Your Compliance Department. Not a Consultancy.

Most consultancies give you advice and a report. Arcus gives you a compliance team that is embedded in your business, knows your products, and operates as if it is part of your company.

The Difference Between Advice and Ownership

There is a significant difference between hiring a consultancy and having a compliance department. A consultancy gives you documents, invoices by the hour, and moves on. A compliance department is part of how your business operates. It knows your product pipeline.

It alerts you to regulatory changes before they affect your products. It carries the Responsible Person relationship. It talks to your team, not just to your founder.

That is what the Arcus outsourced model delivers. A full compliance department function, embedded into your business, without the cost or complexity of hiring for it.

What Your Outsourced Compliance Department Does

You get a named contact who knows your business.

You are supported by a dedicated regulatory contact who understands your products, target markets, and compliance requirements, providing continuity without the need for repeated onboarding.

Ongoing regulatory monitoring

We track relevant regulatory developments in the markets you operate in and provide updates where changes may affect your products or compliance obligations.

Responsible Person management for UK and EU cosmetics

Regulatory filings across applicable markets. CPSR coordination, Product Information File structuring and maintenance, and labelling reviews for new products or reformulations. We also support communication with regulatory authorities where appropriate, as part of managing compliance processes.

Commercial Intelligence

Commercial intelligence that separates a compliance department from a compliance form-filler. When a requirement is a genuine constraint, we say so. When it is an opportunity to do something your competitors are not doing, we tell you that too.

A Founder-Led Team for Founder-Led Brands

Lee Bryan built this model specifically for ambitious brands that cannot justify full-time compliance headcount but cannot afford to get compliance wrong either. Brands at the growth stage. Brands entering new markets. Brands that have moved fast and need to build their compliance foundation properly before enforcement tightens.

The embedded model works because our team is present in the markets. UK. EU. China. Middle East. Indonesia. Not one office reading foreign regulation from a distance. Specialists in the territory who understand how the rules actually work, not just what they say on paper.

The Fractional Compliance Model

The concept of the fractional executive is well established in finance and marketing. Fractional CFO. Fractional CMO. The compliance equivalent barely exists as a named model. Almost nobody in the cosmetics or nicotine space is offering it properly.

Arcus has been running it for nearly a decade in the nicotine market. A retained compliance department function, scoped to your product portfolio, where we dip in and out at the volume your business actually needs. Not a consultancy you call when something goes wrong. A compliance function that is part of how you operate, without the cost or complexity of putting it on the payroll.

The retained model is structured around your product portfolio. How many products you have in market. What markets you operate in. What compliance tasks your portfolio generates. You are not paying for hours spent on admin. You are paying for a compliance function that moves with your business.

Who This Is For

Growing cosmetics or novel nicotine brands that need regulatory depth without full-time headcount. Brands entering new markets who need temporary expertise while they build internal capability. Brands that have had compliance problems and need to reset properly. Founder-led businesses that want a compliance partner who operates at commercial speed and understands what is at stake.

This includes cosmetics and personal care brands that have grown fast through social commerce:

These brands are often turning significant revenue with lean teams and no dedicated compliance function. They need more than a filing service. They need strategic guidance, a Responsible Person, regulatory monitoring, and a team that understands their product portfolio without having to be briefed from scratch every time. What they cannot justify, and do not need, is a full-time Chief Regulatory Officer. That is exactly the gap the fractional compliance department fills.

Build your Compliance Department Why Arcus is Diferent