We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lauren Ing a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Lauren, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Unfortunately, I think our industry is motivated by the bottom line and maximizing profits. The space is very crowded especially with almost every celebrity, influencer or dermatologist having their own cosmetics or skincare line. What the public doesn’t know is that many of these skincare lines are all made from the same factory, using the same poor quality ingredients and ineffective formulations, except with just a different label or bottle design. This is called white-labeling. The consumer is actually paying for advertising costs plus licensing fees instead of a truly effective product. In addition, many of the bigger companies are also public companies with shareholders who demand profits over quality. Minimizing costs demands inferior ingredients and/or manufacturing done in places like China.

SMD Cosmetics is different. We are a privately owned company which allows us to always prioritize providing best-in-class products, using the latest technology, over profits. In addition, we own every step of the process, including research and development to manufacturing all done in our factories in Korea.

Providing best-in-class products that are truly made from the best, top-quality ingredients has always been and always will be what sets us apart. Our products are created with a painstaking process that is truly labor of love. It takes 90 days to produce our unique, patented, effective formulation. It’s ingredients are processed, steamed, dried at least 9x during this process to maximize efficacy. We combine this with the latest patented technology to create a one-of-a-kind product that truly does what it says it will do. Our products delivers results, in a natural way.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Beauty entrepreneur, Lauren Ing, is the Founder and President of SMD Cosmetics Intl., a natural Korean skin care and beauty company. With a M. Ed. in Psychology and a M.A. in Organizational Leadership, both from Columbia University, Lauren began her career as a Licensed Marriage and Family psychotherapist, but transitioned quickly to being a successful serial entrepreneur. She understood the devastating impact that skin issues can have on a person’s sense of well-being and self esteem, long term. After so many years of struggling with her own skin, she became a self-taught expert in skincare. She considers herself a “ skin therapist” by helping people find their way to feeling good about themselves and their skin. After discovering the miraculous results of this incredible Korean beauty secret, she combined her passion to help others with her experience and intuition for entrepreneurship, beauty and skin care, to launch SMD Cosmetics Intl.

Finding products that are not only effective but healing and natural has always been a challenge. The journey of spending thousands of dollars on products that promise a lot but fail to deliver is the reason why SMD Cosmetics was founded. Lauren spent so many years looking for a solution for her very sensitive and acne-prone skin. The roller-coaster ride of feeling excited about a new product only to find that her skin reacted negatively to the ingredients or was left worse off was such a disappointment that she was motivated to find a solution. After much trial and error, she began to realize the importance of natural, safe and non-toxic ingredients. She recognized the connection between our skin’s natural function of releasing toxins and the chemicals that she was putting into and onto her body. It made sense that her skin would react badly after putting harsh chemicals onto her skin. It made her want to find a different solution to break the cycle of her skin issues. The secret to healthy skin was the exact thing that she was doing for her body. Eating healthy, natural unprocessed foods was doing wonders for her overall health, so this is what she decided to do for her skin, as well. SMD Cosmetics is about providing the best-in-class products that are safe, natural and effective.

Founded over 20 years ago, as one of the first luxury, natural Korean skin care companies to combine advanced technology with powerful, rare ancient herbal medicinal formulations, we know the secret to help heal and transform your skin. Each patented formulation has over 35-65 active ingredients. Compare this with most skin care products that only contain 1-3 active ingredients. Everything about SMD Cosmetics is meticulous and held to the highest standard of excellence. In South Korea, we are the only cosmetic company, in the whole industry, to ever be awarded the prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence and Innovation. We proudly remain dedicated to being natural, safe, non-toxic, dermatologist tested, non-comedogenic, cruelty free, paraben-free, gluten-free and environmentally friendly and we never test on animals. We are a high conscious company that values ethical and socially responsible actions. SMD Cosmetics is completely vertically integrated, which means we own every step of the process, from research and development to manufacturing.We use only top quality ingredients, advanced technology and meticulous, labor-intensive processes, to help ensure that our products are truly the best. Our 39 patents guarantee that our proprietary formulations are truly unique.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Our reputation is reflected by our dedication to providing the best-in-class products. Skincare is different from many other products. Its efficacy is only seen after use and experience of our products, which takes time. During this time, our job is to prove ourselves to our customers through our products’ efficacy and superiority. This is a very different from buying a pair of jeans or lipstick. In the latter examples, the outcome is almost immediate and a consumer decides whether or not they like the item right off the bat. We liken this experience to be more like dating versus a marriage. This contrasts significantly to the skincare experience, which is closer to that of a marriage and trying to find a soulmate partner. The customer has to take a leap of faith and try our products and experience the benefits over a longer period of time. We have to prove ourselves to our clients and our clients develop a deep love of our products and soon can not live without them! This loyalty is hard-earned and we build a long-term relationship of trust and commitment with our customers. We take this responsibility seriously and everything we do reflects our dedication to our customers to provide only the best quality products possible. Our customers are our best brand ambassadors! Our reputation proceeds our products thanks to the power of word-of-mouth. It speaks volumes about how one satisfied customer, without any incentive, will tell all of their friends and family about our products. It is the highest compliment and we don’t ever take that trust for granted. We are so proud of the fact that the majority of our customers are long-time loyal customers of our products, and many of who refuse to use anything else. We are confident that every new customer will soon be a forever customer.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

When SMD Cosmetics was just beginning many many years ago, very few people even knew anything about Korean skincare or even why it was important to have natural ingredients in products. In fact, many women did not see the importance of daily skincare use, so our main focus was educating people about the importance of natural skincare.

Due to the lack of awareness, initially, many of the buyers of large department stores couldn’t see the potential of natural, luxury, Korean skincare, at the time. You can definitely say we were ahead of the curve. With that being said, we were a little known company, at the time, although, we were growing quickly, we were not in the position of making any demands with the department store buyers.

The tables turned when we were lucky enough to find a place in the hearts of many A-list celebrity make-up artists. This group of amazing professionals were expert at skincare and most of them had tried everything there was to try in the skincare market. This was the perfect group to be able to recognize the superiority of our products. They saw that our products were truly different because they were able to compare them to all of the products that they had tried previously. Makeup artists are constantly being given free products by large and small companies. Despite this, they truly appreciated our products and recognized its efficacy. It meant so much to us that such a discerning and knowledgeable group of professionals loved our products! The makeup artists willingly purchased our products, not only for their clients use, but for their personal use as well! So, the word spread about our products.

This led to a large department store reaching out to our company via the customer contact email from our website, which went unseen by our team. Thank goodness they were persistent because we saw their email the second time around. It turned out that the person that reached out to us was one of their top buyers who had heard about our company from word of mouth. Due to the fact that they reached out to us, we were in the unique position of setting the terms for our collaboration! We were very excited at our luck and opportunity to collaborate with such a large, luxury department store under circumstances that were favorable to our company.

Our take away from this experience is that our products and the power of word of mouth led to this successful collaboration. Our philosophy continues to be that when you have quality products, the products speak for themselves. Holding ourselves to the highest standards, at all times, has paid off for us. We believe that any company that demands the best from themselves to provide the best for their customers, will be a success company.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.smdcosmetics.com
• Instagram: smdcosmetics
• Facebook: @smdcosmeticsintl
• Linkedin: smd-cosmetics-international
• Twitter: @SMDcosmseticsUS
• Youtube: SMDCosmeticsintl
• Other: Thread: smdcosmetics threads.net

Image Credits
Avelena Ing, Eddie Yang