A Look Inside David Chung’s Vertically Integrated Beauty Wonderland

Although he's behind some of the brightest ideas in beauty, David Chung prefers a low profile.

The man behind countless beauty companies - none of which bear his name - runs his end-to-end beauty business in a nondescript office building in Mahwah, NJ

More from WWD

But don't be fooled by the facade. Inside it is a beauty wonderland.

Cosmetic chemists, packaging manufacturers and marketing experts all work together at Chung's ILabs, a contract manufacturer-slash-beauty incubator that can support an idea from inception and creation through product development, packaging and marketing. It's also where The Rootist is based, Sephora's exclusive hair care brand Chung unveiled earlier this year after selling Farmacy, the skin care brand he founded, to Procter & Gamble in 2021.

"We want to be an innovation company," Chung said, speaking in a conference room flanked by the products he makes, both for his own brands and as a manufacturer. The room reads like an archive of the biggest beauty hits, from Supergoop sunscreens to Farmacy's Cleansing Balm.

No wonder that when he bought the building, he converted the C-level offices into a cosmetic chemistry playground. He also built his own in-house IT business, installed packaging manufacturers headquartered on site and is able to build a full-fledged brand without ever leaving the premises.

Chung's distinguishing feature is that he still thinks like a trader, a brand founder and a product maker. "All these things happened along the way because I couldn't find anyone who did them the way I wanted to," Chung said. "I am a perfectionist. There is a saying that if you want your car to be really clean, you have to clean it yourself."

How did your upbringing and early career influence your sense of entrepreneurship?

David Chung: The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. My mother was a very driven entrepreneur and I grew up in that environment all my life. After school I never worked for anyone else. I started a small store called DC Enterprise, and from there I got into fashion. Coming from fashion, I started studying skin care brands and launched the Cosmetic World store. From there I went to Englewood Lab, contract manufacturing and research and development, and then back to the brand side at Farmacy.

The story continues

Now we have ILabs and a few more brands coming out. I also just bought a company, a mental wellness company called Amare.

Your career has involved retail and brand building. Was production always part of a larger vision?

DC: When I launched 3Labs Skincare, we used a third-party contract manufacturer and always had shipping delays. Quality was always an issue. We moved to another manufacturer and there were the same problems, and that's how I got into manufacturing.

I started an in-house IT company and bought a packaging company called Mortar Packaging. We were vertically integrated so I could do it all in-house as a complete turnkey service. Now I work with many different brands to support their innovations, concepts and ideas, so that they too can become successful.

You acquired Amare Global, a direct-to-consumer wellness brand, last year. What are your thoughts on the intersection of beauty and wellness?

Amare Global is a mental health company that started long before the pandemic. I became passionate about it because I wanted to give them my experience of over 30 years. This is an opportunity for me to work together and help them become successful, and to help people with the products. The products are natural and are intended to work on the gut-brain axis to make you not only mentally healthy, but physically healthy as well. It's a completely different job than anything else I've done.

How you look, how you feel: mental well-being encompasses it all. In our body these are all directly connected to each other. We will look for more innovative ways to work on mental health. It is important to take care of our brains as well as the muscles in your body.

You've created a business that allows you to build your brand without even leaving the building. How do you stay aligned with the culture and pace of the market?

I am surrounded by people who know what is going on and who are always involved. And I'm not a typical contract manufacturer. I've worked in retail, so working with Sephora was different because I was a merchant. I've done branding, so I know what it's like to run branding. I can advise, guide and guide all these matters and ensure that everything runs smoothly. Most other contract manufacturers can make products for you, but they don't know the whole picture.

What is your philosophy on team building and how would you describe your leadership style? How has this evolved over the course of your career?

My philosophy is that everything we do is about people. They are people who make you successful or make you fail. When you have talented people around you, it's important that you make sure they are taken care of.

As a businessman, every time I've done poorly, I challenge myself and try to come back and do better. We all have problems, problems, headaches from employees or people who have your back. I went crazy when things bothered me. You get upset. If it happens now, I'll make sure it doesn't happen again; we deploy systems to prevent errors. As you do business through more and more changes, you become wiser.

You recently launched The Rootist, which is billed as kombucha for hair. What technologies are most exciting to you from an ingredients perspective?

We're evaluating innovation around clean beauty and natural products, and we're also looking at more scientific brands that have more stem cells or peptides, which is completely different. What I see now among all this is the idea of ​​the microbiome, fermentation, probiotics, postbiotics - the whole area is growing and there are a lot more opportunities there.

After your successful departure from Farmacy, what made you want to build a brand again? How has your approach to brand building changed??

I'm going to work until I die. I just like to work. To me, building a business is nothing more than a hiker climbing Mount Everest. It's not about how much money I make; I really enjoy being part of it: coming up with ideas, bringing the team together.

I learned a lot from Farmacy, and with the Rootist I wanted to start putting a lot of money behind the innovation. We have something that we're launching next year that we've never seen in the market, and I want us to be a company that does things first.

How have you seen consumers evolve?

The pandemic turned everything upside down, and now it's back. Color cosmetics used to be a complete disaster because no one was going out, and now it's coming back extremely quickly - faster than before the pandemic. But there is a lot of beauty and people get confused. So what we need to do is simplify: simple packaging, simple brand stories, and it has to work. The consumer is extremely smart and knows what is a good product and what is not. The future must be much more about simplicity, and that is the direction consumers are heading.

What is the most valuable lesson you have learned in business?

In business and everything else in life, the secret recipe starts with reputation. Promise less and deliver more. Make sure you have a good reputation. All I have done is make sure my clients are taken care of.

What's your favorite skincare product you've ever made?

I have a new product that I developed specifically for personal use. As I get older, I get dark spots and sun damage. My chemists in Korea made me a vitamin C serum, and it really works. I asked them if we could market it, and they said we had to charge $2,000 each because of the raw material costs. I just started it and it's great. I told them I would try it for six months and if it got rid of my dark spots, I would sell this serum for $10,000 each.

The best of WWD