It feels like we can’t go a week without a new celebrity beauty brand hitting our Instagram feed (and inbox). Lately, the trend on top of the trend is to make said lines vegan.

But, what goes into creating a vegan beauty brand? Star-backed or not, it starts with finding the right manufacturer and sourcing raw ingredients, companies told Retail Brew.

“Anytime that you are putting ‘vegan’ on the packaging, not only are you avoiding animal-derived ingredients, but you should also not be processed or manufactured with non-vegan ingredients,” said Emily Bowman, the founder of vegan hair-care line Lovesong Beauty. Not that it’s easy. Bowman said Lovesong interviewed some 30 different cosmetics manufacturers before landing on the right partner.

It took Davroe, an Australia–based vegan and cruelty-free hair-care brand, nearly 20 years to develop its current formulas, founder Mary Centofanti said. (Though founded in 1987, Davroe became fully vegan in 2007.)

• The company said it only works with “accredited” manufacturers that can provide a material breakdown of ingredients before they can be sold and exported.

Choices for vegan brands have at least expanded over time, Centofanti noted. “Initially, it was a lack of choices in availability of raw materials, but more recently there are more options for manufacturers.”

Paint the picture

Obstacles remain, of course. “Being vegan was a challenge and still is, when it comes to creating colors—especially for everything that deals with the color red,” CEO Violette Serrat of Violette FR, a vegan and cruelty-free beauty brand, told us in an email. “For this, you usually use carmine (a little insect), and vegan red pigments are a new thing and are hard to find.”

Another example: Serrat said that Boum-Boum Milk, Violette FR’s three-in-one moisturizer, toner, and serum spray, contains fermented birch sap—it makes up more than a third of the product. But it is harvested once a year. “There are only 50 vendors in the world that produce this, and we had to hunt all 50 to build our supply chain,” she explained.

These complexities have made Serrat build in a longer buffer to actually create her products.

“The way to do it is to work much earlier than your launch date so that you have enough time to push vendors to find more diversity in their vegan raw material offering,” she noted.

• To develop a skincare product, the brand—which was founded in April 2021—said it needs to plan three years in advance; it’s at least one and a half years for makeup.

Study hard: Sabrina Sadeghian, cofounder of 4AM Skin, added that it’s important to do your homework to ensure the ingredients are not only vegan, but also high quality. “We made sure to really study and emphasize the research coming out of each raw-material supplier for each ingredient chosen,” she said.

Even after a brand does all that work on the backend, how can customers recognize that a company is truly vegan? Click here to read more about vegan certification programs.—JS

No one likes it when Mom and Dad fight, but here we are.

Lululemon and Peloton have traded lawsuits over the past few weeks in a battle over leggings and sports-bra designs.

• Peloton debuted its own line this year, but had previously collabed with Lululemon on co-branded apparel since 2016.

The warm-up: Lululemon filed a suit last week (that many saw coming), accusing Peloton of trade dress infringement, false designation of origin, and unfair competition.

“Unlike innovators such as Lululemon, Peloton did not spend the time, effort, and expense to create an original product line,” Lululemon alleged in the suit. “Instead, Peloton imitated several of Lululemon’s innovative designs and sold knockoffs of Lululemon’s products, claiming them as its own.”

• This followed a complaint filed by Peloton on November 24 asking for a declaration judgment stating it did not infringe on Lululemon’s patents.
• Shannon Higginson, SVP, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Lululemon, wrote in a statement to Retail Brew, “We are confident in our position and look forward to properly resolving this case through the courts.” (Peloton has not responded to a request for comment.)

Eyes on the long run: What makes the case interesting to Douglas Hand, founding member of Hand Baldachin & Associates LLP and an NYU law professor, is that it’s one focused on apparel—which doesn’t have a ton of legal precedent.

• Most cases relating to design patents have centered around accessories and footwear, he noted.

If Lululemon is successful, Hand said it could open the door for the retailer to go after other brands that make similar-looking products.

But Hand believes there are potential downsides for both companies, depending on how things go: Lululemon’s existing design patents could be invalidated, while Peloton could be cast as a “copycat” artist.

“It all relates to brand,” Hand said. “When people have a lot of different items, which are somewhat ubiquitous, then the reason they’re buying one pant over the other pant really relates to how they feel about the brand. There definitely will be a splash of negative press, I think, for whomever the loser is.”—KM

Administering Covid vaccines has provided a bump to some retail pharmacies, as post-injection consumers browse the aisles. But, because of increased demand for boosters due to Omicron, combined with the labor shortage, it might not last, per the Wall Street Journal. Chains like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart have had to limit hours and close drive-thrus as they look to recruit thousands of pharmacists and technicians.

• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.4 million doses, on average, were administered every day in the US last week, up 22% from the previous week.

“Demand for vaccinations is particularly high at this time, so we encourage people to schedule their appointments in advance,” Walgreens told WSJ. The company is even doling out bonuses to employees who get certified to give the vaccine.

Over at CVS, appointments are available for the next two weeks, but staffing issues can lead to people waiting in lines or needing to schedule a week or more in advance.

• The company recently hired 23,000 pharmacists, technicians, and other positions to facilitate Covid vaccines and tests.

Meanwhile, certain Walmart locations ceased walk-in vaccine appointments because they couldn’t manage the demand. Those stores offer online booking, but time slots are often weeks away in some locations, per WSJ’s reporting.

Looking ahead...More companies, including local chains like Publix, are beginning to carry Covid boosters amid the continuing labor shortage and emergence of new variants.—JG

Today’s top retail reads.

Quiet down: What you need to know about Macy’s new holiday mascot, a blue reindeer named Tiptoe. (Marketing Brew)

Homebound: Might the supply-chain crisis be an opportunity to bring manufacturing back to the US? The CEO of American Giant thinks so. (Bloomberg)

Role call: Inside The Body Shop’s open hiring program. “We only ask candidates three questions: ‘Are you legal to work? Can you lift 50 pounds? And can you stand for eight hours?’” explained Jennifer Wale, the company’s people director. (Modern Retail)

What do Walgreens and Foxtrot have in common? Conveniently for Retail Brew, they’ll be joining us for The Checkout on December 14 at 12pm ET to help put 2021 (and its retail trends) in perspective—and look forward to 2022.

Don’t miss our last virtual event of the year. Sign up right here.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• Why malls and retailers still believe in Santa
• Instant delivery startup Jokr (quickly) becomes a unicorn
• How Supergreat aims to stand out in the livestream shopping space