Celebrating independent beauty brands is quite the trend, what with this past summer’s Indie Beauty Expo, Cosmopack and Elements trade shows. (Of course there’s CEW’s coveted Indie Beauty Award, too, in May.) Most recently, on Tuesday, a new effort to acknowledge smaller beauty brands took place at the South Street Seaport Studios with an event by FounderMade, The Future of Beauty Summit, a day-long event that brought together more than a dozen small brands that included a brand exhibition, fireside chats with entrepreneurs and The Future of Beauty Challenge, one that awarded the most promising beauty brand from the day. On site services (hand massage, hair braiding) were also available.

Co-founded by May Lan Dong and Meghan Asha, New York-based FounderMade is an educational platform and consultancy that targets various industries and pinpoints opportunities within them, including the lifestyle, wellness and food industries.

While the event drew a crowd, including attendees from press, investors and bloggers and influencers, the daytime functions drew about 100 people to its exhibition and chats, which featured The Coveteur’s Stephanie Marks and executives from Stowaway Cosmetics, Loli Beauty and Make Beauty. Much excitement centered around The Future of Beauty Challenge that evening, too. This portion of the event drew another 100 people and kicked off with a Q&A led by Jessica Richards, Founder, Shen Beauty and included Deborah Marquardt, GM Style Network, Time Inc.; Yael Alkalay, Founder of Red Flower; Ian Ginsberg, President of C.O. Bigelow and Ricky Kenig, Founder of Ricky’s NYC.

After the panel fielded questions about everything from wellness, natural and digital trends, three brands identified as the most promising beauty brands of the day pitched their story to panelists. The mini “Shark Tank”-type event featured short presentations and videos from the founders of Fur, TréStique and Vive.co.

The winner of The Future of Beauty Challenge was TréStique, a company founded by Jennifer Kapahi and Jack Bensason that delivers the first magnetic sealing system of cream-gel, multifunctional pencils. The tools are designed to not only be high performance makeup but super portable thanks to magnetic caps that attach onto the pencils, and the blending and application tools that help users achieve their desired makeup look.

Pencils include a Moisturize & Blend Tinted Face Stick, Correct & Cover Concealer Crayon, Color & Contour Blush Stick, Color & Contour Bronzer Stick, Matte Color & Shine Balm Lip crayon, Color & Smudge Shadow Crayon, Line Sharpen & Smudge Eye Pencil and Define, Sculpt & Set Brow Pencil. Tools to help users achieve results include a Face Blender, an ultra plush sponge meant to be paired with the Tinted Face Stick; Blotting Sheets Cartridge, meant to be paired with Tinted Face Stick, Blush Stick and Bronzer Stick; Contour Brush, designed to work with the Blush Stick and Bronzer Stick; and Concealer Blender, meant for the Concealer Crayon.

The grand prize included two months free rent at WeWork, consulting from public relations firm Covet PR, three free months of exhibition space at Seaport Studios, $2,500 worth of legal fees from New York-based Dentons and features on The Coveteur and MIMI.

The other two brands up for the challenge were Fur, a conditioning oil and stubble cream designed for “the hair down there,” and Vive.co, an app that pairs users with nearby salons for fixed-pricing blowouts.

Additional brands that participated in the day’s event were Sakara Life, Onomie, FaceLoveFitness, PiperWai, Kopari, Glam&Go, True Moringa and D.I.D. Nails.