OldPerry
Forum Replies Created
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That depends. How damp is the skin? (How much water is present)? How soaked was the cotton ball with propanediol?
I’d guess anywhere from 1:1 to 1:100 (water:propanediol)
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For the most part, Big Corps in the beauty industry do not make raw materials. So, they are only indirectly involved in safety testing. In fact, a Big Corp would not even look at using an ingredient if the supplier hadn’t first done safety testing.
If you look at the most controversial ingredients, safety testing has been done.
Parabens, Phthalates, Talc, Formaldehyde donors, etc. These have all been determined to be safe as used in cosmetics. Studies that raise questions use unrealistic exposure amounts, or directly expose cells, or make correlations but don’t prove causation, etc.There is an entire “fear marketing” segment of the industry that is designed to scare consumers and convince them to buy more expensive, less effective products. Consumers don’t know. They are not interested or informed enough to read actual Toxicology reports. So, it works.
And big corps don’t really care too much because they are happy if consumers move away from less expensive products. They will just make more expensive versions (e.g L’Oreal making “sulfate free” shampoos) or they will just buy the indie brands that grew because of fear marketing (e.g. Drunk Elephant is now owned by Shiseido). None of these products are more safe for people. But consumers will spend more money on them because they have been convinced they are.
The bottom line is that big companies have no interest in selling dangerous products. And there is no extra profit in doing it. This isn’t the Tobacco industry where their product is inherently dangerous and there is no safe product.
It’s easy to make safe cosmetic products. Rigging safety studies would make no sense and not be profitable.
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No.
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Not much. But you’ll have to test to find out.
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I had this same problem with a pearl system years ago. Using a Carbomer (EDT 2020 I think), that helped suspend the pearl and kept the formula stable.
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@DaveStone - If a cosmetic company found an ingredient or treatment that made a significant difference in solving problems like anti-aging or hair loss, the demand would be so great, they would do all the necessary research required to get an NDA. Minoxidil, Latisse & Tretinoin are recent examples. But mostly, research isn’t turning up anything impressive.
In truth, big companies would be happy to find natural ingredients that work. It’s a much easier marketing story to tell. Plus, many big brands already embrace natural as a marketing strategy. (Burts Bees, Toms of Maine, Aveeno, etc). Corporations do not fear natural will put them out of business.
I’ll go out on a limb and say there are no natural oils or materials that will be discovered to significantly inhibit hair loss. People have been looking for thousands of years and if there was anything obvious, it would have been found by now.
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@DaveStone - This is just “the world according to Perry” but here are the main reasons.
1. It’s really HARD to find better technologies. Cosmetics/personal care products represent a variety of different types of products. Cleaners, moisturizers, coloring products, anti-aging, exfoliating, conditioning, styling, etc. Not to mention biological differences in hair & skin both genetically and aging. Then there are different consumer desires. Just defining what it means to make something better is hard to figure out. For example, what would make a shampoo “better”?
2. Consumers can’t tell differences. People who use personal care products are easily swayed by packaging, fragrance, color, marketing story, brand story, etc. You can make the greatest product in the world based on lab tests and still have a market failure. People might notice big differences but there just aren’t many of these. Pretty much every company can make products that work as well as everyone else’s products (from a consumer standpoint).3. Bans on animal testing. We do not yet have complete replacements for safety testing without animals. So, if you are able to make a completely new molecule there is no good way of demonstrating that it is safe for consumers to use. That means new raw materials are going to be very similar to the stuff that already exists.
4. Short term focus. In the beauty industry they need to launch new products at least once a year. What that means is that there really isn’t time to do the longterm research that would be required to find impressive new breakthroughs. Companies in the industry would rather spend money on new ways to market existing products than to invest money in long term R&D that may or may not pan out. Not that I blame them - see point #1
5. BS sells as well as real technology - Maybe I’m just being cynical but stories have proven to sell just as well as real technology. A brand like Urban Decay can be created out of nothing, use no new technology, but build up to $150 million in sales in less than 10 years. Kylie Jenner can launch a color cosmetic brand that eventually gets bought for almost $1 billion using standard technology. Why would companies even bother investing in real technology when people are perfectly happy to buy existing stuff?
So, I don’t look to see much improvement any time soon.
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@DaveStone - retinol & niacinamide are probably your best bet.
I’m skeptical most consumers would actually notice too much more improvement vs a daily moisturizer. I’ve seen how bad consumers really are at noticing subtle improvements, especially over time.
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The number one thing to do is to get rid of the oils.
Shampoos are supposed to clean hair which means remove oils.
Putting an oil in your formula is just making it a less effective shampoo & leads to separation. -
Without an ingredient list there isn’t much help we can give.
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@DaveStone - “It doesn’t seem fair that companies can get away with putting infinitesimal amounts of something in their product.“
This is something that all companies in the cosmetic industry do (big & small alike).
The challenge that cosmetic manufacturers have is this…technology isn’t really improving in ways that consumers notice.
If you went back to 1990 and tried a shampoo or conditioner or skin lotion, they would not work any better/worse than the ones that are made today.
30 years with no significant improvements. Compare that to cars, computers or phones. These products from 30 years ago would be almost unusable.So, when you are in an industry where there is minimal technological improvement, the only way you can make your products stand out is through marketing stories. And there is really no point in putting a high % of an ingredient in a formula when you can get exactly the same story from a low %.
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How do you know it is actually Buriti Oil and not just mostly high oleic sunflower oil?
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Without the list of ingredients there is not much help we can give here on the forum.
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@DaveStone - I would expect that the company did actually include all the ingredients they listed.
Absolutely, a company can get in trouble if they list an ingredient then can’t prove they included that ingredient in their formula. That’s why they probably do add at least a tiny amount of all the ingredients they list.
