The vegan beauty industry has been experiencing a significant boom, with consumers increasingly demanding ethical and sustainable alternatives to traditional beauty products. According to a report by Grand View Research, the global vegan cosmetics market is projected to reach $26.16 billion by 2030, growing by a CAGR of 6.3%, and driven by a rising consciousness surrounding animal welfare, environmental concerns, and a desire for transparency in product formulations. According to data received from Spate, the hashtag #veganmakeup garners 3.1K average weekly views on TikTok, growing by +48.3% weekly, with vegan beauty garnering up to 1.2K average monthly searches. Yet, behind the surge in popularity lies a complex ecosystem of supply chain challenges, manufacturing concerns, and marketing hurdles that vegan beauty brands must navigate.
With consumers becoming more conscientious than ever about what goes into the products they use, vegan beauty has emerged as one of the most sought-after categories. Vegan cosmetics refer to products free from any animal-derived ingredients, including common substances such as beeswax, lanolin, collagen, and carmine. Interestingly, the market has seen more mainstream players entering the vegan beauty space. While brands like The Body Shop are being announced as the first global beauty brand with 100% vegan portfolio certified by The Vegan Society, others like Hourglass and Cover FX have made bold statements about transitioning or already offering vegan product lines, aiming to tap into the rapidly growing segment. The beauty giant L’Oréal has also been active in expanding its vegan-friendly portfolio through acquisitions, including brands like Garnier Bio and Urban Decay. Despite this popularity, building a successful vegan beauty brand requires navigating several complexities, particularly regarding sourcing, manufacturing, and meeting regulatory standards.
Ethical Sourcing: A Delicate Balancing Act
One of the primary challenges for vegan beauty brands lies in the sourcing and procurement of ingredients. Unlike traditional beauty brands that may rely on animal-derived ingredients, vegan brands must ensure that every ingredient is plant-based or synthetic, without compromising efficacy. This demand for ethical sourcing creates a web of complexities, particularly as brands scale globally. Take grace & stella, a vegan beauty brand known for its cruelty-free ethos and for recently hitting over $1 million in sales on Prime Day. Erin Mawhinney, Content Marketing Manager, explained that the brand works closely with its suppliers to guarantee no animal by-products are used in its formulations. This requires an intricate understanding of the supply chain at every stage, from ingredient sourcing to final production. “We collaborate with our suppliers to ensure that not only are our ingredients vegan, but also that the process through which they are sourced aligns with our ethical commitments like being cruelty-free,” Mawhinney says to BeautyMatter.
However, this level of transparency and commitment presents business challenges. For instance, supply shortages and delays can impact production schedules, as vegan brands are limited in the alternatives they can use when a key ingredient is unavailable. As Nakery Beauty’s founder, Liz Folce, noted to BeautyMatter, maintaining ethical standards sometimes means choosing to be out of stock rather than compromising on ingredient integrity. “For us, we have made the choice to be out of stock for up to six months, rather than change any ingredient in a product,” Folce says, demonstrating the trade-off that many vegan brands must navigate—balancing consumer demand with ethical practices and the operational risks that accompany them.
Many cosmetic ingredients that are essential for product texture, longevity, and performance, such as certain waxes, colorants, and oils, traditionally come from animals. Finding plant-based or synthetic alternatives often involves a more costly and time-consuming process. According to FoodNavigator, Europe, vegan does not always mean cruelty free or free from animals, meaning that a surprising number of beauty products, even those marketed as vegan, can inadvertently include trace amounts of animal-derived ingredients due to contamination or the complexity of global supply chains. Brands like Glossier, however, have gone back to reformulating some of its vegan beauty products, including the Balm Dotcom, which was firstly nonvegan, then developed as vegan, and now back to its initial nonvegan formulation.
