The Chemistry Behind Every Beauty Brand: Dr. Dominika Andrys on What Actually Makes a Product Work

Every beauty brand you scroll past on Instagram had to start somewhere in a lab, not a mood board. Long before the packaging, the founder story, or the ad spend, someone had to actually make the product work on skin. That part rarely gets talked about, and honestly, most people building a beauty brand for the first time don't even know it exists.

Our guest today has spent 15 years doing exactly that job for hundreds of brands. Dr. Dominika Andrys holds a PhD in plant biotechnology and a patent on a lavender based cosmetic preservative system. She's the founder of Beauty Brand Formula and Beauty Brand Hub, and she also serves as Chief Scientific Officer at Zelenia Skincare in New Zealand.

She's formulated everything from skincare and hair care to oral care, pet care, household products, and even car care. When we asked her how wide her range really goes, her answer was basically "I've been challenged many times, and yeah, I can do it."

Dominika also turned 15 years of consulting knowledge into a book called Beyond Beauty, a launch playbook for founders who want to understand the science before they touch the branding. In this conversation, she walks through what a formula actually contains, why AI still can't replace a chemist in the lab, and the launch mistakes she sees founders make again and again.

Key Takeaways: What Actually Makes a Beauty Brand Work

The Product Comes Before the Brand:

• Formulation starts with a client brief covering mission, vision, and the exact texture and efficacy the brand wants
• Every formula goes through "paper formulation" first, then lab samples, then client feedback rounds before anything is final
• Stability testing runs for three months at 45 degrees Celsius as an accelerated way to predict how a product holds up over one to two years on the shelf

Marketing Can't Save a Bad Product:

• On average, a person needs to see an advert eight times before deciding to purchase
• Fake or oversaturated marketing might drive first sales, but without real efficacy there's no repeat purchase
• Word of mouth from real people is still, in Dominika's words, the best marketing there is

AI Can Brainstorm, But It Can't Formulate:

• Dominika now sees two AI-formulated briefs a week from clients, up from roughly twice a year just two to three years ago
• AI can suggest ingredients and even output a formula with percentages, but she says most of those formulas simply don't hold together
• A physical sample still has to be made, tested, and adjusted by a human chemist before anything is stable enough to launch

Q: In one line, how would you describe what you actually do?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: In few sentences I think is very hard because it's quite complex. My role is quite complex but if I would say in one line is helping beauty brand owners to bring their vision to life by developing different type of products from skincare, hair care, oral care to even pet care, household products and even car care products. So wide range of portfolio, I'm not focusing only on skincare formulations but anything that needs development I can do it basically. So I was challenged many times and yeah, I can do it.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: A specialist who refuses to be boxed into one category becomes the person every category calls when they're stuck.

Q: What does a cosmetic scientist actually do that founders never see?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: I think there is a lot of behind the scenes. Once you get brief from the client, cosmetic chemists basically do a lot of research to find suitable ingredients that will meet those requirements. Every year there are new launches, new technologies. I think cosmetic chemist sometimes might be not appreciated because to be honest everything starts from formulation. Beauty brand owners have their vision, their branding is their idea, but formulation is a big part of success of beauty brand owners.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Branding sells the story. Formulation decides whether the story survives contact with actual skin.

Q: Is it the product or the branding that's made Korean beauty brands so successful globally?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: I think it's mixture because some products are very good and effective but I would say those products slightly more expensive, because with the formulation cost comes the cost of the product. Also there is a lot of scam product and oversaturated marketing, not telling exactly the truth. I tested myself few of those trendy products on TikTok or Instagram and I don't see any efficacy really. So a lot of them are marketing gimmick, but some of them are also doing well.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Virality gets a product noticed once. Concentration and formulation cost decide if anyone repurchases it.

Q: Can you walk us through the framework from your book, from brief to launch?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: Everything starts from the brief from the customer, stating the mission, vision, purpose of the brand. Once I have the brief I do the research, suggest ingredients, go to the lab and make the product. Once the formula is approved I run stability testing, because even if you have stable formulation in the laboratory it doesn't mean it will be stable for a period of time. Then packaging has to be compliant with regulatory guidelines, and then it's launching and right marketing. It sounds like a few easy steps but there might be challenges, like missing one letter in your packaging design. Believe me this has happened, you check the packaging ten times, then it comes in 10,000 units printed and you see the mistake.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: The first product is always the hardest. Every mistake you survive on product one becomes a shortcut on product five.

Q: How should founders think about naming their brand?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: I feel there is no wrong or right, because if a beauty brand owner came up with the name and it's associated to their personal journey, there is no right or wrong. There are some names that you hear first time and think this is weird, but then once you hear it all over again it's just growing on you. I feel like it's worth checking if there's any translation in a different language, because in English it might sound nice but in a different language might have a very negative meaning.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: A name doesn't need to be perfect on day one. It needs to survive repetition until it becomes familiar.

Q: How has social media changed the way beauty founders build their brand story?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: Last few years we see more than just the personal story. Beauty brand owners have to show up on social media and show some failures, not only positive things. For example with packaging, if the print comes wrong, some brand owners actually decided to show that on social media, and that really resonates with the audience. I think the customer feels like they're part of the story because they follow all the steps of creating the brand or the product.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: People don't trust perfect anymore. They trust brands that let them watch the mistakes happen in real time.

Q: What's a launch mistake you'd warn founders about, something that looks fine on paper but actually wastes budget?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: I think one of the things is that the marketing speaks more than the product actually does. On average a human has to see eight times an advert of something before they make a decision about the purchase. Many brands spend a lot of money on marketing, but if the product is not performing they will not have the repeat purchase. I think some of the mistakes brand owners do is not performing market research. Sometimes brand owners just combine too many things in one product and communicate that the product does everything, instead of focusing on some specific concern for the targeted group of customers.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: A product that claims to fix everything usually convinces no one of anything.

