The story of EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ 2023 Malta winner, Andy Gatesy, is one of humble beginnings, big-picture thinking and an absolute dedication to remaining agile while leading a more than 50-year-old global company.
Gatesy’s father, Zoli Gatesy, founded Toly as a manufacturing company specializing in cosmetics packaging in 1971 in Malta. The elder Gatesy had fled his home during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and as a refugee in the United Kingdom, became a mold maker during the height of the mid-20th century plastics boom. Andy joined the family business in 1986 and became CEO when his father died in 1991.
“When I was growing up, if somebody asked my father what Toly was, he would say we were an engineering company that converts plastics and builds molds. We were a British company with a satellite manufacturing plant in Malta, and all our customers were British or American brands like Estee Lauder and Revlon with British factories,” says Gatesy. “When I took over, I knew we needed to change our mindset.”
Today, under Gatesy’s leadership, Toly still builds molds and converts plastics. But they’ve also become the go-to packaging supplier for 23 of the top 30 beauty brands around the world, including legacy brands such as Chanel, Loreal and Unilever, and buzzy, celebrity-backed lines such as Fenty Beauty by Rihanna and Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez. They boast 8 offices and 5 production facilities as well as a network of partners that are scattered across the world in North and South America, Europe and Asia. In 2022 alone they banked EUR97 million in sales.
How did Gatesy shape his father’s business into the global powerhouse it is today? Gatesy outlines the three pillars from which he has expanded Toly:
— Andy Gatesy, CEO of Toly share
A global mindset
Shortly after joining the family business, Gatesy visited the Galeries Lafayette in Paris. In their beautiful displays of the storied department store he saw the French and international brands not working with Toly. It inspired him to think bigger. He focused first on expanding Toly in the United States. They initially struggled to sell a Malta-manufactured product in the U.S., but the tide turned after they opened a sales office in New Jersey in 1987. Gatesy counts this as the beginning of their international expansion which later led to locations in Paris, The Netherlands, China and beyond. It’s a strategy that is paying off in 2024.
“It’s clear we are moving toward a deglobalized world right now. If we want to be a global leader, we need to offer local manufacturing solutions to our customers,” says Gatesy. “And that is what we’ve done with this network of factories and offices we’ve built.”
Product diversity
Toly’s heritage is plastics manufacturing, but if plastics are no longer the material of choice for the beauty industry, where does that leave them? Prepared. Because they no longer just deal with plastics. They now also offer packaging comprised of various materials from glass to metal and new, eco-friendly options.
“We are always finding new materials to plug into our platform,” he says. “But we aren’t going build our own glass factories or metal factories. We do it with a network of strategic partners and alliances, so we have the credibility of manufacturing, but the agility of partnerships in other areas.”
Innovative service offerings
Gatesy positioned Toly to be flexible in their manufacturing as well as in the non-packaging services they offer their beauty industry customers. Their division Beauty Trill offers filled, ready-to-go packaging for white label products, and Toly Design Studio offers brands full service for primary and secondary packaging.
They also pride themselves on product innovation, opening their Innovation Academy in 2003 and the physical Innovation Centre in Malta in 2014. By Gatesy’s count, the company innovates 200 new products every year, including their patented Powder Queen, a loose powder dispenser that won’t break or spill all over your luggage the next time you travel.
Prepared for challenges
Even the best-intentioned executives face unforeseen challenges, and Gatesy is no exception. He has directed Toly through multiple Gulf wars, several economic crises and a pandemic. Ask anyone in the beauty industry what it was like selling makeup products when no one in the world was leaving their homes and when they did, they wore face masks. But because of the agile culture Gatesy created, Toly has not only survived but thrived.
Now the next challenge putting Gatesy to the test is succession planning. As one of the only long-standing, family-owned and operated companies in their industry, he knows he has continuity in his corner. His competitors are predominately private equity firms. And, he has four adult children all involved in Toly.
“I have four smart, committed, hardworking entrepreneurial kids. So, though I don’t have plans to leave anytime soon, I’ve started early and I’m getting them involved in the strategic decision-making processes, so hopefully it will be a smooth process,” he says.
Another challenge that many executives can relate to? An increase in the demand for sustainability, both from companies who themselves want more eco-friendly practices and optics and legislation throughout Europe requiring it.
Toly is a founding member of the Malta ESG Alliance and sees the push for sustainability in the cosmetic industry as an opportunity to push innovation.
— Andy Gatesy, Malta’s 2023 EY Entrepreneur of the Year share
“Our core purpose at Toly is to make a positive impact on everybody and everything we touch,” he says, citing Toly’s core values as people, passion, pride and creativity. “The future is not an upgrade of the present. It’s an invitation and an opportunity to think in a completely different way. I think that’s what we try and do: think differently and be different for a sustainable future.”
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