Manufaktur

For a long time …

… I devoted myself exclusively to making soap. Skin care items seemed of little interest.

Then my focus shifted to ingredients of various care products.
During some of my workshops participants had been telling me about their „self-stirring“ products.

Aha.

They buy different raw materials and mix or stirr these with help of specific recipes to a self-made care product.

Wondering

what this stirring-busines was all about I started digging deeper…
Eventually I found out that most often industrial raw materials were used – which really perplexed me.
Mmmmmm.
Does this make any sense?
Making something yourself which you could also buy in a store – made from similar raw materials?

For my part, I only make things myself if I’m aiming at higher quality;
looking for something really natural;
in any case something more special than bought from a store.

A good deodorant

The first product I put my mind to was a „deodorant“.
Most so-called „natural deodorants“ never really convinced me – or they contained alcohol which dried my skin out.

For two years I tinkered with ideas, recipes, ingredients, consistencies, packaging and ways of application till I finally had a paste in hand which met my personal demands.

Only then did I look into additional skin care products.
Which I make on a teeny-tiny scale.
Just a few jars or a few pots at a time.

One look at my workshop and you wonder how I can produce anything at all….

Natural cosmetics

European regulations on „natural cosmetics“ (Switzerland automatically adopts European requirements; otherwise export would be impossible) have undergone a revision in 2014.
Since then up to 60% of all ingredients in natural cosmetics may be of NONE-natural origin.
Interesting.
And the word „natural“ may be still be used ?
Yes.

Natural with a small „N“

How come is this possible ?
And why on earth are these bizarr materials part of any cosmetic formula in the first place ?

The answer is quite profane:

Cosmetic products are …

  • produced and bottled in huge quantities with the help of industrial reactors and mixers
  • lots of raw materials are simply part of the formula due to manufacturability
  • the mixture shouldn’t not agglutinate (i.e. must’nt absorb moisture)
  • the mixture must remain free-flowing
  • some raw materials have such a penetrant stench that other ingredients are used to cover this up
  • AND many substances are simply responsible for preservation.

Preservation is indispensable

After production, long supply chains have to be served.
These products are sold worldwide and may see high or low temperatures during intermediate storage and transport.

Changes in temperature activate organic matter. And this can the end of most products…

Last but not least: cost calculation.
One raw material may cost a few cents less than another; calculating with huge quantities has tremendous leverage on price and profit calculation.

Baseline: raw materials

Over the years I’ve had countless discussions about raw materials with a wide variety of people (for a couple of years I worked for a commodity supplier in the detergent industry).
Funnily enough most people think, that all industries basically use identical ingredients.

This is by no means the case.
There are HUGE differences in types and qualities of raw materials.
There are rotten, semi-bad, good, very good and excellent materials.

This is the case for synthetic AND natural substances.