Christine Esposito, Associate Editor08.01.16
There are many clichés about the importance of teamwork in the workplace, not to mention those inspirational posters pitched in the old SkyMall catalog—I especially like the one with the crew team rowing in synch on a misty morning river. Yet when it comes to survival in the competitive world of selling personal care, beauty and household products, the benefits of working with a great distributor are anything but platitudes. The best distributors can source a novel material, cut costs, help navigate new regulations or find a replacement ingredient—all so your company never skips a beat.
For example, when one multinational manufacturer needed to replace a non EU-compliant ingredient in one of its well-known brands, Brenntag Specialties, Inc. (BSI) answered the challenge. According to Rich Joyce, business director personal care group, BSI’s lab collaborated with one of its suppliers’ labs to develop a functional EU compliant product that dropped into the formula.
Distributors serve start-ups equally as well. Centerchem—which has a long history of supplying and developing active ingredients—was working with an entrepreneurial company that wanted to create a skin treatment containing a unique and exclusive active complex but had limited R&D capabilities.
“We worked closely with them to help refine/finalize their product profile…and put together a novel combination of active ingredients at clinically functional concentrations,” explained Jon D. Packer, president. Centerchem then “incorporated these materials into a novel delivery system that could be readily incorporated into their products as an active complex that was exclusively theirs.”
Behind the Scenes
Distributors are silent partners working alongside marketers as they move through the complex process of getting a product out of the lab and into the market.
According to Packer, Centerchem has helped customers with formulation problems by providing prototypes, solving stability issues and setting strategies to enhance the activity of a given formulation’s end benefits/claims.
“Product manufacturers require formulating support to expedite project timelines, complement unique formulating capabilities and reduce complexity. We are all trying to do more with less and certain distributors, such as Univar, offer both technical and logistics expertise,” said Kelly Gilroy, senior director, personal care and household and industrial care, Univar US.
That technical expertise, Gilroy contends, can include formulation, scale up and process support as well as new ways to work through regulatory changes; supply and logistics can include unique bulk storage requirements, the right packaging, on-time delivery and a single point of contact to optimize time and resources.
Distributors also lend their support when firms need to make strategic business decisions. For example, when a medium-sized brand owner wanted to change manufacturing partners to increase control and optimize total costs, Univar’s team work confidentially on the entire formulation “because of our formulating expertise, our relationships with strategic suppliers, and our national supply and logistics footprint,” Gilroy told Happi. “Univar’s project management approach enabled our customer’s positive ROI and mitigated risk so the customer team could focus on the myriad new requirements a project of this magnitude demands.”
Recently, Univar USA entered into a new distribution agreement in which it will distribute ANGUS Chemical Company’s complete line of nitroalkanes and specialty additive products, which are sold into a number of US markets, including personal care and household, industrial and institutional cleaning. The product portfolio includes AMP-95, a multifunctional, low-VOC (volatile organic compound) specialty chemical, and Tris Amino Ultra PC, a high-purity, broadly compliant tromethamine for use in cosmetic and personal care formulations, especially skin and sun care.
Companies like Rita Corp. also provide support from lab scale to production scale, working with finished product companies, contract manufacturers and marketing groups that need expert guidance with product development, according to Tom Keech, senior formulation chemist with the Crystal Lake, IL-based company.
Product manufacturers, he said, can turn to distributors for a wide range of issues today—from complex regulatory information within the ever-changing global marketplace to reformulation efforts.
“One critical area of involvement is bridging the gap between sales, R&D and purchasing,” said Keech, noting that Rita has worked extensively on custom blends.
“This is about improving scale up efficiency and reducing production time. We’ve optimized existing formulas that are good, but not great. This involved adjusting ingredient ratios to improve texture, aesthetics, and even stability profiles,” he said.
Source & Support
Sourcing the right ingredients is a major task, and Coast Southwest considers itself a “supermarket of ingredients,” noted Joseph C. Cimo, president.
“We have great scale in commodities; we balance that with a terrific amount of technical aptitude on the specialty end of the spectrum. Not many companies cover that whole range of ingredients with such a wide diversity of capabilities as Coast Southwest. With us, customers have one place to go to find everything they need,” he said.
According to Cimo, more suppliers “have wanted to shift costs down stream in the supply chain, for better or worse. There’s no judgement in me saying this. We have robust capabilities whether in technology with our applications expertise and regulatory knowledge, or in distribution with our warehouses, trucks and locations. We can take on those burdens better than smaller firms.”
