by Although he is behind some of the most vibrant ideas in beauty, David Chung prefers to keep a low profile.
The man behind dozens of beauty businesses – none of which bears his name – runs his end-to-end beauty operation in an inconspicuous office building in Mahwah, NJ
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But don’t let the face fool you. Inside, it’s a real beauty.
Cosmetic chemists, packaging manufacturers and marketing experts work in symphony at Chung’s ILabs, a contract manufacturer-slash-beauty incubator that can support an idea from inception and creation to product development, packaging and marketing. It’s also home to The Rootist, which unveiled Chung’s Sephora-exclusive haircare brand earlier this year, following the sale of Farmacy, the skincare brand he founded, to Procter & Gamble in 2021.
“We want to be an innovation company,” Chung said, speaking in a conference room alongside the products he creates, both for his own brands and as a manufacturer. The room seems to have an archive of beauty’s greatest hits, from Supergoop sunscreens to Farmacy’s Cleansing Balm.
No wonder when he bought the building, he renovated C-level offices to turn them into the playground of cosmic chemistry. It also built its own in-house IT company, brought in packaging manufacturers with on-site headquarters and can deliver an entire brand without ever leaving the ground.
Chung’s differentiator is that he still thinks like a merchant, brand founder and product creator. “All these things happened along the way because I couldn’t find someone who was doing them the way I wanted to do them,” Chung said. “I’m a perfectionist. There is a saying, if you want your car to be 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 didn’t work for anyone else. I started a small retail store called DC Enterprise, and from there, started in fashion. From fashion, I started studying skin care brands, and launched the Cosmetic World retail store. From there, I went to Englewood Lab, contract manufacturing and research and development, then back to the brand side with Farmacy.
Now, we have ILabs, and some other brands are coming out. I also bought a company, a mental wellness company called Amare.
Your career has been in retail and brand building. Has manufacturing always been part of a larger vision?
DC: When I launched 3Labs Skincare, we were using a third party contract manufacturer, and the shipment was always delayed. Quality has always been an issue. We moved to another manufacturer and had the same issues, and that’s how I ended up in manufacturing.
I launched an internal IT company, and bought a packaging company called Mortar Packaging. We were vertically integrated so I could do it internally as a full integer service. Now, I am working with many different brands to support their innovations, concepts and ideas so that they can be successful as well.
You acquired Amare Global, a direct-to-consumer wellness brand, last year. How are you thinking about the intersection of beauty and wellness?
Amare Global is a mental wellness company that started long before the pandemic. I got passionate about it because I wanted to give them my 30-plus years of experience. This is an opportunity for me to partner and help them be successful, and help people with the products. The products are natural, and are meant to work on the gut-brain axis to make you not only mentally healthy, but physically healthy as well. It’s a very different business from anything else I’ve done.
How you look, how you feel – mental wellbeing covers it all. In our bodies, all of those are directly connected. We are going to start looking at more innovative ways of working on mental health. It is important to take care of our brain as much as you take care of the muscles in your body.
You’ve created a business that allows you to build a brand without even leaving the building. How do you stay attuned to the culture and speed of the market?
I am surrounded by people who know what is going on, and are always involved. And I’m not a typical contract manufacturer. I’ve done retail, so working with Sephora was different because I’m a merchant. I’ve done branding, so I know what it’s like to run a brand. All these things I can advise, guide and make sure everything is streamlined. 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 it evolved over the course of your career?
My philosophy is that everything we do is about people. They are the people who will make you succeed, or make you fail. When you are surrounded by talented people, it is important that you make sure they are taken care of.
As a businessman, I challenge myself every time I have done badly, and I try to come back and do it better. We all have issues, problems, headaches with employees or people getting behind your back. I went crazy when things upset me. You get upset. Now, when it happens, I make sure it doesn’t happen again; we implemented systems to prevent mistakes. As you do business through more and more change, you become wiser.
You recently launched The Rootist, which is billed as kombucha for hair. In terms of content, which technologies are most exciting to you?
We evaluate innovation in clean beauty and natural products, and we also look at more science-driven brands with more stem cells or peptides, which are completely different. What I see right now between all of that is the idea of the microbiome, fermentation, probiotics, post-biology – the whole area is growing and there’s a lot more opportunity.
After your successful exit with 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 love to work. Building a company, to me, is not like a hiker climbing Mount Everest. It’s not about how much money I make; I love being a 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 by putting a lot of money behind the innovation. We have something that we’re launching next year that we’ve never seen done in the market, and I want to be a company that does things first.
How are consumers evolving?
The pandemic turned everything upside down, and now, it’s back. Color cosmetics used to be a total disaster because no one was going away, and now it’s coming back incredibly fast – faster than before the pandemic. But there’s a lot of beauty out there, and people are getting lost. So what we need to do is simplify it: simple packaging, simple brand stories, and it has to work. The consumer is very smart, and they know what is a good product and what is not. The future needs to be much more about simplicity, and that’s the direction the consumer is heading.
What is the most valuable lesson you have learned in business?
In business and in anything else in life, the secret recipe starts with a good reputation. Underpromise and overdeliver. Make sure you have a good reputation – I just make sure my clients are taken care of.
What is your favorite skin care product you have ever used?
I have a new product that I have developed just for my 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 would have to charge $2,000 per unit because of the raw material costs. I just started using it, and it’s great. I told them I would try it for six months and if it gets rid of my dark spots, I will sell this serum for $10,000 each.
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