What Cosmetic Chemists Should Know About Natural and Clean Beauty
Clean and natural beauty products remain on trend but the roots of the movement lie in a long-standing problem: formulating with natural ingredients is hard.…
Category: Natural cosmetics
Cutting Through The Confusion Between Natural and Synthetic Cosmetic Ingredients
The “natural vs synthetic” debate is one of the most persistent and misunderstood topics in cosmetic formulation. It’s also where marketing often clashes with science.…
Why natural cosmetics aren’t better
It’s easy to find people claiming on the Internet that natural cosmetics or natural skin care is better than synthetics. These claims are inherently believable…
What is in a cosmetic ingredient
Formulating cosmetics can be a challenge. You’ve got to make a product that performs well enough for your consumers, is easy to make for your…
5 Reasons Sulfate-Free Products Exist
Have you ever wondered why companies sell sulfate free products? If there is some safety issue with sulfates, why do companies continue to sell those…
Things to know about starting an organic or natural cosmetic line
I frequently get requests here on Chemists Corner from people who want to start their own organic skin care line or their own natural cosmetics…
The challenges of formulating a natural cosmetic line
Natural cosmetic and beauty products are in vogue these days and cosmetic marketers around the world are looking to launch their own version that appeals…
Natural cosmetic preservative ingredients and strategies
One of the most common type of questions we get asked here on Chemists Corner is about natural preservatives. On the one hand this is…
Natural surfactants for cosmetic products
Cosmetic surfactants are the most versatile and important ingredients in cosmetic formulations. Unfortunately, there are not many surfactants that naturally occur so trying to make…
Natural cosmetics and Standard cosmetics - What’s the difference?
In a previous article about natural cosmetic products, I wrote about the difficulty in producing actually natural cosmetics. This is particularly difficult for cleansing products…
What is a natural cosmetic?
This month we are going to focus on formulating natural cosmetic products. This continues to be a hot area for cosmetic marketers and frequently cosmetic…
Natural Colors in Cosmetics
Many consumers desire natural cosmetics. While some countries, including the US and EU, have natural colors in their positive lists these color leave a lot…
Claims for your natural cosmetics
I spoke at the Twin Cities Holistic Seminar last month and then attended their companion trade show. That’s where a number of cosmetic industry raw…
Three levels of Natural Formulating
While perusing the Twin Cities Holistic Cosmetic show last week I noticed lots of different types of cosmetic raw materials targeted towards the “natural” cosmetic…
Surfactant sources - Making detergents without using crude oil
Crude oil is pretty amazing stuff. It’s a mixture of a variety of hydrocarbon molecules and can be used to create any number of…
Should your products be organically certified?
There was an excellent write-up of a debate between two cosmetic industry experts about the value of having your products certified by one of the…
Natural Cosmetic Preservative Questions Answered
On a number of occasions we get asked questions about formulating cosmetics and the best cosmetic preservatives. When there are enough questions on a theme…
Is your cosmetic marketing misleading?
Entrepreneurs make me smile. They have such earnestness, optimism, and creativity. I encourage entrepreneurs whenever I can even when I think the idea is dumb.…
Naturals Cosmetic Market hits $30 billion
According to the Kline Group, the world wide sales of natural cosmetics is about $30 billion. This is roughly 7 or 8 percent of the…