The inside scoop: Cosmetic Specialty Labs
LAWTON – On the south side of town, not too far from an auto salvage yard, is an unassuming building that houses Cosmetic Specialty Labs, which manufactures and distributes products across the globe.
“We are a private-label, turnkey manufacturer of hair care, skincare, anti-aging products, and dandruff shampoos, and over-the-counter drugs, such as acne products,” said Jennifer Ellis, the president, and chief executive officer. The company makes lip balms, anti-aging creams, moisturizers, body treatments, nail treatments, skin conditioners, makeup-dissolving cleansers, sea mineral moisturizer, body butter, foot creams, various lotions, shaving scrub, bath balms, and bronzer artificial tanning product. The list goes on and on. And the products come in myriad fragrances, too.
The lab can manufacture literally thousands of stock formulations, and, “We do custom formulations,” too, Ms. Ellis said. “Sometimes the customer will provide the formula,” she said. “Sometimes we are asked to duplicate another vendor’s product.” All of the ingredients in a cosmetic product are listed on the label, in descending order. In contrast, the ingredients in over-the-counter drugs are listed alphabetically, per FDA requirement, Ms. Ellis related.
EDNA HENNESSEE
Cosmetic Specialty Labs was founded in 1973 by Ms. Ellis’s grandmother, the late Edna Hennessee, whose picture hangs on the wall just inside the front door. “We export to 45 countries, including China, Kuwait, Europe, South America and India,” and the company is “heavily into the Middle East,” Ms. Ellis said. Expansion into new markets has come “through contacts and connections,” Jennifer’s and Edna’s alike, as well as with customers and state and federal departments of commerce.
The company operates in a building that encompasses almost 300,000 square feet under roof. One room is where the ingredients are combined in precise amounts to manufacture the products. It has 35 mixing vessels that range in volume from 5 gallons to 1,000 gallons. “We do batch processing,” Ms. Ellis said. “We don’t keep products in stock,” but one room in the building has shelves where leftover products are displayed for retail sales.
Nearby is a room where local tap water is purified via organic reduction and ultraviolet multimedia filtration, including reverse osmosis. “We get it down to two H’s and an O,” Ms. Ellis quipped. “We test for 30 parameters in our water” that is used in the manufacture of cosmetic products. Another room in the building contains thousands of various sizes of product containers and caps. “A lot of my containers come from overseas,” she said. Many of the components and packaging in this industry are not made in the U.S. Most acrylic containers, for example, come from China. They’re not manufactured in the U.S. “because it’s expensive.”
Yet another room contains cardboard boxes and wooden pallets for shipping products. Besides the overseas markets, products manufactured in Cosmetic Specialty Labs are sold in Ulta Beauty stores, in Wal-Mart stores, at Walgreens pharmacy stores, and on the QVC and HSN television networks, Ms. Ellis said. Materials used in her products are purchased from various preferred vendors and distributors.
“We have a lot of contacts in Dallas, and we work with huge companies in California and New Jersey,” she said. Product development meetings are held weekly. Ms. Ellis has a diversified staff of 50 employees, “from line workers to clerical to lab techs to sales,” and employee training is performed in-house. Ten of her employees are Cameron University graduates. “We are a second-chance employer,” she said. Some of her workers “have had trouble getting jobs elsewhere” because of criminal records. “They are some of the longest-term employees we have.”
Some of her critical employees are “very skilled workers,” she said. “To make our products they have to problem-solve and be self-starters and energetic.” Usually, the company is able to meet production demands with one shift working a typical 8-hour day, 5 days a week. However, “We can scale up pretty fast” and add a second shift, if necessary, such as “when a celebrity wants to launch with a new show.” More likely, though, “We’ll push into overtime.” Since Cosmetic Specialty Labs is a privately held company, sales and profits are proprietary information. However, Ms. Ellis will acknowledge that company sales reach several million dollars a year.
Ms. Ellis is a chemist; she earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Oklahoma. Now she’s studying for a master’s degree in regulatory affairs from George Washington University. She graduated from Lawton Eisenhower High School, then moved away. She served almost four years in the U.S. Army, where she met her husband, Mark. Jennifer returned to Lawton 22 years ago to take over management of the cosmetics lab at Edna’s request.
“My mother wasn’t interested in the company. Her brother, Uncle Odus Hennessee, was involved in the company at one time but he retired many years ago.” The company is truly a family affair: Jennifer’s two oldest children work at the cosmetics lab. Eldest son Zachary, a Cameron University graduate, oversees quality control, and his wife, Jera, is the company’s vice president of finance. Middle son Joshua, a graduate of the Great Plains Technology Center, is the lab’s facilities manager, and his wife, Emily, works in the sales department. Jennifer’s youngest son, Peter, is following in the footsteps of his parents and his maternal grandfather: he is in the Army, serving at Fort Benning, Ga., in a Ranger battalion.
Ms. Ellis can aptly be described as driven. Besides her hands-on involvement in the cosmetics company and her higher-education studies, she chairs the Lawton-Fort Sill Chamber of Commerce board of directors and the Lawton Metropolitan Area Airport Authority. And she’s the mayor of Medicine Park, a post previously held by Uncle Odus.