Bobzchemist
Forum Replies Created
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For me, asking for a small fee for an NDA is mostly a selection/exclusion method, particularly for those people who flat out refuse to disclose even the tiniest bit about their projects without one. If they’re not willing to pay $20 for me to fill out paperwork, I tend to make the assumption that they are also going to give me a hard time about paying the rest of their bills - and I can do without that.
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When I have taken consulting jobs for people with no experience/reputation in the cosmetic industry and/or no business experience at all, I have charged an initial fee for a phone consultation, because I have had way too many 2-3 hour free phone calls that did not turn into a paying gig.I could certainly understand charging a small fee to prepare a NDA as well, since I need to be paid for my time, and again, there have been too many that have gone nowhere. I’ve found that being a nice guy about this does not put food on the table, and some clients will take shameless advantage of my good nature.It would also not be out of line for a consultant to say that his/her minimum fee is about $2,000, which entitles you to x amount of time/labwork/samples.I would probably put things differently than charging a “retainer”, though. I think I’d say that my small initial fee for preparing the NDA, and the subsequent (larger) fee for a phone consultation (which comes with a written summary) are either considered part of the minimum fee, or will be refunded if the project cost goes beyond the minimum fee.I forgot to mention that paying for a phone consultation does not obligate any of my prospective clients to the minimum consulting fee.
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This is actually only true for some formulations. For others, the opposite is true.
The explanation is something that you’ll probably never see published - it has to do with the way the waxes crystallize/solidify in the sticks. -
OK, a couple of things you need to be aware of.
1) The saponification of triglycerides is a slow process at room temperature. Heating to 70 - 80C increases the reaction speed substantially. The more dilute your solution, the harder it will be for the reactants to find each other so that they can react - and that takes even more time.2) Adding a concentrated lye solution to your oil/fatty acid mixture is the best way of using the exothermic reaction to make your soap quickly - but not so much on a larger scale, as you’ve discovered. If you can’t or won’t heat your batch, you are inevitably going to see batch making times in the 8 - 12 hour range or longer. (and yes, we make this sort of product where I work, so I’m not just speaking theoretically)3) The rest of the problem solution is going to be a series of cost/benefit calculations - how much does it cost to heat the water vs. how long does the batch take to react vs. what is the capacity of my mixing vessel vs. how big a water heater can I afford/fit into my factory. -
That should work. Are you heating the soap and/or mixing energetically?
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First off, there’s this from Bonicel’s FAQ:Is Bonicel a probiotic?Bonicel is a probiotic-derived ingredient. It is derived from the an optimized form of GanedenBC30’s fermentation broth. Although a probiotic organism produces Bonicel, Bonicel is not a probiotic.So, you see that it is important to pay careful attention to the exact wording of the advertisements from the people selling these products.The CLR material plays a similar trick that’s even harder to catch:PROBIOBALANCE CLR™ NPProBioBalance CLR™ NP supplies the skin cells with nutritive elements and allows for the activation of detoxification processes to obtain raw materials for the production of new molecules (e.g. proteins) and energy. As a result, the metabolic activity of skin cells is increased, the skin’s immune system is strengthened and the skin is protected against environmental stress.Characteristic: ProBioBalance CLR™ NP consists of probiotic bifido cultures, suspended and disintegrated in a biologically active milk-based matrix.INCI-Name: Water, Lactose, Milk Protein, Bifida Ferment LysateTrue, they are selling probiotic cultures, but what they are selling is disintegrated cultures - there’s nothing alive left in there at all. But they’re being pretty careful not to say that too loudly.This is a useful article:
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Some of the companies selling pearlescent pigments and/or colors still do a color forecast either once or twice a year, predicting the latest hot colors. They will usually have starting formulas to work from that you can give to the private label company. That is easiest way to do this.Second easiest is to find a lipstick from another company that you want to copy, and send it to the private label place you’re buying from. They will probably charge you extra to match the shade.Otherwise, you can buy a pantone book or two, or hire a color matching expert as a consultant or an employee.
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It’s been done for cosmetic pigments and used in eyeshadow and possibly for hair coloring. Not sure if it’s legal for lips.
Not too many people want to look that weird, though, and the pigments are very expensive, so lack of market/profit pretty well killed the idea. -
If you’re serious about optimizing your formula, you should do both, at varying percentages, to determine experimentally what works best for you
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@MarkBroussard, I’m going to have to disagree with you a bit. “Free from x” or “x-free” claims carry the clear implication that something is wrong with “x”. I agree with the way Perry put it “Free from claims say “buy my product because it doesn’t have a scary ingredient that my competitors who don’t care about your safety put in their product.””
The piece of the picture I think you’re missing is that we know that there have been “free from x” marketing/pr campaigns against ingredients that are perfectly safe, even beneficial, (PABA, for example, or red 3) that were deliberately false/misleading solely to get a competitive advantage.We also know that this continues today, albeit in subtler form. It’s insidious, and difficult to counter. -
The most cost-effective way to do this (if you’re not operating on a shoe-string) is to find a medium-to-large sized manufacturing company, and work with their R&D department.
The fastest way to do this is to go with a private-label operation rather than designing your own formulas. -
This sort of thing makes me despair for the future of our planet.
“healthier” line? short, pronounceable ingredient names?The very fact that these things are seen as desirable means that we as scientists have badly failed in educating the general public. -
You have run into one of the basic truths - packaging is an integral part of new product design. Talk to your packaging supplier for more info - tube diameter, spring strength, pump design, and orifice size all impact the way a product sprays out of a container.
