hip from industry experts, and full access to Atelier’s global network of manufacturers. The goal, according to Atelier founder Nick Benson, is to foster and give back to the beauty creator community in Australia. “We always want to be generative and additive to the things that we’re a part of, so it was a no-brainer to do this campaign,” Benson told Inside Retail.  “We’ve been in this industry for about three-and-a-half years now, and we’re very fortunate enough to have grown a company that can provide support not just to our market, but to the people inside of it.” The competition acts as an abstraction of Atelier as a business itself. Founded by Benson in 2018, Atelier acts as a ‘translator’ between global beauty brands and manufacturers — interpreting the needs of both parties and helping them work together, as well as simplifying their supply chain needs.  One of the main goals of Atelier, and the competition, is to make it easier for smaller beauty players to scale their operations up without investing heavily into supply chain management. “One of my first customers said she spent 15 per cent of her time on growth, and 85 per cent on managing her supply chain, and her business was doubling each year. I thought, ‘imagine if we could invert that?’” said Benson. “So that’s what we try to do. We try to help brands focus more on their own growth and less on the nitty gritty.” Representation matters The competition also acts as a way to help smaller brands and creatives to take on the issue of representation in beauty, where they may struggle to get support otherwise.  Larger brands may not be able to justify going after a smaller target market or a niche, Benson argued, and said that there were opportunities all over beauty for smaller players to exploit. “Representation within beauty is a huge talking point, and a point of friction within the market,” Benson said. “Traditionally, the Western world had the money, and there wasn’t market and spending data to mitigate the risk of launching something other than what had already been made. “To me, I see the creator community as the bellwether for these niche communities: we’re going to see products focused on different demographics coming out of them and doing well. I really see the creator community as the answer for this issue, because they’re identifying markets that are crying out for products, and are serving them directly.” Plus, creators typically already have a large social media following, usually on Instagram or TikTok, and are able to communicate directly with their audience through these channels in an authentic way – something larger brands sometimes struggle with. To Benson, the next five to 10 years are likely to be a ‘golden age’ for smaller beauty players, as they take their products directly to the underserved markets that larger players have typically shied away from, and find a dedicated community. But that’s not to say all larger players are ignoring representation. Last year, Adore Beauty launched an initiative spotlighting the lack of available beauty products for people of colour, and said it was working toward ranging over 2,600 shades from 350 complexion products. Major stockists Coles and Woolworths have started trials of darker foundation shades in collaboration with beauty giants Maybelline and L’Oreal.  Inclusive beauty brand All Shades Matter’s co-founder Shaanti Wallbridge told Inside Retail last year, however, that many larger brands treat darker beauty shades as “an afterthought”. “They’ll put in one product to make it look like they’ve got a shade range, which is just to tick the box, or [they’ll put] a person of colour in their imagery, but their shade range doesn’t even cover that person, so it’s not really aligned,” Wallbridge said.