Behind the scenes at the creation stage of some of Australia’s best-known beauty brands are pH Factor’s Rita Sellars and Melinda Tizzone. Hannah Gay sat down with the local contract manufacturers to discuss the state of the sector, regulation, greenwashing, and the realities of creating a beauty product.
For 15 years, Rita Sellars has led pH Factor – a Sydney-based personal and home care product manufacturer, overseeing product creation from development stage through to providing training and education to emerging brands. The multi-accredited chemist and biochemist regularly speaks at international conferences on key topics ranging from beauty marketing, to sustainability and packaging. Rita’s right-hand is seasoned skincare expert, Melinda Tizzone, whose background extends from retailing through to education, now overseeing product development as the company’s General Manager.
Rita and Melinda can name-drop because chances are, if you’ve heard of the brand, pH Factor have collaborated with them. Yet, professional brands make up a mere 10% of those they work with. The pair field daily enquiries from new and existing clients hoping ph Factor will help them launch the next big thing in beauty.
Contract manufacturers like pH Factor provide direction to clients seeking to create a product, oftentimes from scratch. Rita describes her role as “tech support”, aiding brands on the logistical considerations surrounding anything from ingredient use to packaging. In short, she provides a sense check between the client and the manufacturer. She substantiates claims written on product packaging, keeping brands accountable. Regular consumer trials are also run, leaning on a database in the thousands to provide honest feedback on their experiences using a formula.
In 2025, the global beauty marketplace is saturated by competition. For the majority of newcomer brands, the reality of getting a finished product onto shelves is a far cry from what appears on the drawing board. While we experienced a surge of “indie beauty brands” a decade ago, Rita warns few are still standing. The issue often comes down to batch sizes, with start-ups holding unrealistic expectations on how many units are likely to sell their first year. “L’Oreal and Unilever can make a million units, but your everyday Priceline or Chemist Warehouse brand is making 1000-5000 units maximum.”
Working with traditional contract manufacturers, Rita explains, can be a costly and difficult exercise. Innovation is harder to come by given they’re more likely to utilise any of the thousands of ingredients they have on hand before investing in new ones. Likewise, grassroots beauty businesses don’t have the funds to buy their own raw materials. The team seeks to source solutions in smaller quantities, and encourage brands to piggyback off materials already on order. “We’re always a point of call because we’ve been around for so long.”
pH Factor can manufacture a pilot batch of 100 units to encourage emerging brands to test their market. “We’ve got brands that are in Sephora that are only going through a couple of hundred units,” Melinda says. While partnering with large-scale beauty chains is beneficial for a brand’s marketing and brand awareness, “it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re pumping through large volumes [of product].” Alternatively, Melinda suggests spreading ingredients across multiple product types.
Australian manufacturers are also at the mercy of location, with lead times reaching 25 weeks for ingredients to make their way over, ordered in minimum 400kg lots. “It’s never going to suit the Australian market, and it’s not going to suit the USA either – people are expecting innovation more quickly.” As a result, the duo are witnessing an about-turn away from local production in favour of cheaper rates overseas. “Back in the day, it used to take 18 months to launch a product. Nowadays, it takes three to six because that’s what the market is demanding; because of TikTok. Manufacturers are being put under the pump, launching products that aren’t necessarily robust,” Rita says. Melinda furthers this, citing requests from chain retail stockists to lessen the wholesale price of a product, oftentimes at the expense of a formulation’s efficiency.
On labelling and regulation
Issues around greenwashing can stem at the certification stage. “For many, I don’t believe it’s commercially viable to have a certified organic brand,” Melinda admits, noting the expense it takes for brands to undergo official testing. “Our motto to all brands is: if you expect consumers to invest in your brand, you need to invest in your brand,” Rita argues. “That means you’ve got to do your due diligence and make sure that you’re giving them something that’s safe.” To have a product tested at a minimum – including a “plate count and mini stability test” – Rita says it’s possible for less than $1000 per product. But for many emerging brands, money can feel better spent on a marketing campaign or influencer.
“We follow the ACCC guidelines, but that’s just for labelling and packaging, they’re not mandatory requirements. There’s no government stipulating that your product needs to be stability tested, or micro tested, or PET tested.” The ACCC instead conducts audits on products to check for issues, which can result in a recall. “We’re into safe preservatives. We will say ‘you either have a safe preservative or you don’t have a brand’. Brand owners need to be realistic.” Melinda adds, “to have a certified organic product, but to be competitive in the market – they don’t go hand-in-hand because of the cost of raw materials and of producing a certified organic product – it’s double compared to a normal product without. Natural preservatives will also add $3-$4 to a formula. If your market’s prepared to pay $90 for a cleanser, knock yourself out. But you need a market, and the organic market is less than 1%.”
The professional space remains the exception, where the pair agree discerning skin therapists are most considered in their approach to product efficacy. “We also speak to so many salons that want to create a range because they can’t afford the $5000 minimum orders” offered by third party suppliers. This is because pH Factor is able to supply salons with significantly smaller unit quantities tailored to less frequent retail sales. Despite this, Rita and Melinda are avid supporters of pre-existing Australian skincare brands, most notably for the support salons receive in partnering with them. “Creating a range is fine, but you’ve got to pump marketing into it,” Rita says. “Unless you’ve got a great salon and you’ve already got those people that respect your opinion, you’ve done your testing, and you’re using it… that’s how the likes of Skinstitut started. However, that was 20 years ago; the market is now saturated and so competitive.”
