Briana Pace | Southern Indiana Business Report
What started with unhealthy lashes has led to a 24-person cosmetic manufacturing team that makes a quarter of a million lip gloss products per year. Megan Cox created an eyelash and brow growth serum in 2013 and has since developed Innacos, a beauty lab located in downtown Bedford.
When the Bedford native left for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010, she never thought she would spend her career in cosmetics. Cox was expecting to take a consulting job or venture into finance, but when there were no products on the market to help her thinning lashes, Cox took matters into her own hands.
“I’m like a problem solver or a tinkerer, but I really didn’t think this was something I would do for my career,” she said. “Even when I created the eyelash and eyebrow growth serum, Wink, I was not committed to spending my career in cosmetics.”
But Wink led Cox to develop an entire brand of her own, Amalie Beauty. When product packaging issues started, she, once again, took charge and moved to China. She decided she would deal with the problem herself.
“I felt like in China you’re able to get anything done,” Cox said, “and you’re able to get it done really quickly.”
While she was there, news outlets in the United States wrote about Cox’s story and it began to reach other beauty entrepreneurs. They started to contact her; they’d heard about her story and wanted her advice and help. Cox started consulting between clients and manufacturers, but she became frustrated with the manufacturers. She felt they couldn’t deliver quality products to her clients consistently.
“My husband said to me, ‘I’m pretty sure you could do this better than these labs that we’re working with here in China,’” Cox said.
So, she decided to try. Cox sold Amalie, moved back to southern Indiana and opened her own lab in Bedford, Innacos. Moving back allowed her to test her new business in a low cost way. She also had a strong support system there; her parents, extended family and many connections all lived in the area.
“I knew that if I needed to figure something out, or I needed to try something or I needed some help,” Cox said, “that I could probably get it there in Bedford, where I had a community that was already built.”
At first, Cox only worked with entrepreneurs and only developed lip products within color cosmetics, making lip glosses and lipsticks. The company has expanded since 2018 to include skincare, hair care and body care production.
“We’re eight years in,” Cox said, “and we’ve really grown pretty massively during that time.”
Innacos now accepts about 25 to 30 new clients a month, helping through product development, testing and launch. If the client is successful and re-orders with Innacos, they continue production. Today, Cox estimates they’ve worked with over 1,000 clients.
“The thing is, the deeper you go, and the more things you solve, the deeper you go,” she said. “I don’t know, at this point I don’t see myself doing something else.”