Vegan beauty products are often praised for their ethical approach and minimal ingredient lists, but the performance comparison with nonvegan products can be complex. According to experts at GreenBeard Grooming, vegan beauty products often use high-quality plant-based ingredients, which can offer unique benefits such as antioxidant properties and increased bioavailability, while nonvegan products may contain animal-derived ingredients that people might be allergic to. Furthermore, vegan products are generally free from animal-derived ingredients like beeswax and lanolin, which can be potential irritants for sensitive skin, making vegan products a good choice for those with sensitive or allergy-prone skin. To ensure product integrity, vegan beauty brands like grace & stella and Nakery Beauty are forming close relationships with trusted suppliers, and are regularly auditing their supply chains to avoid ingredient contamination.
Supply Chain Disruptions: The Hidden Cost of Sustainability
Supply chain disruptions have become increasingly common in the beauty industry, particularly for vegan brands that rely on specific plant-based ingredients. The global supply chain, already strained by factors such as climate change and geopolitical instability, poses a unique challenge to vegan beauty brands trying to scale without compromising their ethical values. Many vegan beauty brands source ingredients from different parts of the world, which not only makes logistics more complex but also increases the risk of supply chain vulnerabilities.
Speaking to BeautyMatter, grace & stella’s Supply Chain Manager, Ya Hsin Chen, pointed out the need for strategic agility when sourcing ingredients globally. The brand imports materials from regions such as China and the US, and logistics planning often involves making decisions on whether to ship by sea or air, depending on cost, time sensitivity, and environmental considerations. “This complex supply chain process, compounded by varying ingredient regulations across countries, means that companies must constantly adapt to shifting conditions,” Chen says. “Vegan beauty brands like ours, in particular, face heightened pressure, as many of the plant-based ingredients they rely on are susceptible to climate-induced shortages or delays.”
Beyond logistics, the rising cost of sustainable ingredients adds another layer of complexity. From a financial perspective, running a vegan-focused beauty brand can be both rewarding and challenging. On the one hand, the demand for vegan beauty products is rising, and consumers are willing to pay a premium for ethical products. On the other hand, production costs may be higher than those for conventional beauty products, due to the cost of plant-based ingredients, the need for third-party certifications, and the complexity of sourcing from ethical suppliers. This price differential often translates to higher retail prices, which may limit a brand’s market reach, particularly among price-sensitive consumers.
In terms of manufacturing, vegan beauty brands face an uphill battle. Traditional beauty product formulations have long relied on animal-derived ingredients that are relatively easy to source and work with. Alternatives to these ingredients often require new manufacturing techniques, specialized equipment, or reformulations that affect product performance. Folce at Nakery Beauty emphasized the difficulty of navigating the landscape of trending ingredients. Vegan beauty brands often face pressure to adopt popular ingredients like snail mucin, but Folce refuses these trends in favor of vegan alternatives such as peptides derived from plants. “Just because a trendy ingredient like snail mucin is all the rage doesn’t mean it’s the best option. We can achieve the same—if not better—results with plant-derived alternatives,” she explains. This balancing act—between maintaining product efficacy and staying aligned with vegan values—presents a significant challenge, particularly for indie brands competing against larger, well-established players in the beauty space. It also requires brands to heavily invest in consumer education, helping customers understand that vegan alternatives can be just as effective, if not superior, to animal-derived ingredients.
There is also the issue of ethical expectations and fast-paced demands within the supply chain landscape. As vegan beauty grows in popularity, consumer expectations continue to evolve. Shoppers, today, want it all— ethical ingredients, sustainable packaging, and fast delivery. However, meeting these expectations often creates tensions for vegan beauty brands, especially in terms of the environmental impact of logistics. For brands like grace & stella, which focus heavily on e-commerce, the demand for fast shipping has forced them to carefully evaluate their environmental footprint. Mawhinney pointed out that while consumers want quick delivery, faster shipping methods often result in higher carbon emissions. “We are constantly trying to educate our customers about the environmental impact of fast delivery, and we’re working with logistics partners to find the balance between speed and sustainability,” she says.