Cimo contends that’s why his firm is attracting many of the big names in the business on both supplier and customer fronts. For example, Coast Southwest continues to add to its portfolio and is partnering again with Sharon Laboratories to launch SharoSense liquid blends.
Coast Southwest also prides itself on finding solutions that keep its customers’ businesses churning. For example, when one long-standing customer in the pet care category was having difficulty with an ingredient that had been eliminated due to Prop 65, Coast Southwest was “able to create a solution in our lab by reformulating their products, and then, working with the existing portfolio supplier to provide the component ingredients and blend that product so the customer could continue to make his products for his customers,” Cimo relayed to Happi.
The distributor’s goal is to have solutions that allow customers to hit their targets.
Jeen International serves as a distributor for Botanicals Plus. According to Albert Babik, general manager for Jeen International, Botanicals Plus’ extensive product portfolio of botanical extracts, complexes and actives are complementary ingredients to Jeen’s own green chemistries and initiatives, which “helps us deliver on a long list of customer wishes.”
“Our customers want new innovative products and formulas. Distributors who can provide products that are compliant with today’s regulations and show how the formulas are efficacious will solidify their relationships,” added Joyce, noting that in addition to local warehousing and excellent customer service, BSI also has fully staffed regulatory department providing fast turnaround on regulatory document requests.
In addition, BSI recently entered into a distribution agreement with Novo Nordisk Pharmatech A/S for pharmaceutical grade quaternary ammonium compounds into the pharmaceutical, over-the-counter (OTC) and personal care markets in the US and Puerto Rico.
Customer-Centric Relationships
A great distributor will be the customer’s “eyes and ears” and will have its finger on the pulse of the industry, insisted Centerchem’s Packer.
“The best supplier-distributor relationships are built on and maintained with trust,” noted Gilroy of Univar. “Trust is essential because a good distributor is an extension of a supplier’s sales force, and in order to leverage that position, a distributor must be thoroughly familiar with every aspect of a supplier. A good distributor also shares the positives and negatives that it learns from the market and customers. This is information every supplier values, and key to innovating and growing in the dynamic marketplace in which we operate today.”
A similar sentiment was voiced by Brenntag’s Joyce. “Trust, transparency, and regular communication at multiple levels throughout each organization lead to a strong supplier-distributor relationship,” he said.
In the end, trust is what enables the best distributors to seamlessly handle the nitty-gritty so that their customers can focus on what they do best.
For example, when one multinational manufacturer needed to replace a non EU-compliant ingredient in one of its well-known brands, Brenntag Specialties, Inc. (BSI) answered the challenge. According to Rich Joyce, business director personal care group, BSI’s lab collaborated with one of its suppliers’ labs to develop a functional EU compliant product that dropped into the formula.
Distributors serve start-ups equally as well. Centerchem—which has a long history of supplying and developing active ingredients—was working with an entrepreneurial company that wanted to create a skin treatment containing a unique and exclusive active complex but had limited R&D capabilities.
“We worked closely with them to help refine/finalize their product profile…and put together a novel combination of active ingredients at clinically functional concentrations,” explained Jon D. Packer, president. Centerchem then “incorporated these materials into a novel delivery system that could be readily incorporated into their products as an active complex that was exclusively theirs.”
Behind the Scenes
Distributors are silent partners working alongside marketers as they move through the complex process of getting a product out of the lab and into the market.
According to Packer, Centerchem has helped customers with formulation problems by providing prototypes, solving stability issues and setting strategies to enhance the activity of a given formulation’s end benefits/claims.
“Product manufacturers require formulating support to expedite project timelines, complement unique formulating capabilities and reduce complexity. We are all trying to do more with less and certain distributors, such as Univar, offer both technical and logistics expertise,” said Kelly Gilroy, senior director, personal care and household and industrial care, Univar US.
That technical expertise, Gilroy contends, can include formulation, scale up and process support as well as new ways to work through regulatory changes; supply and logistics can include unique bulk storage requirements, the right packaging, on-time delivery and a single point of contact to optimize time and resources.
Distributors also lend their support when firms need to make strategic business decisions. For example, when a medium-sized brand owner wanted to change manufacturing partners to increase control and optimize total costs, Univar’s team work confidentially on the entire formulation “because of our formulating expertise, our relationships with strategic suppliers, and our national supply and logistics footprint,” Gilroy told Happi. “Univar’s project management approach enabled our customer’s positive ROI and mitigated risk so the customer team could focus on the myriad new requirements a project of this magnitude demands.”
