Today, Kryolan headed by Wolfram Langer son of the founder and run by the 3rd generation of Langer family based in Berlin, continues to deliver Arnold’s scientific approach to meet the ever-changing needs of make-up artists, introducing countless new items year-on-year to its growing list of iconic products. The brand supplies a few thousand products in more than 1,000 colours to make-up artists in over 100 countries worldwide – and it’s all down to one man and the brand’s famous philosophy, Make-up is a Science.

The Professional Difference
What sets Kryolan apart from other make-up brands, professional or otherwise, is our dedication to meeting professional make-up artists’ needs and demands. Every sector has its own expectations, for example theatrical make-up must be extremely hard-wearing, and so we only produce formulas that can perform under industry pressures:
• Every one of the brand’s colour-true products stands up on stage and on camera, even under HD lighting and filming conditions
• All the products are very long-lasting, yet still comfortable to wear
• Every formula developed is highly pigmented and colour-intense
• They use ingredients of highest purity for unbeatable skin compatibility
• They guarantee colour continuity, which means you can recreate similar looks again and again
• The brand offers the highest degree of product safety and reliability – perfect for the professional environment
• A large number of these products are also suitable for everyday wear.

Kryolan India
In the year 2006, Kryolan decided to venture into India since there was a huge demand amongst Professional make-up artists who were asking why they could not buy Kryolan products locally. Kryolan India was set up with a production factory at Mahindra World City, Chennai. Currently in India, they also have seven retail outlets – 3 in Chennai, 1 in Bangalore, 1 in Mumbai and 2 in Delhi. When it was decided that Kryolan would start operations in India, Malgorzata Langer, the spouse of Wolfram Langer, was responsible to set up the organisation and build the production factory. She took over the important task of setting up the new facilities and developing operations over the years. As a shareholder of the family business, Langer feels closely connected to the values, ideas, goals and future of the Kryolan Group.

It has been 76 years now and Kryolan, as you all know, is a big international world family. Worldwide, they have around 500 people working for Kryolan. When asked about her own introduction to cosmetics, Mrs Langer says, “I was 28 years old when I got married and came to Berlin. Of course, I did not understand anything about cosmetics then and it was impossible for me even to understand why people need so many different kinds of products and colours. When they took me to the company it was a revelation for me to see how the product was mixed, produced and all the colours that came out. I had so many questions on my mind. I wanted to know who is buying it and why so many colours? At that time, I was using only mascara and lipstick. I was lost seeing how the company works every day and for the first three years, I didn’t understand anything. I was really asking myself why I’m here,” she adds.

“People from the film industry and theatre come and tell us about the product requirement for their performance or they ask for our suggestions. Then, we started development in the production line based on their requirements,” she shares explaining its authenticity.

Talking about the company’s goals, she shares, “We are a company that has the most colours compared to all the other companies in the world that produce cosmetics. We have 1000 different shades in different products. If you go to our laboratory, you can see all the varieties of shades. We have a lot of shades and we still keep them as a reference. In case somebody would come and say I had this shade 20 years ago in this movie which worked, you can go to our laboratory and pull out what was produced 20 years ago.”

The Research and Development head, Dr. Jochen Gottfriedsen says, “Worldwide we have more end user customers now. Our goal is to take the step from the professional makeup to the end consumer which is sometimes a little difficult because some products are really not for daily office goers. But if you’re a makeup lover, then you have the opportunity to play a little more with the products to improve things. We understand ourselves as a service company for professional makeup, theatres, movies and opera and so on. One of our main goals is our service and that we have all the shades and we produce new shades as well.”

“For example, on stage, if an artist wants to put tar on somebody, it’s not possible to do so. So, we also produce products for special effects that look like tar and are not unhealthy to use on any skin. The makeup trend for us is performance, high durability, and a different range of shades from all over the world. When the HD series came up, the performance was very important because makeup is matte for the HD camera, because you don’t want reflection. In HD camera techniques, the reflections always look like white spots but in real time on the nose, it is a little bit whitish kind of reflection, so the HD series of makeup products were invented together with the HD cameras. We always take a look at the camera and check ok, is this matt enough? Or need any change and this was quite challenging. We invented the ‘DIGITAL COMPLEXION’ series which is specially made for higher resolution cameras. We also found that it also works for normal, daily basis because a lot a women don’t want to look like they are wearing makeup and it’s not sweaty, thus it’s perfectly working for the end-user”, he adds.

Talking about the constant training and development, he avers, “We are having detailed training programs all the time. So we train makeup artists how to use the products. Usually it is very effective because some products are different to apply, to get the special effect on skin. For example, to apply BALD CAPS (which are made in India and we are the largest producers in the world – we produce 30000 per year), it requires good training of special application techniques. We also have a worldwide makeup artist network sharing their opinions and pictures.”

The CEO of Kryolan, Chennai Madhivanan Ramaswamy says, “When our products are introduced and distributed, detailed training is given by our professional team to our customers, distributors, staff and makeup artists. It’s a constant and continuous process to ensure proper understanding and use of the product.”

Mrs. Langer says, “My personal favourite is digital complexion line, eye makeup remover, facial cleanser, and micellar water and I love all of them. In many cases, women want to be beautiful and want wonderful makeup, but they forget to clean it properly. It’s really important to clean up the makeup at night. All women should remove their makeup and let your skin breathe.”

“We have planned to launch our green series soon – that means sustainable resources of raw materials like plant and minerals based because the current trend is organic, clean, vegan products. All these things together are a challenge and interesting to develop,” adds the R&D head on the future plans.