But just including an ingredient doesn’t mean that it will actually do anything. For example, they list “Calendula Extract” because it is “wound healing, rejuvenates skin.” Well, first of all what’s the evidence that the extract actually does that? Of the 7 published human studies available, only 1 was determined to be of good quality and the results from that one were “weak”. The bottom line is even under the best controlled circumstances, there is scant evidence that the extract has any beneficial effect. But there is enough for marketers to make the claim.
As far as how much they use. Typically, extracts are supplied to manufacturers as 1% solutions. Then the makers of the product might put in 1% of that or even less (say 0.1%). So the amount of actual Calendula plant material is more like 0.0001%. Sure, they can say it’s in there but it’s not in there at a level that makes any difference except to support the marketing story.
A similar exercise can be done with all the other “natural” ingredients in there too. Basically, they are things that haven’t actually been proven scientifically to work but they have enough of a reputation to support marketing claims.
The ingredients that will have the most effect in the product you listed include…
Water - hydrating
Shea Butter (and maybe some of the oils) - emollient
Aloe - maybe some humectant propertiesEverything else is either a formula stabilizer (like the preservative, emulsifier, etc) or it is just a marketing gimmick to support the story.
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Here is a useful strategy to follow whenever evaluating a product that makes big promises.
1. Does it come from a big company?
> No - then it’s just marketing hype
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2. Is it a drug?
> No - then it’s just marketing hype
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Then it narrowly works for many people but maybe not in a way you would ever notice. -
One more point, big companies have no interest in eliminating pop-up sellers. Big companies primarily care about what other big companies are doing. Startups and pop-ups don’t represent a significant enough threat to even care about.
During my time in industry, I spent time as a “cost savings” chemist. My job was to look at all our formulas and see where we could save money. One rule was that if a project would not bring in at least $100,000 in annual savings it was not even worth working on. And my company was a cheap mid-sized company. Places like P&G probably put the savings at $500,000 or even $1 million. That’s the mentality of big corporations.
That’s why they don’t even care about a pop-up company that might make a few thousand or even tens of thousands in sales. It’s a rounding error.
Also, big companies rely on the small startups to take the risk of starting a new brand. Then they just buy out the new brands that are successful. Having a functioning ecosystem of start-ups is seen as good for a large company.
How many small, indie brands that become successful are still indie?
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The manufacturers of raw materials are just not interested in selling to companies (or people) who only want to buy 1kg.
@Graillotion - makes some great points. The only thing I would slightly disagree with is that there is any “exclusivity” going on. If a company demonstrated they were going to purchase in large enough quantities, the raw material supplier would be happy to sell it to them. There really aren’t many ingredients that are exclusive to big companies. In fact, one of the complaints I’ve heard from suppliers is that companies like L’Oreal tie up ingredients in patents and that ruins the market for the raw material supplier.
But my explanation for why there are such high MOQ is that raw material suppliers would rather have 10 customers who buy the entirety of a raw material run, than 1000 customers who buy it. It’s just much easier to deal with 10 customers than 1000.
Big companies like BASF don’t want to deal with customers who think 20,000 jars of a product is a lot. They want customers who will be making millions of jars. They want customers who think 20,000 is just a rounding error. In truth, they actually don’t even see the Cosmetic Industry as a significant customer since the volumes/profits are much lower than automotive, paints/coatings, pharmaceutical, or other industries. Cosmetics to them is puny.
When I worked on the VO5 brand we sold over 50 million bottles a year. And even we were not big enough to warrant anything other than a distributor from BASF.
So, it’s just a matter of perspective.
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@Paprik - You are correct, I did skip the Sodium PCA. I thought perhaps they weren’t following the proper labeling rules. So, I just went with what I thought was a good guess based on experience.
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My guess
Water - 90%
Disodium Glutamate - 4%
Glycerin - 2%
Cocamidopropyl Betaine -2%
Methylcocoyltaurate - 1%Rest of the stuff. 1%
But that’s just a guess.
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I agree it is not a dumb question. You would be surprised how many “dumb” questions don’t actually have answers in cosmetic science.
The first big challenge with your question is how to quantify the subjective measures of “rapid”, “fast”, “average” and “slow”. If it is just subjective feel then you’ll have a really hard time as most people will have different perceptions of what is fast or slow absorption.
The answer will of course depend on whether the components of one specific oil is more compatible with the other oils or with the lipophilic components of skin. That’s hard to say.
The only way to really get this answer is to use expensive equipment as @EVchem suggested. However, you can get a relative answer by conducting your own experiment. Make a 50:50 mixture of the fastest absorbing and the slowest absorbing and measure absorption rate. From there, it will just be more experimenting with different ratios using different oils.
But there is no simple answer.
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If you are getting a precipitate in your formula, you have a stability problem.
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This may work in theory but in practice it likely won’t lead to much stability. But other associative thickeners may help suspend small amounts of lipophilic ingredients in aqueous systems. Things like Xanthan Gum, Cellulose thickeners, etc.
But you have to understand, the reason people use emulsifiers is because they work. They were invented to be superior solutions to problem of combining oils with water. You’re talking about going backwards in technology so you can’t expect that old technology will give you results anywhere close to what modern technology gives.
My question is why would you want to use an inferior technology for solving this problem?
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Normally, something like Cetyl or Stearyl Alcohol would also be included in a conditioner formula to give some opacity / thickness / body to the texture.
1. Maybe but perhaps not in a noticeable way.
2. The supplier will say it does. I’m a little skeptical consumers would notice
3. Yes, 1.8% is plenty. You probably don’t need more than 1%
4. No.
5. Already said. -
And cold water is preferred.