OldPerry
Forum Replies Created
-
I’d add a few steps to @Belassi suggestions.
4b. Find out what problems consumers have
4c. Figure out solutions they use and how you can make one that works better5b. Build an email list
6b. Build a bigger email list
6c. Figure out your distribution system7b. Build a really big email list
10. Interact on social media, fill orders, and keep building & marketing to your email list
-
@Pharma -
Sunscreens (fortunately, the worst ones are now being banned) mean DEATH (probably not for you, probably for your baby, and certainly for nature).Of course, the corollary is also true - Not using sunscreens means DEATH (probably for you, your baby, but maybe not nature)
-
You might also add a drop of Violet #2 to offset the yellow color.
-
DMDM Hydantoin works well too. (0.2%)
-
To answer your initial question, yes parabens were falsely demonized. They are a perfectly safe preservative that should get wider use than they have now. This has been verified by the most important groups responsible for the verification of the safety of cosmetic ingredients including…
SCCS (Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety) - simplified explanation & scientific explanation
CIR (Cosmetic Ingredient Review) - scientific explanation and consumer friendly explanation.
Paula’s Choice is fine enough, but they are also marketing & selling products so they are not a completely reliable source of information. I agree with @ngarayeva001 assessment of their reliability. They are excessive in their conclusions about alcohol & fragrance in cosmetics. And they blindly tout the benefits claims ingredients like ceramides, peptides, and now CBD which will have practically no noticeable difference to the consumer.
In the US, it is illegal to sell unsafe cosmetics. Anything you can buy at Sephora, Target, Walgreens, Ulta or any of the other standard stores is safe. Anything produced by P&G, Unilever, L’Oreal, etc. is safe. These companies would face expensive lawsuits if they weren’t & there is no good reason to sell unsafe cosmetics anyway.
The scare stories about parabens (or most any other vilified ingredient in cosmetics) is all a result of the fact that everyone can produce products that work just as good as everyone else.
So, pretty much the only way a new company can set themselves apart from another company is through their marketing story. And in the realm of stories that you can tell, one of the most effective & motivating stories is FEAR. This has given rise to the natural movement, green beauty, and now “clean” beauty.
None of these movements have lead to products that are measurably safer than standard cosmetic products. They just aren’t. And that’s because standard beauty products are already safe.
Parabens have been and continue to be safe for use in cosmetics. They have been in use for over 80 years and have been proven time & time again to be safe. Unless you are one of the rare individuals that has an allergic reaction, there is no good reason to avoid them.
-
@ngarayeva001 - that’s really bad & irresponsible. I did not know they encourage such terrible formulating advice.
-
While I would agree that all fragrances can potentially cause allergic reactions, that doesn’t mean they will for most people. Ingredients like linalool & limonene which are found in many fragrances are known allergens but to only like 15% of the population. So 85% of people will have no reaction at all. And those two are particularly high. Most of the fragrance allergens affect less than 5% of the population. It’s my opinion that the advice to avoid all fragranced products is an overreaction. Certainly, if someone is allergic to a fragrance material then they should avoid them. But the majority of people will be able to tolerate fragrances perfectly fine.
I also don’t believe the notion that long term exposure to fragrance can cause damage to the skin. This is not proven.
Yes, a lot of stuff in the industry is bulls**t, although there tends to be a grain of truth in most things. The reality is that for skin products the best working ingredients are…1. Petrolatum - occlusive agent
2. Glycerin - humectant
3. Mineral oil - emollient
4. OTC actives - eg sunscreens, anti-acne, etc.In skin care (particularly anti-aging), everything else is marketing hype. Not to say that other ingredients don’t have some studies to back up their effective use, but most of these studies show small results that consumers actually won’t notice. As a consumer you won’t be able to tell a difference between the company that puts a lot of an ingredient in a formula or just a splash.
Cosmetic companies are motivated to create stories about ingredients to set themselves apart from all the other companies. In reality, everyone can make a product that works as well as everyone else’s product. And since you can’t differentiate yourself through technology, you have to come up with a story.
-
1. Correct.
3. Yes, fewer ingredients is generally better mostly because it reduces unknown variables and the chances of instability or an allergic reaction.
5. I do not know Lorraine nor do I know of the quality of information shared in their organic cosmetic science course. Their website looks pretty enough & some of their blog posts seem fine. I also listen to their podcast and it is usually interesting. They do a decent job. But from the view of someone who’s worked in the cosmetic industry, it also comes off as quite naive. It’s not surprising coming from someone who has no real cosmetic industry experience. You get a much different perspective when you work for a company that sells millions of bottles of product every year.
I personally think their slant on the information they provide is inappropriately hostile to mainstream cosmetic companies, a little “holier than thou”, and not critical enough of unverified claims. They seem to begin with a philosophy (Natural is superior to synthetic) then cherry pick information to support that belief. They also encourage some practices that I view as ones that break federal cosmetic regulations & are borderline illegal (e.g. their blog post encouraging people to use unapproved plant extracts as cosmetic colorants). They are located in the UK so follow EU regulations which are not quite the same as regulations in the US.
