Owner/CEO's Name & Business's Name
Minna Ha
Year Established
2009
Why is your business unique and what's your pitch?
UNII Cosmetics has begun a campaign to reduce waste and eliminate clutter in makeup bags and bathroom drawers. The UNII Palette is an innovative, re-usable, freestyle makeup case that boasts Do-It-Yourself roots and a green way of thinking. The UNII Palette allows women to consolidate their stash of makeup cases into one multi-brand palette, both refillable and customizable to each woman's preferences. By consolidating makeup into one magnetic case, the UNII Palette offers convenience. By encouraging the use of refills, the UNII Palette saves its users money and reduces the waste associated with conventional packaging
What led you to start the business?
Depotting is a technique to remove eye shadows, blushes, and other makeup pans from their original containers. I used to put my depotted makeup pans are in a different container (i.e. empty CD cases, modified palette prototypes, etc.) to customize and consolidate my cosmetic products. As a long time depotter, I experienced how much plastic packaging was being wasted after depotting my makeup. A few years ago, I began to see a shift in the marketplace - more and more cosmetic brands started selling refills, enabling consumers to purchase makeup without the extra packaging. However, the refillable palettes produced by those brands that sold refills could only accommodate their own brand of makeup refills. Since most consumers used more than one brand, the brand-specific design discouraged the purchase of their refillable palettes and refills. I designed a refillable palette that can accommodate a wide variety of brands, enabling consumers to consolidate their makeup and encouraging the purchase of refills, reducing plastic consumption.
The original concept for the design originated from the need to consolidate and simplify my makeup. I spent years traveling back and forth from Los Angeles to Boston while attending school. Carrying my bulky makeup bag around and trying to use my makeup from all of those separate containers on-the-go was not easy, especially on airplanes. I wanted all of my makeup in ONE case, with a mirror big enough to see more than just one eye at a time. The design of the UNII Palette enables women to consolidate, simplify and organize their makeup into one case – a case compact enough to carry in a purse for everyday use, or for travel.
While attending MIT, I took courses in engineering, manufacturing, business and design. I designed the UNII Palette from an industrial design perspective, with the DIY, eco-friendly makeup enthusiast in mind. My coursework in manufacturing showed me how to design for manufacturability, and my background in design made me consider sustainability and user friendly features.
From concept to launch was a long process. I found a cosmetic case manufacturer in Korea and web developers in India. I did most of the design work myself and got some help with drafting the patents.
Lessons Learned
- The main lesson from failure for me is to give everything more time. I’ve learned that manufacturing plastic products and web design and development should be given enough time for testing, development, and any other unforeseeable problems to be properly addressed. Rushing to launch caused us to overlook specific features on our website that caused more work to implement at a later time. More time spent in user testing could have saved us time in the long run, because it would have allowed us to catch our mistakes and get ahead of them. Haste makes waste.