MECCA Streamlines Compliance with Centric PLM

“Working with hundreds of global beauty brands means that managing compliance for ingredients can get a little tricky. Relying only on spreadsheets to keep track of ingredients and claims slowed us down. We needed a solution that could manage all our compliance documentation in one place.”

David Cumberland, GM of Risk and Compliance at MECCA, discusses the beauty company’s priority of customer wellbeing by complying with Australia’s ingredients legislation, as well as the challenges that this entailed.

“We made the decision to introduce Centric PLM™, so that we could store all the information from our brands in one place, knowing it was accurate and up-to-date at all times.”

Today, teams at MECCA no longer need to manually look up product information and compliance documents, everything they need is right at their fingertips thanks to Centric PLM.

“Our reporting requirements are important to make sure we’re prioritizing the wellbeing of our customers and staying on top of the latest regulations. As we grew as a business, doing this manually started to take up a lot of time. Centric PLM simplified this process for us and ensured our data was accurate and traceable back to each individual product,” continues Cumberland.

MECCA teams have saved time, improved processes with brand partners, sped up the compliance process and streamlined new product introductions. How did they do it?

Australasia’s Leading Prestige Beauty Retailer

Founded 25 years ago, MECCA has redefined the Australian and New Zealand beauty landscape. With more than 100 stores across Australia and New Zealand, as well as online stores in both countries and T-Mall global, MECCA offers an exclusive edit of the best in beauty from more than 200 brands, including signature lines MECCA Cosmetica, MECCA MAX and kit.

Striving for Efficiency

With rapid growth in the beauty and wellness market, constantly changing consumer trends and the expansion of product portfolios, MECCA wanted to automate existing processes involving ingredient compliance.

It was important that teams had easy access to all the information about products in one place including ingredients, artwork files and claim documentation.

“We were looking for a back-end solution that provided a secure environment for data. We can’t approve products with incomplete data on ingredients or missing documentation – every product needs to be compliant,“ says Cumberland.

MECCA chose to implement Centric PLM for Cosmetics and Personal Care to handle large volumes of product specification data, while making sure each product meets strict compliance regulations.

A PLM Solution to Serve Customers

“We’re operating in such a high pace environment that we need to be able to move quickly so that we always have the latest and best beauty products ready for our customers as soon as they’re available.  The capabilities of Centric PLM mean we know the history and composition of every product so we can adapt faster than ever before,” explains Cumberland at MECCA.

Working Closely with Brand Partners

When launching new products, MECCA requests the full formulations (BOMS) and other required documents such as artwork from brands. This is automatically uploaded to Centric PLM and the compliance team can immediately see if anything is missing such as documentation to support a claim e.g., ‘cruelty-free’.

“We can also quickly identify if products contain ingredients that aren’t compliant with the markets we sell in which is extremely useful and important” adds Cumberland.

Faster Product Launches

“We’re approving new products faster than ever before because we’re completing our reviews in one place, Centric PLM. If we realize we need more data, we can get in touch with our brands straight away, rather than discovering this further down the line and ending up with delays,” says Cumberland.