCC Digital Scavenger Hunt by SULA LABS + Dior Lip Oil, Rhode, and the Lipstick Effect
Authors: AJ Addae
Abstract - A letter from the founder, AJ Addae
A couple of years ago, reporter, podcast host, and producer
invited me to contribute perspectives to an article in Cosmopolitan titled “How the Pandemic Came For Your Skin.” It is a really thorough and well-written article, by the way. I was in great company alongside Yarden Horowitz, another insightful contributor to this column. A pioneer of Google’s Trendspotting (now known as Google Trends) analysis tool, Yarden is now the founder of Spate, which is an intelligence platform that analyzes consumer searches to identify and predict beauty trends. Our contributions to Kirbie’s Cosmo article led to a discussion of the article on Gloss Angeles Pod, by Kirbie Johnson and Sara Tan. Then, Yarden and I got together on a call and realized how niche yet impactful both of our businesses are for beauty businesses. Afterwards, Spate and SULA LABS teamed up by fusing both of our impacts to analyze and identify Black beauty ingredient searches and consumer TikTok trends based on TikTok search data, which was released by way of CEW, during Black history month in 2024.Spate is one of my favorite collaborators because they have a lot of practical and clever use cases for their tools - for example, I recently learned that the search term “hypochlorous acid” has increased by almost 20k monthly searches on average over the past year, which indicates an uptick in consumer interest for the ingredient (to put it into perspective, salicylic acid is hovering at 1.5k monthly searches on average over the past year). That kind of knowledge is really useful for intelligent, forward-looking product development, and eliminates a lot of guessing. Also, as someone who still has yet to download and keep the TikTok app for more than 7 days straight, Spate keeps me in the know.
So with that said, Spate and SULA LABS are back for yet another collab, joined by the genius formulation platform & PotionAI’s founder, Hejab Malik. This time, we’re covering current trending ingredients based on current Google and TikTok searches - including the hypochlorous acid one I shared earlier. Hejab from PotionAI and Addison from Spate will be covering the data, and I’ll be covering what this all means from a formulation & efficacy perspective (i.e. - are consumers telling us that hypochlorous acid an upgrade from salicylic acid?). If you’re at NYSCC Supplier’s Day next week, come and catch us on Day 2 at 2pm on the Main Stage. :)
The Only NYSCC Digital Scavenger Hunt You’ll Need - by SULA LABS
Speaking of NYSCC Supplier’s Day, when we were thinking about how we wanted to meaningfully bring the event to our clients & community, the first thing that came to my left-brained/creative mind was a scavenger hunt.
NYSCC Supplier’s Day is like the super bowl of ingredient innovation in the beauty industry, and it’s truly one of the yearly events that I can’t miss. But I know that it can be a little saturated and overwhelming. So, I made a couple of calls to my favorite suppliers that have provided what I think are really innovative and/or practical ingredients for some of our projects (suncare projects, active ingredient-dominant serums, textured haircare projects, etc.). With that, I’ve curated the official digital NYSCC Scavenger hunt.
So, for all NYSCC Supplier’s Day attendees here’s your official invitation:
SULA LABS is inviting you to our NYSCC Supplier’s Day digital scavenger hunt, full of stops that we curated for you! We’ve selected our picks of the best-in-class suppliers, featured ingredients, digestible education, and more, so that you can receive must-have Supplier’s Day insights from the lens of our product development team.
When you visit any of these booths/events and complete a low-effort educational task, you’ll scan a QR code. This scavenger hunt features the following participating companies:
Inolex (Booth #136) – Our rec for silicone alternatives & green chemistry.
TRI-K (Booth #743) – Our rec for high-performance textured haircare actives.
Seaspire (Booth #2474) – Our rec for next-gen suncare technology.
Univar Solutions (Muffins & Mimosas Event Booth #641) – Our rec for low-cost structural ingredients.
Independent Beauty Association (Booth #2438) – Our rec for effective cosmetic science education and community for brands of all sizes.
Spate/SULA LABS/PotionAI (Panel - June 4th Main Stage Hall 3E @ 2-2:30pm ET) – Our SEO-focused data dump of trending ingredients.
Lucas Meyer Cosmetics (Booth #1733) – Our rec for extract-based functional actives.
All scavenger hunt entries win a product dev-oriented prize from us for checking off one or more stations, and one winner will win a huge prize (!!!!!) for checking off all stations. To enter, all you have to do is go to any of these booths and ask for SULA LABS.
So, see you there?
For Those Who Aren’t Going…
But, let’s say you live in LA like me and can’t go - we’ve curated a short digital roundup below of interesting things we’ve spotted around the beauty industry lately.
Dior Lip Oil turning lips black? - Remember when I mentioned that I don’t spend much time on Tiktok? Imagine my surprise when beauty journalist Jasmine Browley reached out to me for a comment in her Allure article on why Dior’s lip oils were turning people’s lips black, as evidenced through recent Tiktok videos.
The Ordinary launches a broad spectrum SPF 45 - I am actually a fan of this somewhat surprising launch, and as a sunscreen chemist by training, I would like to call attention to the fact that it’s got almost 25% total weight-by-weight in UV filters and butyloctyl salicylate (think of it like a cousin-compound or a structural analog of octisalate).
Speaking of SPFs, they’ve gotten more expensive, haven’t they? This recent Refinery29 article featuring my colleagues Milan Scott and Dr. Julian Sass dives a little deeper as to why.
Rhode was acquired by e.l.f just yesterday for $1B - as I write this on the same day of the acquisition, I already can’t find better words to analyze this than Rachel Strugatz did in her Puck article titled “Hailey’s Rhode to Riches”. By the way, what do you think?
4. Lastly, more and more publications are making note of the “lipstick effect” in beauty. For those who are unfamiliar, the lipstick effect is defined as “a hypothesis that when facing an economic crisis, consumers will be more willing to buy less costly luxury goods”. Obviously we all work in beauty here - but where do you see the lipstick effect taking place in your life?
And that’s all for this month’s SULA LABS Report - if you have anything you’d like us to write about or cover, feel free to drop me a line at aj@sula-labs.com. For the NYC folks, see you soon!
Till next time,
AJ Addae + SULA LABS
I’m sad I can’t be there!! Love that you and Yarden were able to do something together.