OldPerry
Forum Replies Created
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Ethylene Glycol Monostearate (EGMS) - It can impact foam but depends on how much you add.
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Yep, to make a “volumizing” shampoo you can…
1. Increase the level of surfactant
2. Decrease the level of conditioning ingredients
3. Include a film forming polymerAnother thing that works is just put “volumizing shampoo” on your regular formula. Consumers are really swayed by marketing like this.
Short anecdote. I was involved in a market research project trying to find the best moisturizing and best volumizing shampoos on the market. We looked at all the top 10 best selling brands. Pantene was one as were brands like Fructis, Dove, etc.
To keep things consistent we used the same SKU of each brand. We blind coded all the samples, transferred them to white bottles with a flip cap & generic labeling on the front. Then we sent them to different groups of 100 consumers. It was about 2000 people.
The winner for best moisturizing shampoo was Pantene.
The winner for best volumizing shampoo was…Pantene.These were exactly the same products/formulas.
The lesson I learned: for most people fragrance and marketing can convince them a product works like they want.
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Give people a chance to read your posts. It takes time to get an answer.
But you should also provide a list of all the ingredients in your system, otherwise people can only guess at what is going on. It’s likely your pH is off or you have too high a load of electrolytes.
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I could only guess but it would make sense that there is some non-water soluble compound dissolved in your alcohol that precipitates out when you dilute the alcohol with water.
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Yes, when I first started we used a combination of DMDM Hydantoin and Methylparaben in our shampoos. It was a cost savings project that demonstrated we didn’t need the methylparaben based on our manufacturing conditions.
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@SugarHouse - ah, but none of those ingredients are required to make a sunscreen either. For example, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZTRQ6W3
Any raw material made from palm oil could easily be made from petroleum.Perhaps I’m missing something?
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@SugarHouse - palm oil doesn’t have an SPF value and is not necessary to make a sunscreen.
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From a regulatory standpoint, I don’t think anything really applies, except it would likely be illegal to lie to your customer. You coming up with a formula for someone is more of a contractual thing and agreement between parties. The government isn’t really involved. Transparency has no legal meaning as it can mean whatever you (and your customer) believe it means. For some it would be the ingredients, exact percentages and manufacturing procedure. For others it might mean giving them everything including supplier names. It’s up to you to decide.
If you want to share everything you can. For some formulators that might be a selling point of differentiation. Most manufacturers/formulators would not give anything more than the List of Ingredients.
The downside of sharing everything is that the customer can easily drop you for someone who is cheaper. On the other hand, it would be a great business model if you could develop a relationship with the customer that is so strong that even knowing all the details of the formula, they wouldn’t want to leave you for a cheaper price. Ideally, that would be the best situation. When you withhold information from the customer that reduces trust between parties.
I was once quoted from a manufacturer that they would charge $500 for a formula, a fee which would be waived if we did the first production run with them. But in either case they weren’t going to give the exact formula with all suppliers identified. It cost more like $4000 to get the formula and everything else.
I’m sure @chemicalmatt could weigh in on this.
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Yep, very few shortcuts in formulating.
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It depends on the microbial load already in the raw material. And it depends on what broad spectrum preservative you are using.
Whether it affects performs…it depends on what it is.
Natural ingredients are made up of numerous different chemicals. How they affect performance depends on what it is and what it is put into.
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Ah, just to ensure I understand the question, the situation is this…
1. You are a formulator & manufacturer working with a customer.
2. They hire you to create a formula for them.
3. You do the work and create the requested formula.
4. You then manufacture the product for them.You want to know how much information about this formula you are supposed to give them?
I think that’s what you’re asking.It seems to me what you give them exactly should be spelled out in the contract up front. The more information they want, the more expensive it should be. So, like @Pattsi said, if they want all the information (trade name, suppliers, percents, etc) that should cost the most.
If they don’t want to spend a lot of money up front, giving them the INCI list (for labeling) while you manufacture the product, would probably be enough. Although, that also assumes that you put your company’s name down as the manufacturer and you take on the responsibility for any safety problems that might happen down the road.
And if they want to buy the formula from you, then you could give them all the details.
I don’t know really. It’s an interesting question. But that’s how I would handle it.
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Yes, I would think you would add the emulsifier to the oil phase. Although you might also have a water soluble emulsifier too and if that was the case, that would go in the water phase.
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We had used it with Methylparaben but eventually just used the DMDM Hydantoin alone. Although we also had Disodium EDTA as a chelating agent and kept pH around 5.0
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We used 55% DMDM Hydantoin at 0.2% (so 0.11% active) in a shampoo
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What do you want to add it to do?