Product packaging, regulations, and sustainability
Rita flags a disconnect between what the future of packaging regulations are set to look like, and what is actually getting produced. Where beauty brands often lean into packaging that is aesthetically appealing, having that same packaging be recyclable is another consideration altogether. “And that’s not to mention those smaller brands making 5000 units, and still sitting on 3500 a year-and-a-half later and have to dump it,” she warns. “You don’t want to be a problem to our environment.” China-made packaging tends to be ordered in bulk only at single sizes, eliminating a brand’s ability to customise their range. “Unless you’re a large brand, Australia doesn’t have any [product packaging] manufacturers.”
Recycling a product post-use isn’t as straight-forward as it is marketed to be. Rita says, “plastic can only be heated a certain amount of times, so it’s not like we can reuse a bottle 50 million times, it doesn’t work that way.” Ongoing public confusion around the recycling process lends itself to what Rita and Melinda describe as a general lack of care around sustainability that remains rife on the side of beauty brands. A more sustainable approach to product creation and re-recreation won’t occur “unless a tariff will be forced on brands [to do so]. Plus, our infrastructure doesn’t allow for recycling, and we have different processes state-by-state.” Sustainable also doesn’t automatically make for a better product. Options like glass packaging and solid shampoo bars remain in high demand, but can be costly to produce and require large amounts of water. “It offsets what you’re trying to achieve.”
Inconsistencies in ingredient education
Between formulators, the level of education held can also vary. Where it’s one thing to understand the composition of an ingredient, Melinda argues it’s another to transition that formula into manufacturing. Again, this variation comes down to the lack of industry regulation overall.
“A disappointing thing I’ve noticed over the years is the rise of advice on the internet,” Rita says. “I will never give advice on skin because I’m not a dermatologist. I know what works in a formula, and I know ingredients. So I get really angry when I see people talk about ingredients and their compatibility. The consumer is the only person losing out in this whole beauty and wellness trillion-dollar industry because they don’t know what to buy. They’re confused by all the messages, and there are so many brands out there… we’ve allowed this. There needs to be a standardised way to communicate skin issues. I think that would cut out the noise.”
During the pandemic, the Australian market witnessed a run of new beauty brands launched, with few remaining today. “The truth is, there’s probably only three or four [that are still around]. It’s all about, what is your purpose? What do you want to create, and why do you want to create it? And then let’s create a story.” Otherwise, the women recommend salon owners seek out solutions from the country’s pre-existent cohort of professional brands. “If I were a salon… I would host a champagne night, invite my database, have new clients purchase a subscription, and have reps from the brand do a talk… you would convert those clients to the brand,” Rita recommends.
On the question of whether the Australian beauty industry would likely be regulated anytime soon, Rita wonders “how would we even regulate something like it? Beauty is lower risk [versus an industry like electronics, for example]. Also, the growth of the Australian beauty industry and many local indie brands has only happened in the last 10-15 years.” Melinda cites changes that occurred in the EU at that time, whereby safety legislations on cosmetic products came into effect and left many small, non-tested players to fall by the wayside. If something goes awry, responsibility ultimately falls onto the brand owner, not the manufacturer. “I’ve worked with brands for 20 years…,” Melinda starts, Rita continues, “…but no one talks about the brands that are falling apart.”
What’s next for Australian beauty?
Rita can count on two hands the number of “amazingly innovative” products she’s encountered in her thirty years. So, what enquiries are the pH Factor team currently fielding most? “Every second request we’re getting now is for sunscreen. Retinol also continues to grow… with sun damage, there’s the after product. We’ve had a lot of doctors come to us to create their own clinic brands,” the pair reveal. Rita hopes to see more personalised services marketed in-salon, like massages strictly for the hands; “we truly see gaps in the market.” Colour cosmetics will also continue to grow, but the machinery required has not been made available in Australia due to lack of demand. “I think we’re on the tail-end of lash and eyebrow [growth products].”
“I think innovation has to come back… everything is cyclical. It’s just the cost of living that has stifled us; people aren’t spending the money,” Melinda says. “There’s constant innovation around ingredients… It’s whether the Australian market is going to invest in using that technology.”
Rita adds, “brands need to realise that consumers have retail fatigue… there’s now 11 touchpoints before a consumer buys your brand. Unless you have thousands of dollars to spend on social media to get your brand visible, you’re not going to do well. But we’re in the midst of a crash, and [the industry] will re-build… it will re-generate.”
The next big things in beauty
Rita and Melinda share their predictions:
- Dissolvable tongue strips to enter the ingestible beauty space
- Terms like ‘skinflammation’ and ‘inflammaging’ marketed to consumers
- Further growth in wellness. “People want to feel good; people aren’t feeling good”
- Dupes
- Perimenopausal products
- Acne “hasn’t hit its peak yet”
- Offshore manufacturing.
Photography: iStock/VectorMoon
This article originally appeared in the Issue 01 2025 print issue of Professional Beauty magazine. Read it here.
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