The various clean beauty standards are 98%+ in agreement with one another. They all essentially have the same list of 50 or so ingredients that cannot be included in products to meet their standard. While some standards restrict many more ingredients, most of those ingredients you probably would not include in a cosmetic product under any circumstances. The conflict for a chemist trying to meet multiple standards simultaneously mainly revolves around whether or not you can use phenoxyethanol as a preservative. The best approach is to pick the one clean beauty standard of the retailer that you are most interested in developing a distribution channel relationship with and formulate the best product you can within the confines of that standard.

I have always practiced Skinminamalist formulation. Skinminamalism is a disciplined approach to formulating cosmetic and dermacosmetic products where you use only the ingredients necessary to achieve the intended form and function of the product. And, you focus on using the purified active ingredient instead of plant extracts. Using purified Asiatic Acid or TECA, for instance, instead of Gotu Kola extract. The average female applies up to 186 unique chemical compounds to their skin daily and that generally includes several fragrance allergens. With Skinminamilism, the approach is to reduce the number of products used and the number of chemical compounds you daily apply to your skin without sacrificing product performance or compromising skin health.

I tend to formulate in a Skinminimalist K-Beauty style. So, yes, less is more. The ingredients that are trending are Ectoin, PDRN, Beta Glucan, Peptides and various Senolytics with the focus on Longevity. In particular, I like to use these in combination with Manuka Honey, Bee Propolis, Royal Jelly, Recombinant Royal Jelly Protein, Copper Tripeptide-1, Avenanthramides, Squalane and Ceramides. There are some new Retinol alternatives that match the performance of Retinol without the side effects such as Heterophyllin B and Growth Factors fused to Oleosomes that I like to work with.

I mostly purchase products directly from brands where I developed the products since I have confidence in the product formulation and performance. For instance, Highbrow Hippie is a haircare brand; we won two Oprah Best Of Awards for products that I developed. On the skin care side, Editrix Wellness has some great products developed with their proprietary microbiome technology. More generally, SkinCeuticals is the brand that I always rely on because of the science.

Dermatologists are my favorite clients because they come to the process with a clear understanding of the science of skin. A dermatologist client allows you to move more quickly though product development and dermatologists are the most rigorous and demanding on the science. With Indie Beauty Brands you are formulating within the context of their existing product line. The advantage of established Indie Beauty Brands is their understanding of their consumer base and business generally to guide product development. Beauty Entrepreneurs are usually the clients that require the most attention both in product development and business development, particularly if they do not have industry experience.

Yes, in order to win a Best Of award, the product has to perform well clinically and the marketing and presentation of the product is critically important. With most awards in the cosmetics industry, the brand must actually apply to be considered for an award, so you’re competing against a limited pool of applicants. The exception is the Oprah Awards. Oprah hires a team of experts to survey the market and select what they consider to be the best product in each category. For instance, one product I developed won an Oprah Menopause Award. The brand had no idea the product was being evaluated by the Oprah team until the award was announced. Without good marketing to complement the product’s performance, the Oprah team may well have not noticed the product.

In OTC product development you must follow the FDA Monograph for the active ingredient(s) and allowed percentages; you’re going to have more rigorous product stability testing to validate the assay of the active ingredient under various conditions; and, you’re going to need to work with an OTC-certified contract manufacturer. From a formulation perspective, it’s not terribly different than developing a cosmetic product. Actually, the OTC category is ripe for innovation in this context; most OTC products are “medicinal” in their product format. You can develop OTC products that have the sensorial appeal of a prestige cosmetic product that just happens to contain an OTC active ingredient. I’m working on a product like that as we speak.

That really comes down to whether or not the brand has obtained a Clean Beauty Seal from one of the major retailers. Since Clean is a marketing term and not a legal or regulatory term, it can be used by virtually any brand. The various organizations Credo, Sephora, Ulta and others have spent considerable time and effort developing their standards and have a product review process. If a product bears a Clean Beauty Seal, it has undergone a review process to ensure it meets the criteria of a third party. If a brand is claiming Clean, but does not bear a seal, they could be making up their own clean beauty standard and that could be virtually anything.

First, that all ingredients work as advertised. Second, that one ingredient does all the work in a formulation. There is an enormous amount of science misinformation in the cosmetics industry surrounding ingredient efficacy. Marketers routinely overstate the impact of any one particular ingredient. A cosmetic product is a system in which various components interact to make a product effective. I’ll address PDRN and Exosomes, both which have received considerable market attention. The PDRN molecule is too large to penetrate the epidermis to interact with the cell biology, so it simply metabolizes on the surface of the skin. Exosomes are unstable at room temperature, so a bottle of product sitting on a shelf at room temperature has virtually no active exosomes; they’ve all degraded. This is marketing extrapolation that PDRN and Exosomes, both of which work when applied in a clinical setting via microneedling, will also work when applied topically on the skin. This leads to the other most common misconception is not understanding that the delivery system that allows ingredients to penetrate the epidermis is of critical importance in product development, on par with the ingredients themselves.

I have the advantage of having been a venture capitalist, so I understand the investing side of the equation. What my formulation and product development background brings to the equation is that I can better understand how the products must be developed to achieve superior performance and market positioning. Let’s call it strategic product development. Every product you develop must be done so in the context of who are you competing against and my formulation background allows me to have more insight into the strategy of product development than a typical investor.