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Drawbacks to “simple” ingredients and limited ingredients?
I am creating new skin care and hair care due to my last eczema flare that caused me to be in and out of hospitals. Although I can’t market it for medical conditions, my goal is to limit the ingredients in products to make it simpler for those who know what their triggers are to shop for cosmetic items. Although anything can be an allergen, is there any drawbacks to making very simple products?
For example, my shampoo bar only has 10 ingredients vs up to 30 I’ve seen in store brands, my conditioner bar has 8 ingredients and all are plant based. My most popular skin cream has 3 ingredients.
Could this potentially limit my audience too? Might it be too podonk for the local festivals? Or too homegrown for any mid size local company to offer it in their stores? My goal is to eventually sell to local natural stores.
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12 Replies
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I also suffer from sensitive skin, so when I co-founded Indochine Natural in 2006 and went on to establish factories in Viet Nam and Malaysia, my approach was limited, simple, plant-based ingredients and zero synthetics. Plus I did a lot of research and analysis of ingredient allergens. I established my own in-house analysis lab to test all products before release for sale, and ongoing product development.
My company did very well, and I manufactured and supplied products globally. I have now retired in Australia.
The key, in my opinion, is to sell your story and maintain very high product standards.
You can contact me directly at: mikethair@gmail.com
Good luck.
Kind regards,
Dr Mike Thair
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It depends on how you want to market it. Ingredients can be part of the marketing, so you can determine for yourself if it’s limiting your marketing ability towards your demographic.
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How did you market the limited ingredients and what was your most popular products? Did you get good feedback from people suffering various skin ailments?
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I couldn’t actually market it since I could be shut down for any potential medical claims, I used the dubious term, natural. There’s only so many words that can be used so I settled on that and it was at least something the masses sort of think they understand which helped. But now I am attempting to move away from that term so I could use some ideas. I am leaning on either Simple (its not simple, took years of research and experiments on myself lol) or Limited Ingredient which almost sounds like pet food. I can see why so many people claim organic or natural, not a whole lot to go on without accidentally making a medical type claim.
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I’m trying to not use any essential oils in my products, how can I cover the scent of unpleasant ingredients like BTMS?
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Then use fragrance oils
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Scents are so tricky, as most scented ingredients are strong triggers for allergies or dermatitis, across the board. Is there any scent that has been found to be less of a trigger? I was thinking about using coco butter beause of the strong scent that could disguise the smell of ingredients like BTMS.
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skin cream with 3 ingredients? can you say what they are?
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Most likely an anhydrous body butter, but I am also curious.
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Just a body butter but I did create an effective 2 ingredient “lotion” but smelled so bad that I realized simple can only go so far.
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The fewer ingredients is a marketing concept. To the question “… is there any drawbacks to making very simple products?” Nothing per se - if it is safe (microbiologically and chemically) safe.
As expressed as the clean concept, it embraces the (usually fake) natural and often, (equally fake)”preservative-free” marketing extension. It is both dishonest and risky.
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Yeah I get you totally, thats why I stopped using the terms organic and natural but now am stumped as to what words to actually use. Sometimes you use the words people understand (they don’t necessarily know that natural is not an actual real term). I was actually thinking of Simple, Easy lol. Or made from plants which isn’t a lie even though its actually made in a lab, otherwise they’d risk blindness or death.
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