Last week, I had the honor of touring Nu World Beauty’s factory, a cosmetic lab in New Jersey. I felt like I was Charlie and I had won the golden ticket to the chocolate factory, except instead of chocolate, it was makeup; so way better. It was such a unique, eye opening experience and I just couldn’t wait to share my insider access with you BeautySweetSpot readers.
We were invited to the factory through the cosmetic company Hard Candy to celebrate their new fall launch. But we not only got to see the creation of Hard Candy products, but also other Nu World Beauty brands such as MAC, Victoria Secret, Benefit, and many more they manufacturer.
We were guided through different rooms on the floor, each room with a different task focus. The first place we explored was a small room where they were pressing powders into blush pallets. Through a window, we watched the machine go up and down as the pallets moved through on the conveyor belt.
Next, we went into the largest room we saw on the tour. It was filled with multiple assembly lines, conveyor belts and persons manning the machines. From lipsticks to primers to eyeliners, handfuls of different products and brands were being shifted along the lines. It was perfectly organized mayhem and beauty junkie would fawn over.
At one station in the cosmetic lab, workers were filling up moldings for lipsticks and then shaving off the tops before being placed in to their tubes. Once they were in the tubes, women were hand placing the bullet tops onto the lipsticks before capping them off and sending them to the end for packaging.The next room we went to held a very potent smell due to the flavored lipgloss being stirred in a giant container you needed a ladder to even to the top of it. Next to the giant chamber was a machine that was pressing the wax for lipstick. This was the part of the process where the wax was pressed to create the perfect color pigment before being heated and mixed.
We then moved through the storage area where ingredients were packaged in giant plastic bags with the perfect measurements for products ready to follow a recipe to its creation. It was a very Walter White moment for many of us. Then, we moved through the flammable section of storage into the nail polish creation area. With skinny long belts along the room, one special nail polish brand specifically had a curtain between their line and the rest of them for more privacy.
Our last stop on the tour was the chemistry lab where the colors and fragrances are researched to find the perfect combinations for the perfect products. Men and women in lab coats were measuring out glitters, and powders in all types of beakers and test tubes. You forget how scientific makeup and beauty products really are until you take a deeper look in to its creation.
A whole new level of respect is earned for the beauty industry when you step behind the scenes into a cosmetic lab and see the products that make up the industry created from scratch.
