Launch Date: April 2026

Geography: London, United Kingdom

Founder: Lauren Bowker, Founder + CEO

2026 Full Year Projected Revenue: Under $2M, according to industry estimates

Primary Category: Makeup

Other Category: Skincare

Funding: Angel Investment

Primary Distribution Channel: DTC

Other Distribution Channel: Prestige

2026 Projected Offline Distribution Points: 3

Exist was born from a belief that the future of beauty will not be defined by more products but by better materials. Founded by Lauren Bowker, the material innovator behind THEUNSEEN, Exist is the evolution of 15 years of pioneering work creating world-first technologies across industries from space exploration to healthcare.

After years of pushing the boundaries of experimental beauty, Lauren saw an opportunity to transform color cosmetics at its foundation: the materials themselves. Exist creates high-performance, everyday beauty powered by patented material science, lab-grown bio technologies, renewable clean chemistry, and circular design. Our mission is to move the industry beyond traditional ingredients and outdated systems by building products that perform with purpose and return to the loop.

Designed for the next generation of consumers, Exist combines scientific innovation with emotional connection, proving that sustainability does not mean sacrifice and the future of beauty can be both responsible and extraordinary. Because to exist, as you are, is enough, and the products we choose every day have the power to shape a more beautiful future.

Insights: Lauren Bowker, Founder +  CEO

Why now and why you?

Beauty is at a turning point. Consumers are demanding more transparency, higher performance, and greater responsibility, but much of the industry is still built on materials and systems created for a different era. The next revolution in beauty will not come from another trend; it will come from reimagining what products are made from.

That is why Exist was created now.

For the past 15 years, I have worked at the intersection of science, design, and human behavior, creating world-first materials that respond to the world around us, from innovations explored in space to technologies developed across healthcare and beauty.

With Theunseen, I proved that material science could create wonder, emotion, and entirely new experiences in beauty. Exist is the next evolution: taking that pioneering approach and scaling it into high-performance, everyday products that can create measurable change.

We are not trying to make beauty look different. We are rebuilding what beauty is made of. Because the future of the industry belongs to brands that combine performance, responsibility, and imagination, and Exist was built to lead that shift.

What fuels your competitive advantage?

Our competitive advantage comes from combining deep scientific expertise with world-class design, innovation, and the ability to commercialize technologies that are difficult for others to replicate. For over 15 years, I have built proprietary materials and technologies at the intersection of biotechnology, material science, and design. This gives Exist access to innovations beyond conventional cosmetic ingredient development, including Certified Space Technology, bio-grown actives, and advanced circular materials.

We don’t simply formulate products; we engineer complete systems. Spacelip, for example, combines a world-first, space-derived biotechnology with the world’s first fully metal, precision-engineered refillable lip balm system, creating innovation across both formula and packaging.

Equally important is our ability to translate complex science into products and stories that people genuinely connect with. By combining scientific innovation with design, emotion, and storytelling, we transform breakthrough technologies into desirable luxury experiences that consumers can understand, trust, and aspire to own. Our approach is protected by specialist know-how, strategic partnerships, and a growing intellectual property portfolio, creating meaningful barriers to entry. Together, this enables us to launch innovations that are both technically differentiated and commercially relevant.

As biotechnology reshapes the beauty industry, Exist is uniquely positioned to bridge scientific discovery and consumer desire, creating products that competitors cannot easily copy and consumers cannot find anywhere else.

What’s your proudest accomplishment to date? 

Bringing the world’s first Algae Black pigment, bio-based, to beauty.

What is the one thing you wish someone had told you?

Chasing the art is more powerful than chasing the money. You can be both a master of creativity and business. The two don't have to sit separately.

What would you tell your past self before starting this journey?

Sometimes the best thing to do is to let something go and remake it.

What does success look like in the next 3-5 years? 

In the next 3-5 years, success means proving that a new model for beauty is possible.

Our ambition is for Exist to become the leading material science beauty company, redefining color cosmetics through high-performance products built from responsible technologies rather than traditional systems. Success means scaling globally, building a community that believes beauty can be both expressive and conscious, and creating products that earn a permanent place in people’s everyday routines.

Beyond commercial growth, we want to demonstrate that circularity can work at scale: from lab-grown color technologies and renewable chemistry to refillable systems and materials designed to return to the loop.

Ultimately, success is changing the conversation from how beauty looks to what beauty is made from. In five years, we want Exist to be recognized as the brand that helped move the industry into its next era, where performance, sustainability, and imagination exist together.

What's one industry trend that is overhyped, and what's being overlooked? 

Overhyped: innovation. Overlooked: innovation.

How do you think the industry needs to evolve?

The beauty industry needs to evolve by taking greater accountability for the materials it chooses and the systems it creates. For too long, responsibility has been placed on consumers to make better choices, but the biggest opportunity for change sits at the brand level. We need to actively design better from the beginning, choosing materials, ingredients, and processes that reduce impact without compromising performance or creativity.

The next era of beauty will not be defined by simply creating more products. It will be shaped by smarter material choices, transparency, innovation, and circular systems that consider a product’s entire journey. Sustainability should not be an afterthought or a marketing layer added at the end. It needs to become part of the foundation of how we invent, formulate, manufacture, and scale.

Beauty has always had the power to influence culture. Now it has the opportunity to use that influence to build a more responsible future.

If you could wave a magic wand, what one wish would you make for your business?

If I could wave a magic wand, I would create a faster pathway for responsible material innovation to reach the beauty industry. There are incredible advances happening across biotechnology, material science, and green chemistry, but the systems that approve and adopt new materials have not always evolved at the same pace as the science.

My wish would be for greater collaboration between innovators, brands, and regulators, creating frameworks that continue to protect consumers while accelerating the adoption of safer, more sustainable alternatives. The future of beauty depends on our ability to replace outdated materials with better ones, and that requires the entire ecosystem to evolve.

For Exist, success means helping prove that next-generation materials can deliver performance, sustainability, and creativity at scale, opening the door for a new era of beauty.