Whether you should take the course or not depends primarily on your goals. If you want to launch a product line, I don’t think you need to learn how to make products. If you want it to be successful, you need to take a course on Marketing & Selling cosmetic products. Then hire someone to make your products. You could easily go through a course teaching you how to make cosmetics and at the end, not be any closer to reaching your dream of launching a product. Just remember, learning how to make an omelette doesn’t make you ready to start or run a restaurant.
If you want to learn how to make a few formulas for using at home, it’s probably fine enough.
I can tell you that going through that course will not enable you to make cosmetic products that work better than other formulas. Natural products do not work better than the products produced by large companies. Big companies have teams of trained scientists optimizing ingredients to come up with formulas that appeal to the biggest group of consumers. A small company who learned formulating from an online course will not be able to make formulas that work better. Yes, her last claim as you have written it is razzle dazzle.
-
No.
All sunscreens are synthetic (even Zinc oxide and Titanium dioxide). None should qualify for COSMOS certification.
-
Fee - nox - eee - ethanol
-
Thank you. I’m well so far. Hope you are staying safe and well too.
Some comments in reverse order…
1. Ingredient production: My recommendation (beyond getting data sheets) is to stick with 1 supplier until you get your formula worked out. Once you get a working formula, then you can try a different supplier of the same material and see if the formula still works and remains stable. Don’t buy Cetyl alcohol from Lotioncrafter on one batch and then from Makingcosmetics for another batch. When creating prototype formulas stick with one supplier.
2. pH meter - You could try something like this pH meter to start out.
3. too many ingredients - I think people do this because our brains naturally operate via a “more is better” heuristic. It’s the same reason people take multivitamins with hundreds of times more vitamin than they need. This is a mistake. More isn’t always better, sometimes it’s worse.
Another reason is because people don’t have an understanding of what the ingredients are or how they work. For example, there is another thread where someone was including 7 different oils in their formula. While they see 7 different names of ingredients, I see 7 oils that are made up of essentially the same hydrocarbons. Except for the name, a consumer will not be able to tell any difference between argan oil, almond oil, or sunflower oil. But they have different names so beginners think they are different. They don’t work differently.
4. Side note - First, I’ll say that your perspective is exactly the kind of perspective that someone needs who is going to create a beauty brand and sell a lot of products. You have an over-arching philosophy, an unsolved problem, a villain, and the unwavering belief that you have found a solution that will help other people. Many of the great brands are built in just this way. If you want to create a successful brand, you should not lose this perspective.
But there is another perspective on your story. It’s quite possible that none of the products you made yourself had any impact on your hair or skin. It is more likely (in my opinion) that your skin and hair are the way they are primarily because of your genetics, the physical environment that you’re in, and time.
Over time, to any system three things can happen.
- They get better
- They get worse or
- They stay the same.
This is true whether you put a natural product on, use synthetics, or do nothing at all. The fact that you used products of your own creation could have had nothing to do with how your skin and hair turned out. We just don’t know. Dr Junga just doesn’t know either. His system could be effective, it could be crap, or it could have no effect at all.
The thing about cosmetic products is that anyone can make something that will provide at least a moisturizing benefit to consumers. And 90% or more consumers will be satisfied with that. This is why brand stories are needed to set yourself apart. Without the story of some special ingredient or a hero’s journey to discover a solution (or a ton of advertising and cheap prices), people just won’t buy your product. Cosmetic brands need stories. Whether they are true or not matters less.
If you are primarily concerned with telling the whole, truthful story about your products, it’s unlikely you can create a successful cosmetic brand. Consumers don’t want the truth. The truth is boring. Consumers want the experience. They want the pizzaz, the razzle dazzle. They want their cosmetic products to transport them to a different reality, to experience what might be. They want hope. Successful brands give consumers hope & they don’t mind embellishing the truth to give it to them.
If you’ve ever wondered why there aren’t more cosmetic chemists who have their own brand, this is why. It’s hard to maintain the perspective needed to be a successful marketer when the science of reality is staring you in the face.
-
If it is no problem to do, then it probably isn’t hurting anything to do it. However, I’m not sure it’s helping much. You could do a simple experiment to see if it has any impact on microbial growth.
-
If you use a proper preservative there is no reason to heat and hold. Although, if you are making an emulsion then of course, you would want to heat the system up, hold at high temperature with mixing, then cool. But that doesn’t have anything to do with “purifying” the water.
If someone is heating and holding the water phase to reduce the viable microbial content then they shouldn’t be using that water or raw material source.
Why do you (or people who follow the advice) heat & hold?
-
Olive oil could be going rancid, shea butter might be a problem, castor oil also and maybe something in your fragrance. It’s hard to say for sure without running an experiment.
-
I’ll start. Mistakes that beginners often make…
1. Starting out as a “natural” formulator - If you want to become a formulator, first learn how to formulate. Learn what formulas are & the technology that makes them work. Learn which ingredients work best. If you start out with the attitude that you are only going to be a “natural” formulator, you will never get a complete understanding of how to make products. If you want to specialize, and eventually create Ecocert or COSMOS formulas, that’s fine. But first learn the subject.
