Frank de Vleeschouwer, Toly USA: “The U.S. market has become much more fragmented and is evolving at a very rapid pace!”

2026 is shaping up to be a strong year for the Toly Group across the Atlantic, which recently hosted a private presentation for its clients in New York. This was an opportunity to check in with Frank de Vleeschouwer, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) of the group in the United States. In his view, regulatory pressure on packaging in the United States is intensifying, particularly regarding recyclability, recycled content, plastic reduction, and producer responsibility. Product discovery is increasingly influenced by social media, e-commerce, and rapidly changing trends, which means that a single innovative product or a new format can quickly capture attention and create significant momentum for a brand.

You recently organized a private presentation for your clients in New York. Could you please provide some background on Toly’s presence in the U.S. market? What was the purpose of this presentation, and what were its main highlights?

Frank de Vleeschouwer: Toly has been active in the U.S. market since 1987, when we opened our first office in New Jersey. In 2015, we opened another office in Los Angeles to better serve our clients on the West Coast. Over the years, Toly has successfully developed and diversified its client portfolio, and today, Toly USA accounts for an increasingly significant portion of our global business. We’ve evolved from a company primarily focused on supplying packaging to a partner offering more comprehensive beauty solutions, combining packaging, innovation, design services, and turnkey delivery capabilities.
The goal of our event in New York was to give our clients a firsthand look at Toly. Rather than simply showcasing individual products, we wanted to demonstrate the full scope of what the Group is capable of offering today and create an environment where our clients could interact directly with our products, our teams, and our specialists who had traveled specifically from Malta, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Los Angeles!
The feedback was extremely positive. We held approximately 35 client meetings during this three-day event, with strong engagement from both established groups and emerging brands. One of our key strengths was bringing Toly’s various business areas together under one roof—ranging from packaging and technical innovation to our broader capabilities in beauty and turnkey solutions. This allowed clients to view Toly not simply as a supplier of components, but as a partner capable of supporting a beauty project in a much more comprehensive way.

Generally speaking, how is business in your sector in the United States, and how do you see the coming months?

Frank de Vleeschouwer: 2026 is a very strong year for Toly in the United States. This is due both to working with the right clients and offering them the right products at the right time. Today, consumers are much more likely to switch between brands and vary their price ranges, selectively choosing products that offer them clear functional or emotional value. Product discovery is increasingly influenced by social media, e-commerce, and rapidly changing trends, which means that a single innovative product or a new format can quickly capture attention and create significant momentum for a brand. Consumers are also better informed and act more thoughtfully: they research, compare, and expect products to offer genuine innovation, convenience, and relevance, rather than relying solely on a brand’s heritage. This makes the U.S. beauty market extremely dynamic and forces brands to innovate and respond more quickly. At the same time, customers are becoming increasingly demanding when it comes to cost, speed, and innovation. We continue to see significant opportunities, but the way brands develop, launch, and build customer loyalty around their products is clearly changing. This puts pressure on suppliers, but it also creates opportunities for companies like Toly, which can combine innovation, development capabilities, global sourcing, and manufacturing. We are optimistic about the coming months. Our discussions in New York confirmed that we still have a strong portfolio of new projects.

How would you describe the current structure of the U.S. market for beauty product packaging and formulation, among major beauty conglomerates, independent brands, and private labels? Is the growth of independent brands and private labels continuing? How does your offering as a supplier align with this demand?

Frank de Vleeschouwer: The U.S. market has become much more fragmented and is evolving at a much faster pace. Major beauty conglomerates remain extremely important, but some of the most interesting developments in terms of growth and innovation continue to come from newer, independent brands—what we call “emerging brands.” As we all know, many established brands are struggling to keep pace with these smaller, agile, and innovative brands, but I believe that with the right strategy, they can adapt and get back in the game by leveraging their existing heritage brands, rather than acquiring these new brands—which they often find difficult to manage and grow.
The definition of an “independent” brand has also evolved. A young brand can now achieve significant scale extremely quickly thanks to social media, direct-to-consumer sales channels, and retailers such as Sephora and Ulta. At the same time, private-label brands are becoming more sophisticated in terms of design, product performance, and customer experience. The traditional boundaries between luxury, independent, and mass-market brands are thus blurring—and are also being disrupted by the arrival of K-Beauty brands in our market.
This evolution aligns perfectly with Toly’s strategy. We can support large multinational groups that require scale, industrial capacity, and a global supply chain, while also working with emerging brands that demand greater flexibility, speed, and innovation. Furthermore, our capabilities in turnkey solutions and formulation allow us to get involved much earlier in the product development process, rather than simply supplying the final packaging component.

Has regulatory pressure in the United States—in terms of standards and restrictions on the use of plastics—increased compared to previous years?

Frank de Vleeschouwer: Yes, definitely. Regulatory pressure on packaging in the United States is intensifying, particularly regarding recyclability, recycled content, plastic reduction, and producer responsibility. The challenge lies in the fact that, unlike Europe, the United States does not have a harmonized national framework; so brands must adapt to requirements that can vary from state to state, with California currently being one of the main drivers of change. For U.S. brands that sell internationally, the challenge is even greater: packaging must increasingly be designed with multiple markets in mind, including stricter European requirements. In addition, many large companies in the beauty industry are establishing their own sustainability standards, which often go beyond minimum legal requirements. This means that sustainability can no longer be addressed at the end of the development process; it must be integrated from the very beginning. We are therefore increasingly focusing on reducing material use, improving recyclability, using recycled materials, developing single-material and refillable solutions, and considering the entire life cycle of the packaging, right through to its end of life. At Toly, we view this regulatory shift not only as a compliance challenge but also as an opportunity for innovation. The goal is to create more sustainable packaging that is adapted to future challenges, while maintaining aesthetics, functionality, product protection, and cost constraints—all of which remain essential in the beauty industry.