However, grace & stella have gone into a long-term partnership with the logistics company, ShipTop, which it said afforded them the opportunity to grow immediately into millions of dollars. Through its rapid delivery through ShipTop, data at grace & stella showed that it grew to over $1 million in sales per day in the US during Prime Day, over $400,000 in sales per day in Canada during Prime Day, 1,160% growth on Amazon Prime Day, and ranked as the #1 in the beauty category in Canada and #8 in the US on Prime Day. “We work with them as a third-party logistics company in charge of storage and inventory, as well as helping with inventory management, fulfillment of direct consumer orders to customers; that focus is how we helped them grow to millions as a vegan beauty brand, while also responding to rapid consumer demand,” Ash Jamshidpour, founder and CEO of ShipTop, says to BeautyMatter. This consumer paradox—where ethical consumption is prioritized but convenience is still expected—has caused vegan beauty brands to continuously innovate in their operations, finding ways to meet consumer demand without sacrificing their sustainability goals.
Certification and Consumer Trust
To build credibility in the vegan beauty space, brands are learning to navigate a complex web of certifications and regulatory standards, especially because consumers can be increasingly skeptical of brands that make “vegan” claims without verifiable proof. Therefore, obtaining certifications from recognized bodies, such as The Vegan Society, PETA, or Certified Vegan, has become essential for brand legitimacy. However, obtaining these certifications isn’t always straightforward or affordable. The certification process can be lengthy, requiring extensive product testing and audits of supply chains to ensure there are no hidden animal-derived ingredients or testing practices involved.
A significant issue with the vegan beauty market is “greenwashing,” where brands falsely market themselves as eco-friendly or vegan without genuinely adhering to those values. Consumers are becoming savvier and demand transparency, pushing brands to go beyond simple marketing claims and provide detailed ingredient lists, sourcing information, and even carbon footprint data. According to a KPMG report, 33% of respondents said they were skeptical of green labels and sustainability claims, while a similar amount (28%) admitted to struggling to know what products were green or sustainable due to inconsistent labeling.
Biotech: The Future of Vegan Ingredient Sourcing?
According to experts, one potential solution to these formulation challenges lies in biotech, which is revolutionizing the way vegan beauty brands approach ingredient sourcing. By creating “nature-identical” ingredients in labs, biotech offers the potential for vegan beauty brands to bypass some of the traditional supply chain obstacles while maintaining their ethical commitments.
Akemi Ooka, Vice President of Supply Chain and Sustainability at the Independent Beauty Association, highlighted biotech’s role as an emerging frontier for beauty brands. She noted that biotech can replicate the properties of ingredients like collagen and keratin without the need for animal-based sourcing. “There are companies today creating materials that are nature-identical or very similar to the materials with the properties that beauty brands are looking for, and they can be produced virtually anywhere,” Ooka tells BeautyMatter.
While the biotech industry is still in its infancy, the potential it holds for vegan beauty brands is immense. “Biotech could offer a way to reduce reliance on geographically specific crops, which are often affected by climate change, and provide a more sustainable, cost-effective solution to ingredient sourcing,” Ooka continues, “and for vegan beauty brands seeking to scale, biotech could be a game-changer, reducing supply chain risks while still maintaining high-performance formulations.” This venture, however, is likely to be expensive due to ingredient sourcing and formulation, requiring heavy investments that make products accessible and affordable due to widespread adoption.
Running a vegan beauty brand is a complex endeavor that requires balancing ethical values with practical business considerations. While consumer demand for vegan products continues to grow, brands must navigate a range of challenges, from supply chain transparency and manufacturing hurdles to maintaining trust through certification and avoiding greenwashing. The financial costs of running a vegan brand can be steep, but for those that succeed the rewards are clear—a loyal, ethically minded customer base that values sustainability and transparency. As the market continues to grow, innovation in both products and practices will be key to thriving in the competitive world of vegan beauty. The future will likely see more emphasis on biotechnology and sustainable logistics, but the core challenge remains—delivering high-performance, ethical beauty products while navigating the unique operational hurdles that come with running a vegan brand.