If it is just for marketing label claims, use 0.01%
If you expect it to have drug effects then it would be illegal to use. -
The tests you run and how you make the sample depends on the formula, the actives and what you are testing.
I would suggest starting with some base formula. Just a simple oil in water emulsion. If there is some test you can do that doesn’t require the product to be stable, you can just mix the ingredient into the formula and run the test.
Of course, for most things you won’t be able to do this. So, I’d suggest having a standard formula you use for testing. You can make a big batch of the oil phase. Then store this for later use. Then when you want to test something, mix the oil phase with the active and then blend with water. That should make a good test prototype. I personally wouldn’t make a batch smaller than 200g but 400 g is preferred.
This is just rough screening of materials though. If something makes it through the screening process, you’ll want to do a more formal, start-from-scratch formula.
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“And any recommendations for powerful preservatives that are broad spectrum ” - You can’t really do better than parabens and formaldehyde donors. If you’re looking for the most effective options, those are it.
But I suspect that wouldn’t work with your marketing position. So, you’ll need to provide more direction.
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To be fair, the sodium hydroxide doesn’t automatically denature all the proteins in the milk. It will only do that if the pH of the system is high enough. Of course, in making soap that would be a high enough pH to do it. And milk proteins are also denatured during the processing of milk. http://milkfacts.info/Milk%20Composition/Protein.htm
I think the important point is that milk proteins in soap, whether denatured or not, don’t really do anything.
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The point of adding milk to soap is so marketers can tell a story that there is milk in soap. That is compelling to some segment of consumers.
The majority of ingredients that can be added to cosmetics have no real purpose beyond providing support for the story marketers want to tell.
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@Physicist_Formulator - Thanks for the question & welcome to the forum.
For anyone curious, you can read the press release about Pine extvolat here.
If you’re new to formulating, the industry and have a science background the first thing you have to understand is that the marketing of raw materials is not science. It is simply the veneer of science because the subject is chemicals. But the information you hear (especially from suppliers) should not be considered wholly reliable. Any information they share with you is in support of their goal to convince you to incorporate their ingredient into a formula. It’s marketing…not science.
Another thing - Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary proof.
It would be amazing indeed if you could create a water based formula without the need of a preservative. Every company in the industry would want this.
In fact, if it actually worked, little companies wouldn’t be able to get their hands on the material because big companies would buy up all the inventory. The supplier would sign exclusive ingredient deals with the highest bidder. They really wouldn’t even need to spend much money on marketing.
The fact that this ingredient has been around for more than a couple years and it hasn’t taken over the cosmetic industry is all you really need to know about whether it is effective or not. It’s not.
But as @MarkBroussard suggests, feel free to experiment with it yourself. I predict you will be disappointed but you may learn something. Hopefully the lesson is, don’t trust everything that marketers tell you.
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What is your benchmark product in terms of performance?
The best working shampoo on the market for moisturizing while also providing detangling is this version of PanteneIt achieves this by using a blend of SLS, SLES, Cocamidopropyl Betaine for cleansing and Silicones for moisturizing / detangling. This combination provides the best performance in terms of moisturizing & detangling.
The blend of ingredients you list will not perform better than Pantene.
But if you are more concerned with the marketing story over performance, then you may get some benefit from Polyquat 7 & the surfactants you’ve chosen may clean well enough. But including oils like shea butter & babassu oil is just going to reduce the effectiveness of your shampoo in terms of cleaning. You shouldn’t use them
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Yes, they are safe if used within proper limits. The only reason it is avoided is for marketing considerations.
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My thoughts…
If we assume that these esters do enhance penetration, so what?
What will you be able to measure to demonstrate that enhancing penetration lead to some additional benefit?
For that matter, what do you measure to demonstrate that ceramides themselves actually provide a substantial benefit beyond what a moisturizer can do?
I feel like people are being mislead and buying into marketing hype of ingredients without stepping back and asking the basic question, does it really do anything noticeable?
That’s perfectly fine for consumers who want to buy products that provide hope in a bottle. But from a scientific standpoint these are the kinds of things I would want to know.
Because if the answer is “we don’t see any noticeable difference” you’re spending a lot of time trying to optimize something that doesn’t need to be optimized.
This is why raw material suppliers love me lol
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I concur. Dough Schoon is the industry expert in nail products / formulation.
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You have to understand the point of ingredient list regulations.
It is NOT for marketing
It is NOT for helping your competitors copy your formulaIt IS for alerting consumers of potential allergens they might be exposed to
So, with that in mind comes the simple heuristic.
If you purposely add an ingredient (or blend), you have to list that ingredient (and all the component ingredients).