Preserving Cosmetics For Beginners

Effectively preserving your cosmetic formulation is an absolute must! Water in any capacity ( even hummidity droplets from a steamy washroom) CAN and WILL cause bacteria to grow and mold to form. Vitamin mixed tocopherals is NOT a preservative nor is Rosemary extract despite what you may have read online, they are antioxidants, not preservatives. While they are important in a formulation they serve a much different purpose which we will cover in a later post. Beginner formulators should ALWAYS choose a BROAD SPECTRUM PRESERVATIVE! Why? So you don't choose the wrong preservative for your formulation.

When selecting a preservative what should you look for and how should you choose it?

You should look for a broad spectrum preservative first and foremost ( as mentioned above)

Look at the Ph range the preservative is active in! A preservative like Optiphen Plus will be

useless if it is NOT used in the Ph of 4-6. If your product is sitting at the Ph of 6.5, guess what? Your formulation will have no protection whatsoever. You also need to take Ph drift into account (we will cover Ph drift in another post).

ALWAYS CHECK YOUR PH

When should you add a preservative?

Know a preservatives temperature limits. If a preservative is added at a temperature that will deactivate it then it will not protect your formulation. ( Typically add in the cool down phase below 40c )

When making a cold press formulation add your preservative as early as possible, typically in the water phase.

How much preservative should I add?

Each preservative has a safety usage rate and you should know it and follow its guidelines.

Formulating For Profit

A great formulator should be able to formulate a stable and effective product first and foremost, however if that product is costing its sale price it may be great on the skin/hair but won't be great for you as a business owner. With the rising cost of ingredients it is more important than ever to know your TARGET MARKET!!! What do I mean when I say this? Target market is a word that can be very loosely used. To formulate for a profit you need to get specific, VERY specific! It is a lot easier to formulate a product for a specific market and their budget than it is to formulate a product and find its market.

Where do your customers shop? Not just for products but for everything! Are they Walmart shoppers or Luxury Brand Shoppers? Or a bit of both? Do they shop at organic grocery stores or discount ones?

What kind of car do they drive?

Where do they work?

When they splurge what is it on?

What is their age group? (get specific and narrow it down)

Male or Female?

Do they hold any packaging values?

Do cosmo approved ingredients matter?

Are they label readers?

Where do they live?

Whats their income bracket? Disposable Income?

What is their ethnic background? ( this is important as different ethnicities have different needs especially for hair products)

GET IN THE MIND OF YOUR CUSTOMER!!!!

Think of absolutely everything you can about your consumer and develop a product that not only works for them but one they can AFFORD, and you can PROFIT from! Create your ideal customer on paper. If your customer shops primarily at Walmart and you are creating a body butter with upward of 20% of expensive exotic oils and butters you are cutting yourself short. How do places like Walmart still stock products with expensive ingredients like Argan Oil in them? Simple they are 1) Buying In mass bulk and 2) Using Argan Oil at 0.5% - 1.0% of their total formulation, just enough to get it on the label!

With an endless amount of products to formulate it is hard to narrow it down when it comes time to launch your starting line up. Choose a few and find some common denominator ingredients in them and purchase those in bulk!

When launching a product you should know your budget for development of that product. Whether you are formulating it yourself or hiring someone to formulate it for you, you need to know your own budget to launch as well as who and where you plan to sell that product. By doing this you can allocate your funds accordingly. When budgets aren't planned out and allocated accordingly they often get over spent on development and by the time of launch not much is left for labeling and packaging.

If formulating is new to you perhaps have a chemist revise your formulation ( with a non disclosure signed for your protection) to ensure its stable and to see if any adjustments can be made so that you can profit the way you are hoping to ( and deserve to ). Keep in mind that you are responsible for the product that is launched and ensuring it is safe for your customers. If you just started making products in the last couple months then this would be worth doing and could help avoid costly mistakes.

The ins and outs of anhydrous preservation!

With all natural product formulations on the steady rise there is a growing need to keep ingredients in formulations to a minimal. I understand why, natural formulations are what got me interested in cosmetic formulation. It is true anhydrous formulations do not need preservation IF and only if they will NEVER be exposed to water!!

What does this mean?? Products like a face oil or body oil, likely be packaged in a bottle with a dropper or airless pump bottle where the chance of a consumer getting wet fingers or having it unopened and exposing it to humidity are extremely low. In these examples using an antioxidant such as Vitamen E mixed tocopherols or Rosemary Extract would be sufficient and would extend the shelf life of the oils in your product. Products such as Sugar Scrubs or Body Butters which are likely to be packaged in open neck jars and stored in washrooms are at a high risk of customer contamination after purchase. Sugar scrubs are most likely to be kept in the shower, used with wet fingers, or have water droplets splashed into them by accident. Body butters are often applied fresh out of the shower, finger tips are wet or a lid may be left off while the jar is sitting in a bathroom. Showers can get hot and steamy and have the washroom full of humidity and your product is going to then be exposed to water droplets. Bacteria and mold will without a doubt begin to grow!! Some visable some not visable to the naked eye. The consumer applying the product is having their skin exposed to all sorts of bacteria which is not appealing to anyone, nor fair to a customer who has put their trust in your brand. Consumers are often uneducated in the science behind cosmetic formulation, these type of circumstances will negatively effect your brand!

What can you do to prevent this from happening? PRESERVE your high risk products!

What can I use to preserve an anydrous formulation? Not every preservative is oil soluable so you will always need to first check the solubility of your preservative and secondly make sure it meets your brand value expectations.

Phenonip ( INCI: Phenoxyethanol (and) Methylparaben (and) Ethylparaben (and) Butylparaben (and) Propylparaben (and) Isobutylparaben ) is a compatible selection!