Recently, Univar USA entered into a new distribution agreement in which it will distribute ANGUS Chemical Company’s complete line of nitroalkanes and specialty additive products, which are sold into a number of US markets, including personal care and household, industrial and institutional cleaning. The product portfolio includes AMP-95, a multifunctional, low-VOC (volatile organic compound) specialty chemical, and Tris Amino Ultra PC, a high-purity, broadly compliant tromethamine for use in cosmetic and personal care formulations, especially skin and sun care.
Companies like Rita Corp. also provide support from lab scale to production scale, working with finished product companies, contract manufacturers and marketing groups that need expert guidance with product development, according to Tom Keech, senior formulation chemist with the Crystal Lake, IL-based company.
Product manufacturers, he said, can turn to distributors for a wide range of issues today—from complex regulatory information within the ever-changing global marketplace to reformulation efforts.
“One critical area of involvement is bridging the gap between sales, R&D and purchasing,” said Keech, noting that Rita has worked extensively on custom blends.
“This is about improving scale up efficiency and reducing production time. We’ve optimized existing formulas that are good, but not great. This involved adjusting ingredient ratios to improve texture, aesthetics, and even stability profiles,” he said.
Source & Support
Sourcing the right ingredients is a major task, and Coast Southwest considers itself a “supermarket of ingredients,” noted Joseph C. Cimo, president.
“We have great scale in commodities; we balance that with a terrific amount of technical aptitude on the specialty end of the spectrum. Not many companies cover that whole range of ingredients with such a wide diversity of capabilities as Coast Southwest. With us, customers have one place to go to find everything they need,” he said.
According to Cimo, more suppliers “have wanted to shift costs down stream in the supply chain, for better or worse. There’s no judgement in me saying this. We have robust capabilities whether in technology with our applications expertise and regulatory knowledge, or in distribution with our warehouses, trucks and locations. We can take on those burdens better than smaller firms.”
Cimo contends that’s why his firm is attracting many of the big names in the business on both supplier and customer fronts. For example, Coast Southwest continues to add to its portfolio and is partnering again with Sharon Laboratories to launch SharoSense liquid blends.
Coast Southwest also prides itself on finding solutions that keep its customers’ businesses churning. For example, when one long-standing customer in the pet care category was having difficulty with an ingredient that had been eliminated due to Prop 65, Coast Southwest was “able to create a solution in our lab by reformulating their products, and then, working with the existing portfolio supplier to provide the component ingredients and blend that product so the customer could continue to make his products for his customers,” Cimo relayed to Happi.
The distributor’s goal is to have solutions that allow customers to hit their targets.
Jeen International serves as a distributor for Botanicals Plus. According to Albert Babik, general manager for Jeen International, Botanicals Plus’ extensive product portfolio of botanical extracts, complexes and actives are complementary ingredients to Jeen’s own green chemistries and initiatives, which “helps us deliver on a long list of customer wishes.”
“Our customers want new innovative products and formulas. Distributors who can provide products that are compliant with today’s regulations and show how the formulas are efficacious will solidify their relationships,” added Joyce, noting that in addition to local warehousing and excellent customer service, BSI also has fully staffed regulatory department providing fast turnaround on regulatory document requests.
In addition, BSI recently entered into a distribution agreement with Novo Nordisk Pharmatech A/S for pharmaceutical grade quaternary ammonium compounds into the pharmaceutical, over-the-counter (OTC) and personal care markets in the US and Puerto Rico.
Customer-Centric Relationships
A great distributor will be the customer’s “eyes and ears” and will have its finger on the pulse of the industry, insisted Centerchem’s Packer.
“The best supplier-distributor relationships are built on and maintained with trust,” noted Gilroy of Univar. “Trust is essential because a good distributor is an extension of a supplier’s sales force, and in order to leverage that position, a distributor must be thoroughly familiar with every aspect of a supplier. A good distributor also shares the positives and negatives that it learns from the market and customers. This is information every supplier values, and key to innovating and growing in the dynamic marketplace in which we operate today.”
A similar sentiment was voiced by Brenntag’s Joyce. “Trust, transparency, and regular communication at multiple levels throughout each organization lead to a strong supplier-distributor relationship,” he said.
In the end, trust is what enables the best distributors to seamlessly handle the nitty-gritty so that their customers can focus on what they do best.