2. Believing the hype about ingredients - Raw material companies are motivated to get formulators to use their ingredients. They publish seemingly scientific studies that “prove” some ingredient is good for some specific thing, anti-wrinkle, hair growth, skin lightening, etc, or even some non-specific thing that sounds good, e.g. antioxidant or anti-inflammatory. Be skeptical. Most of the claims about ingredients like Hyaularonic acid, Peptides, Pro-biotics, ceramides, etc. are exaggerations. Consumers can’t tell differences & ingredients like that typically don’t matter except for the claims you can make. Putting more than 0.1% vitamins in a hair formula is a mistake since they do nothing in hair products. And natural extracts or hydrosols will have almost no impact on performance. Be skeptical & carefully evaluate ingredients to determine whether they actually make any noticeable difference in your formula or not.
3. Starting out with too many ingredients - It’s ridiculous how many formulas I see with dozens of ingredients that have no effect or just duplicate the effects of something else. Practice formula minimization. That is, use as few ingredients as you can to still achieve an effect. If you can’t tell a difference in your formula whether using an ingredient or not, then don’t use the ingredient!
4. Inconsistent measurements - Formulating requires consistency and doing your measurements in terms of cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons is not formulating. That’s cooking. Formulating is not cooking. Get a scale. Measure things on in terms of Grams. Make your formulas in terms of percentages. The math is not hard & it’s important to do if you ever want to make the same formula twice.
5. Using pH strips - Don’t use pH strips. While they might work for a kid’s science fair, they are not helpful for a formulator. You need a proper pH meter.
6. Not understanding ingredient production - Just because an ingredient has the same name, that doesn’t mean it will work the same in your formula. The ingredient composition is more than its name and will vary depending on what supplier made it and what starting raw materials they used. You have to have specifications for every ingredient you use and you have to test every formula with every supplier you want to use.
Those are just a few off the top of my head.
-
Yes, you pretty much won’t notice a difference if using it in your formulations.
-
You really should have some specific purpose for adding every ingredient you use. That’s why I don’t understand, why do you have 7 different oils in there and you still want to add more?
-seabuckthorn oil
-rosehip seed oil
-tea tree oil
-argan oil
-small amount of castor oil
-jojoba oil
-almond oil
What is the specific purpose you’re trying to achieve with each of these oils? For example, why use Shea butter, Almond oil and Argan oil when they are all made up of a blend of C18 and C16? -
The supplier claims it does this…
“Capixyl™ is an innovative and unique active complex designed to prevent and stop the hair loss process, stimulate hair growth and reduces inflammation in the scalp. Capixyl™ is a biomimetic signal peptide (acetyl tetrapeptide-3) combined with a red clover extract rich in Biochanin A, working synergistically on DHT modulation via the inhibition of 5-α reductase and on the stimulation of ECM renewal and anchoring proteins.”
But I agree with @EVchem - this is a claims ingredient and you shouldn’t expect that it will work to stop hair loss, especially delivered from a shampoo.
Incidentally, if it did work to stop hair loss and stimulate hair growth, it would be an illegal drug.
-
@Pharma - Nice analysis. I do think you’ve misunderstood my objections so perhaps what I wrote didn’t convey it properly.
I’m all for basic research. I think it is great to discover fundamental truths and they certainly can eventually have an impact on formulating. I just think too often researchers (or perhaps marketers) jump from an interesting discovery in a lab to claims of producing radically improved cosmetic formulas without doing the necessary application/development work in between.
-
I’m not disputing the findings and even with more explanation the strategy sounds interesting.
However, there are lots of interesting things in a lab that have no real world application. This study is a good example.
First, the gold standard for skin lightening is Hydroquinone. Why wouldn’t this study have been done using an ingredient that is actually used in effective products on the market? It would be particularly interesting for that since there are safety concerns with HQ. If it could get the same effects with a lower level, this would be of commercial interest. Optimizing an active that no one uses seems pointless, for product development anyway.
Also, the Lab measurement is useful for claims but how does it correlate with consumer perception? After 8 weeks of use would a consumer notice any difference?
These are the types of challenges that researchers have to answer when taking findings from a lab to real world cosmetic formulating.
-
Lab tests are interesting and quite helpful for making claims. But they typically have no real world application because consumers are not good at noticing differences. What does it mean that there was a 3.2 fold increase in clinical efficacy? What do they mean by clinical efficacy?
-
Something like this. That was for mixing 1 gallon of a 1% carbomer solution.
-
When we made carbomer gels (for hair gel) we had a tank dedicated to just blending carbomer in water. In the lab, we would make a 1% carbomer solution which we let mix all day for use later. (Also put in some preservative)
-
You don’t have any silicone in your formula. You can’t expect to make a product that works as well as one with a silicone without using a silicone.
Also, ingredients like Shea butter, Avocado oil and olive oil can leave a heavy film on the hair. And slippery elm extract? - that’s not doing anything.
You also don’t have a preservative in the formula which you need.
-
The reality is that it will cost you more money to produce your own products. And they likely won’t work as good or be as safe. You do not have to spend a lot of money to get skin care products that are beneficial.