Depend

Depend, trading as Depend Cosmetic AB, is a Swedish nail- and eye-care company based in Halmstad on the country's west coast. It was founded in 1952 and spent its first decades supplying the professional hairdressing trade, before reinventing itself in the early 1990s as a consumer beauty brand built around nail polish and eye products [6]. The company remains active and family-run, develops and manufactures most of its own products, and sells across the Nordic region while exporting to more than fifty countries.

Its best-known product, a five-millilitre mini nail polish sold under the name Minilack, became the commercial engine of that consumer pivot and is now distributed in dozens of markets.

According to the company's own account, Depend Cosmetic was established in Sweden in 1952 and worked solely with the hairdressing market until 1989 [6]. A Swedish beauty editorial that visited the factory describes the early business as a maker of professional hair-care products, and credits it with producing Scandinavia's first liquid soap.

The turn toward consumers came at the end of the 1980s. In 1989 the firm was acquired by Mårten Johansson, who took over as managing director and brought his brother Anders into the management team; the two have run the company since, alongside Dag Jensen [10]. Under the new ownership the focus moved away from salons. In early 1990 the company changed direction and shifted its attention to the retail trade, identifying potential in nails and nail care as well as in niche products for the eye area [6]. Among its early consumer launches were home-use eyelash and eyebrow dye and a home permanent-wave solution.

The product most associated with Depend is Minilack, a small five-millilitre bottle of nail polish. The factory-visit feature recounts that Mårten Johansson came across mini nail polish at a trade fair in Frankfurt; an initial order of fifty units sold out at once, after which the company recruited a paint specialist from Volvo to develop its own pigment bases and formulas [9]. Sources disagree on the year of that discovery: the editorial dates the Frankfurt fair to 1999, while a separate retailer account places it in 1997, and the company itself does not state a date.

Whatever its exact start, the line grew substantially. The Nordic retailer Nordicfeel describes Minilack as a celebrated classic available in more than sixty colours and distributed in fifty-four countries [10].

Depend organises its range chiefly around nails and eyes, with a smaller line of hand care. The nail assortment spans polish, gel polish, nail care, files, removers, decorations, French-manicure and artificial-nail products, while the eye category covers false eyelashes, brow and lash dye, brow pencils, pomade, makeup and tools. Hand care includes hand cream and alcohol gel. Beyond Minilack, current collections include the hybrid gel polish 7day and a newer line marketed as Gel iQ.

The company develops and manufactures much of what it sells, splitting production across two locations. Liquid products are made at its factory in Halmstad on the Swedish west coast, while nails, artificial eyelashes and similar items are produced in Indonesia [6]. The editorial feature reports manufacturing on a notable scale, citing roughly 35,000 mini polishes produced a day and around seven million bottles of lacquer a year, with the Halmstad plant running on a daytime shift and following Good Manufacturing Practice standards [9].

Depend frames itself around expertise, summed up in its Swedish tagline "Kunskap ger skönhet" — knowledge gives beauty. The company attributes its success not only to product quality, design and a stable marketing platform but also to what it calls a new and unique way of selling its products, including individual product training for retailers [6]. Its distribution is broad rather than exclusive: the company says its customer base comprises some 2,000 stores covering the entire retail field.

On values, the brand flags vegan and made-in-Sweden credentials, though these appear mainly as hashtags in social-media posts tied to the Gel iQ line rather than as a formal, site-wide policy [8].

No formal awards or third-party certifications appear in the company's published materials. The most substantial outside coverage is the Swedish beauty title Daisy Beauty's factory feature, "Nagelvecka: Besök på Depends fabrik i Halmstad," which documents the company's history, leadership and production scale through a visit to the Halmstad plant [9].

Depend is active. The brand operates its own companies in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland and exports to more than fifty countries. Its Swedish site continues to market new and limited-edition products, including a Gel iQ collection and a seasonal limited edition, indicating ongoing retail activity as of 2026 [1].