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It sounds like you’re looking for bottles to sell fragrance in, rather than just store it. For simple storage, a dark boston round glass bottle is fine, and should be dead easy for any manufacturer to produce. http://www.containerandpackaging.com/mobile/item.asp?Item=G141A
For selling fragrance in, this may not be the best choice. Have you considered Teflon bottles? In the US, this would be an insane choice, because teflon is about 100x the cost of glass. In your country, it might be a viable option. -
One of the areas that has gotten chemists and companies in trouble is the use of drug ingredients without making drug claims, thinking that this will keep them out of the drug category. This is NOT true. From the FDA’s website: http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/GuidanceRegulation/LawsRegulations/ucm074201.htm
” The FD&C Act defines drugs, in part, by their intended use…How is a product’s intended use established?Intended use may be established in a number of ways. The following are some examples:1)Claims stated on the product labeling, in advertising, on the Internet, or in other promotional materials…2) Consumer perception, which may be established through the product’s reputation. This means asking why the consumer is buying it and what the consumer expects it to do.3) Ingredients that cause a product to be considered a drug because they have a well- known (to the public and industry) therapeutic use. An example is fluoride in toothpaste.”So, this means that the FDA can declare your product to be a drug, regardless of ANYTHING you do or do not claim, if either enough people think your product is a drug, OR, if your product has a well-known drug ingredient in it.Sal Acid is a special case, because the FDA doubts that it works. But still, be very careful. -
There’s no actual difference between these and tinted moisturizers. It’s all marketing hype and double talk.
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Where is it you live that you can’t find glass boston round bottles, but you do have internet access? I thought they were available everywhere.
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Something about this just sounds bizarre to me. Candelilla wax has a melt point of 68.5–72.5 °C, and it’s a pretty straightforward change - increase candelilla, decrease IPM, and your melt point has no choice but to go up. What was your melt point when you got to 25% Candelilla?
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Are you looking for commercial or home crafting information, and what country are you from?
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The more oil that stays on the surface of the lips, the glossier your lipstick will be. Look for an oil that is absorbed into the skin a bit.
I will reiterate that formulating a lipstick from scratch is just about the hardest thing to do in cosmetics, because of the very many attributes that you need to all get right at the same time. Matte lipsticks might be the hardest of all. If you don’t already have experience formulating lipsticks, for Pete’s sake, don’t start with a matte one - it’s like trying to learn how to fix cars by starting with a Ferrari. -
Microspheres aren’t simply texture enhancers, specifically in the case of anhydrous non-volatile creme-to-powder foundations and concealers - they are critical to the success of the formulation.I’ll try to explain why. Feel free to ask questions if I’m not clear enough. (If you’re making a creme-to-powder that has volatile components, this doesn’t apply much)First, let’s look at what we want to achieve with an anhydrous non-volatile creme-to-powder. We want to take a relatively thick paste/creme, apply it to the skin, and have it finish up as a powdery-feeling film with good adherence. The film we want to leave on the skin will therefore consist of powders, and one or more ingredients that will help bind/stick the powders to the skin, preferably ones that don’t feel oily/greasy or enable the film to smudge, smear, or otherwise move. This usually is a wax type of material.This is where we hit the first formulating challenge. Powders + waxes? Pretty much a solid mass that won’t spread on skin. So, we have to have a base oil to act as a lubricant and emollient to spread everything around, but…once it’s spread to where we want it, the lubricant needs to go away. If we could use volatile ingredients, this would be simple - but we can’t, so it’s not.Instead of having the extra oils we need to make a powder into a creme paste simply evaporate into the air, we have to get them to go somewhere else. The only other place for the oils to go is into the skin. The conclusion from this is that we need to use light, highly skin-absorbing esters as our base oil. Now we have our second formulating challenge - there’s only so much oil that can be absorbed into the skin fast enough for this product to work - even if it’s the lightest, best skin-absorbing oil we can find. (This, by the way, is why you can’t make this product “natural” - there simply aren’t any “natural” oils that absorb into the skin fast enough).Why is this a challenge? Because the amount of oil that will be absorbed into the skin fast enough for this product to work isn’t enough to make the powder/wax/oil mixture into a smooth creamy paste. At least not if you use conventional cosmetic materials. (The reasons why goes into powder absorption, wetting, and powder morphology - way too much for here) To make a very, very long story short, you absolutely need to use microspheres in order to make the creme-to-powder product apply smoothly with a minimum amount of oil. 20% - 40% is about right, depending on what the microsphere is made of.
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Why not test it yourself?
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Most plants don’t use pre-heated water, for a couple of reasons:
1) Most formulas call for the use of deionized water. Most deionizing systems produce DI water at a slow, steady rate, and the cost of the system goes up as the rate you need goes up. It is much more cost effective to buy a low-rate system, have it running most/all of the time, and have the DI water feed into a holding tank that will let you quickly pull off much more water for a batch than you could if you were relying on the flow rate of the DI system alone. Systems like this have to be flushed and sterilized regularly. Installing a pre-heat tank into this type of system adds another layer of complexity, and even more equipment that needs to be sterilized.2) Steam heating is relatively fast, so time isn’t much of an issue. And if you already have steam heating installed, it just doesn’t usually make economic sense to install a pre-heater if there’s not already one in place. Also, the cost of keeping unused water hot for a long time (overnight or over the weekend) may work out to be greater than the cost of waiting for the water to heat up.For a brand new installation, however, pre-heating in a tank or even better, using an on-demand heater, might be a worthwhile investment. There’s no chemical reason not to do this, it’s all decided on a cost basis. -
In the US, the national dictates are, essentially:
1) That we have to make sure our cosmetic finished products are safe.2) That we do not use ingredients recognized by consumers as pharmaceuticals (i.e., penicillin)3) That we do not use materials that have been banned for use in consumer products, or banned generally (that basically means that new raw materials need to be tested for heavy metal content)There are also some state/local level laws that, in practice, affect the whole country - California’s Proposition 65 rules, and CARB’s VOC limitations.