NAPA, CALIFORNIA — On the final evening of The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2025 on Tuesday, guests gathered for a celebratory dinner to honour this year’s cohort of The Business of Beauty Global Awards winners.
Throughout the week, guests had been able to discover the brands’ products throughout the Global Forum via a showcase of each line’s collections. Founders also presented to an all-star jury including Ali Goldstein, president of mergers and acquisitions for L’Oréal USA; Carolyn Bojanowski, executive vice president of merchandising at Sephora; Robin Tsai, general partner at VMG Partners; Marianna Hewitt, co-founder of Summer Fridays and Isamaya Ffrench, makeup artist and founder of Isamaya Beauty, alongside The Business of Fashion’s editor in chief and chief executive Imran Amed, and executive editor of The Business of Beauty Priya Rao.
Our Emerging Track celebrated businesses generating up to $2 million in annual revenue. Below, see how Manasi 7, Unifrom and Commune proved their creative execution, business innovation and positive impact and won over our discerning judges.
Creative Execution: Susanne Manasi Persson, Manasi 7
Stockholm, Sweden
Presented by Isamaya Ffrench, makeup artist and founder of Isamaya Beauty
Makeup artist-led brands rarely lack credibility, but sometimes, usability can be more elusive.
For customers at home, professionally developed products can be intimidating to use, with their strong pigments and complicated tools. But Manasi 7, developed by Susanne Manasi Persson, a professional makeup artist from Sweden, makes makeup application as easy as finger painting. Dabbable pots, smudgeable pencils and deft doe-foot applicators make applying Manasi 7’s range of colour cosmetics feel approachable and playful.
For Manasi, a key tenet of the brand is not just its accessibility, but also its skin health credentials. “I wanted to create microbiome-friendly products that really give benefits to the skin at the same time as they also do the color payoff,” said Manasi. “At the same time, it had to have a diverse colour range, because, as someone with darker skin, sometimes, [a lot] shades, they don’t really work.”
The brand launched in 2018 with around 30 products; it now offers more than 60, including skincare oils and creams as well as its multi-use All Over Colour pots and lip glosses. Made in Italy, the sumptuous formulas are minted in small batches of only a few hundred at a time, which founder Persson explains is part of her “slow beauty” manufacturing philosophy.
Based in Stockholm, and taking inspiration from the minimalist Scandinavian aesthetic, Manasi said more than half of sales come from the US. “That Scandinavian touch is really a benefit here,” she said, adding that actress, director and producer Sofia Coppola is a fan of the range.
As the company begins to explore the fundraising process, it will keep a lean and mean operating model. Manasi said that, as the company’s only employee for some time, she has learned to keep things simple; for example, its visual identity is inspired by the hero ingredients in the products and features botanical elements.
Looking ahead, new retailers are high on Manasi’s wishlist. Currently, the line is found in niche stores like One Fine Secret in Australia, Gravitas in Croatia, Content in the UK and Happier Grocer and Montauk Yacht Club in the US.
Business Innovation: Haisam Mohammed, Uniform
Stockholm, Sweden
Presented by Marianna Hewitt, co-founder of Summer Fridays
The niche fragrance industry’s continued popularity can turn small brands into breakout hits almost overnight. One brand that’s ready for its spotlight is Unifrom, a fine fragrance line created by Swedish entrepreneur Haisam Mohammed, which specialises in “pocket” perfumes.
Offering slimline rollerball fragrance oils instead of traditional flankers, Unifrom’s scents are both practical and long-lasting, as the high concentration of fragrance oils better grip to the skin. Fragrance oils are a signature in East African culture, where Mohammed traces his roots.
“I could see this gap I could fill,” said Mohammed, explaining that fragrance oil products are usually in large bottles that can be cumbersome to transport and apply. By using a rollerball format, the process has been modernised, making the scents easier to apply on the go and more convenient for travel.
The current best-seller is Cassis, with notes of plum, fig and coconut; the range also includes smokier and woodier scents like Maghrib and Limbo, all $75. While Unifrom bucks many fragrance trends, founder Mohammed creates the scents in Grasse, the world’s perfume capital.
“[Limbo] is a weird combination, because it’s rhubarb, which is a Swedish classic, and the smell of hay. It shouldn’t work on paper,” said Mohammed. “But it does.”
Luxury brands like Amouage and Guerlain have helped popularise fragrance oils in the West — they are commonplace in many parts of the Middle East and Africa — but have made them an exceptionally premium product. By offering a smaller 10 mL size, a neater format and more contemporary scent options, Uniform offers a more approachable way to use fragrance oils while also maintaining high fashion credibility with its sleek design. Stockists include Dover Street Market in the UK and 10 Corso Como in Italy. The brand’s next priority is to grow its retail presence into 2026.
Positive Impact: Kate Neal and Rémi Paringaux, Commune
Bruton, UK
Presented by Robin Tsai, general partner at VMG Partners
After years working in fashion across companies including Lululemon, Gucci, Peter Pilotto and LVMH, husband-and-wife duo Kate Neal and Rémi Paringaux opted for a slower pace of life when the pandemic hit. The couple moved from Vancouver to a tiny hamlet on the top of a hill in the Somerset countryside.
“People were going on walks together. People were cooking for the village,” said Neal. “It really felt kind of like there was this return to the old, the slow.”
Their newfound lifestyle sparked the concept for Commune, a luxury body-care brand in aluminum bottles with ornate metal pumps and gothic architecture-inspired design.
“Everything that we do, we look to the ancient, and then we reimagine it in a modern way,” said Neal. “There’s a whole mysticism in Somerset — this real kind of universal energy that just flows through the land there.”
With scents developed from Neal’s training in natural perfume, Commune launched on the summer solstice of 2022. It quickly captured the attention of Harrods, Liberty, Mecca, Moda Operandi and Fwrd. They also operate a standalone boutique in Bruton.
Sustainability was a major priority in design, even though aluminium packaging required a big commitment from a startup, said Neal, as the “minimum runs are quite substantial.”
But they took sustainability a step further. While most brands using aluminium still resort to a plastic pump, they studied Victorian-era village fountain pumps and hydraulics to design unique dispensers. The aesthetic of the bottles has helped to make plastic-free hand soap a chic home statement piece.
“It looks like nothing else. People who come across the brand, who are interested in design, who are interested in sustainability, are very excited to put it next to their sink or in their kitchen,” said Paringaux.
For the future, Commune has new products on the way. The pair are planning to expand upon their foray into hospitality partnerships, as well as new international markets including China, Hong Kong and the Middle East.
But they also want to stick to their slow-living roots.
“So much of the model of the last few decades is to get big fast and exit,” said Paringaux. “But it’s not what we want to do. We want to build a brand that is going to keep us excited and busy and [have] fun, and that suits our lifestyle in the countryside of Somerset.”
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The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2025 is made possible in part by our partners Front Row, Unilever Prestige, Citi, McKinsey & Company, Getty Images, Grown Alchemist and Stanly Ranch and our awards partners L’Oréal Groupe and Sephora. If you are interested in learning about partnership opportunities, please contact us here.
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