“Global impact” may not have been item number one on Yuka’s to-do list when the app launched in 2017, but it sure is now.
And for good reason: the product-scanning app, cofounded in Paris by Julie Chapon, François Martin and Benoît Martin, has seen a rare rise, adopted today by one in every three adults in France, and counting more than 65 million total users across the 12 countries it operates in.
Used to scan food and personal care product barcodes, the app provides consumers with ingredient list breakdowns, including explicators on what each ingredient is and whether it poses a low, moderate or high risk or is risk-free (represented in the app by yellow, orange, red and green color codes), as well as an overall product safety score.
While the app’s most common use case globally is scanning food products to determine the presence of potentially harmful additives and endocrine disruptors, Yuka’s cosmetic product-scanning side is seeing fast growth. Recently, the app has gone viral on TikTok as consumers seek more autonomy in their search for “clean” beauty products, subsequently sparking discourse, as well, about the extent to which the app’s scoring system should be relied on. These conversations are particularly hitting in the U.S., where more than 50 percent of Yuka’s new users are coming from.
U.S. consumers are also five times more likely than European users to opt for the app’s premium subscription, data shows, which costs $20 a month and allows users to search for products without scanning them and provides personalized recommendations among other perks.
Here, WWD speaks with Yuka cofounder Chapon about the growth of the app, key learnings in operating it and what comes next.
WWD: What was the genesis of Yuka, and what opportunity did you see for an offering like it?
Julie Chapon: One of my cofounders is a father of three children, and he was looking to buy better products for his kids. He realized how complicated it was to decipher labels and ingredient information on food products, and wanted to create a tool that could quickly and simply identify what’s in the product — and whether or not those components are good for your health. We started with food, but soon Yuka gained a lot of traction and we were receiving emails and messages about offering the same model for cosmetic products, which we launched on the app in 2018.
Julie Chapon, François Martin and Benoît Martin.
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What was it that catalyzed Yuka’s traction?
J.C.: The traction was almost instant. It was significantly due to word of mouth: in 2016 when we were creating the app, we built a community of around 2,000 people who we consulted with, and when we launched the app that community was so behind the project — they shared it massively. During our first few days we thought we were going to have 100 or 200 users, but then we had 1,000, then 2,000 — it was crazy. Our objective for our first year was to garner 10,000 users — at the end of the year, we had 1 million. And to this day, we have never paid for advertising.
How does Yuka’s rating system work?
J.C.: We have about 30,000 food and beauty ingredients registered in our database, and our in-house toxicologist, Zoé Kerlo, reviews the scientific studies for each in order to identify their level of risk. This includes considering how comprehensive studies of a respective ingredient are, and we also rate certain ingredients differently depending on the type of product they’re in. Titanium dioxide, for instance, is labeled “moderate risk” for products that can be inhaled — spray SPFs, lip makeup, toothpaste, dry shampoo and the like. It is labeled low risk, however, in all other products — meaning titanium dioxide on its own won’t significantly impact those products’ overall rating.
The main feedback we receive is about the fact that we don’t take ingredient quantity into account: our reasoning for that, for one, is that it has been acknowledged since the 2000s that the toxicology rule “the dose makes the poison” is no longer infallible, particularly when it comes to potential endocrine disruptors. Additionally, even if an ingredient is present in small amounts in a product, cumulative exposure to it across multiple cosmetic products can pose a health risk.
So what is Yuka’s model most useful for, and what is it not useful for?
J.C.: What we try to do is stick to the scientific literature and deliver information in a clear but concise way. You can decide if you want to buy a product or not, but now you have the knowledge to do so — that’s the most important thing. For food products in particular, we don’t recommend eschewing all products that are labeled red (high risk) or only buying products that are green — that is not a good use of the app. You have to inform yourself about nutrition and be able to determine, for instance, that a product that is red because it has a lot of salt is still OK to eat so long as you’re not constantly eating products with a lot of salt. We try to offer that kind of education on our blog to complement the app.
We don’t want to tell consumers to boycott anything; we want them to be able to make informed decisions, because that was the problem previously — consumers were buying products without knowing what was in them.
As the app has grown, what have you learned about how consumers are thinking about ingredient safety, and what they care about most?
J.C.: It varies greatly person-to-person. There are consumers who only want to avoid high-risk ingredients, and there are those who want to avoid high-, moderate- and low-risk ingredients altogether. When we launched Yuka, people didn’t know much about cosmetic ingredients, about food additives or endocrine disruptors — now they do, and they’re looking for better products. We have the feeling that we participated in that education. We’ve realized, too, that U.S. users are much more willing to pay for the app than European users. Roughly 1 percent of our users in Europe pay for a premium membership [versus 5 percent of our U.S. users, who in fact often pay before trying the app — they want the full package immediately].
What is your assessment of how the beauty regulatory landscape is changing in the U.S. as MoCRA requirements take effect?
J.C.: European ingredient regulations are far from perfect, but they are a bit better in protecting consumers than U.S. regulations. With that being said, these things [like MoCRA] take time — manufacturers have years to conform with new ingredient and safety regulations. We believe change can come through consumers, too, rather than relying solely on federal regulation; if consumers don’t buy as many products with controversial ingredients, manufacturers will stop using them. In France and the U.S., we just launched a new feature that allows users to call out food brands using high-risk additives via email or X with a pre-configured email — it’s a way to give power back to consumers.
Yuka’s newly-implemented “call-out” feature.
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What are Yuka’s key priorities for 2025?
J.C.: This year is very much focused on the U.S. market. Our mission at Yuka is twofold: to help consumers make better choices for their health, and also to push manufacturers to improve what’s in their products. In the U.S., we have 18 million users currently — which is great, but not enough to start having an impact on manufacturers. We’ve just hired our first U.S. employee and are planning to build a small team in the region, and soon, we’ll extend our “call-out” feature to Instagram, too, and allow users to comment the pre-configured demand for improved ingredient safety on a company’s most recent Instagram post. That’s the objective of 2025: to work toward fulfilling the second level of our mission.