Q: How do you separate founders who know exactly what they want from founders who don't?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: I kind of divide clients into two groups. One group knows exactly what they want, they have the story, the ingredients they would like to use, and they come with a brief that's ten pages long. I just have to create a formula, go to the lab, make a sample, and it's done. The second group just wants to create a beauty brand but doesn't really know what exactly they want, sometimes not even what type of product, moisturizer, face mist, cleanser. It's my role to guide them and ask the right questions to clarify the vision in their head.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Half of formulation is chemistry. The other half is translating a vague feeling into an actual brief.

Q: Has AI actually impacted how beauty products get made?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: I think yes definitely, a little. I'm getting more and more brand strategy vision from my customers and I can tell it's from AI. I'm not using AI to formulate the products because I think it's still not there, but to brainstorm a little bit I think AI can come with great ideas. There are tools where if you have the INCI name of an ingredient it will give you information on what raw material manufacturer you can get it from. If you ask AI to formulate a product and give you percentages, it will do that. But it's still not right in my view.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: AI can write you a formula. It just can't tell you it separated in the bottle three weeks later.

Q: You mentioned clients are now showing up with AI-generated formulas. How often does that happen?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: I would say like three two years ago I had clients maybe twice a year coming to me with a formula, but last year it was more frequent, like every maybe three months, and now I'm actually having two clients every week coming with a ready formula. And I'm like, this will not work, sorry, but this will not work. I have a lot of comments always to that formula. Maybe at some point AI will be able to give you a formula that holds together and is stable. There is hope, and I'm pretty sure it will happen at some point, but still you need a chemist to make a physical sample, to test the product, to see the texture, to see the appearance.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Two AI formulas a week means the tools got confident faster than they got correct.

Q: For a young founder, what actually goes into a formula? What's the difference between an emulsifier and an active?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: That depends really on the product type. If you have a face mist there will not be any emulsifiers, there might be a solubilizer which will solubilize fragrance into the water. Face mist might be 90, maybe even 95 percent water. Emulsifiers you use in emulsion type products, any moisturizer. There are new technologies now, ingredients that are hard to tell if they're rheology modifiers or have combined functionality. You add active ingredients below 30 degrees, because most actives are recommended to be added below that temperature, and then preservative, and maybe fragrance if you want scent.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: A moisturizer isn't one ingredient doing one job. It's five or six ingredients negotiating a truce at the right temperature.

Q: Why does stability testing matter so much, and how do brands avoid waiting a full year to launch?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: Every product should go through stability testing to make sure that after one or two years on the shelf it remains the same look as freshly made. Stability testing is where you keep the product for a long period, like one year or two years, and see whether it's changing, that's your room temperature sample. But brands cannot wait one year, that's why in cosmetic chemistry we call it accelerated stability testing. You place the sample in an incubator at 45 degrees, the temperature accelerates the condition, and you run stability testing usually for three months. You check every week, every fortnight, once a month, and if the product isn't changing texture or separating, you can be confident it will be stable on the shelf.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Three months in a hot box tells you what one year on a shelf would have told you anyway, just before your brand runs out of runway.

Q: One ingredient trend you feel has been completely overrated in the last two years?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: I think topical collagen, which is still trending kind of like. Sorry again, I wanted to do an explanation but okay.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: If an ingredient needs eight explainer videos to justify itself, it's probably marketing, not chemistry.

Q: One skill every founder needs but very few have?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: I think knowing what to ignore in a crowded environment of overinformation. That's with AI it's getting even more important, that skill is getting even more important.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: In a world where everyone has access to the same information, the edge belongs to whoever filters fastest.

Q: One ingredient you feel is very underrated?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: That's a tricky one. I think actually Azelaic acid.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: The best ingredients are rarely the loudest ones on your feed.

Final Thoughts: The Formula Is the Foundation

Dominika's take on word of mouth: "I still believe there is no better marketing than word of mouth and recommendation through real people from people that you know."

The bottom line: Every beauty brand founder eventually learns the same lesson Dominika has watched play out hundreds of times. The story, the name, and the packaging matter, but none of it survives if the product doesn't actually work on someone's skin. Marketing can buy a first sale. It cannot manufacture a second one.

That's why her framework keeps circling back to the unglamorous parts, the brief, the paper formulation, the lab samples, the accelerated stability testing at 45 degrees for three months. None of it is exciting on social media, but it's the reason some brands last past their first product drop and others quietly disappear after one bad batch.

AI is already changing the front end of this process, brainstorming names, drafting briefs, even spitting out formulas with percentages attached. But as Dominika points out, two founders a week are now walking in with AI-generated formulas that simply don't hold together in a bottle. The chemistry hasn't caught up to the confidence yet. For now, the physical sample still has to be made and tested by a human who knows what stability actually looks like under a microscope, not just on paper.

Q: How can people connect with you and learn more about Beauty Brand Formula and your book?

Dr. Dominika Andrys: For all our listeners, if you're building or planning to build a cosmetic brand or thinking about it, please check out my book Beyond Beauty, and you can follow my work, I'll be tagged on all socials wherever you're seeing this podcast, all links are in the description.

Final words: A beauty brand doesn't start with a logo or a launch date. It starts with a formula that actually does what it claims to do, tested long enough to prove it. Everything else, the story, the branding, the social proof, is built on top of that foundation. Get the formula wrong and no amount of marketing will save the repeat customer you needed to keep the brand alive.

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