organic skin care

Organic ingredients are the key to all-natural skin care.

Few recognize how difficulties it is formulating an all-natural product. It requires patience, diligence and discipline to take 10 to 15 years of trial and error to make these products work. I tried to get our first cream right for 10 years, with literally thousands of different attempts. I am still trying to get it to naturally preserve longer.

The Process

You have to try the same ingredients hundreds of different ways to get them right. Heat this, cool that, add this first, this second, this last. Sometimes it doesn’t work unless the three ingredients are the same temperature, and so on.

Many companies don’t even make their own products. They take the easy route. They simply call a private labeler. The labeler make products for many different companies. They change a few insignificant details, slap on their own labels and call it a product.

We go through the same formulating process on a weekly basis that many manufacturers go through only once or twice a year. It’s just as much work to make a batch as it is 50,000. We ship them out directly and immediately to the store, bypassing distributors and warehouses. Our products are often less than a day old!

Because we are so small, we also have to handcraft a lot of things. We are not automated and have no sophisticated machines.

Cost of Ingredients

The labor is just one of many reasons it is so much more expensive to make a clean product. The ingredients we use are the most important aspect of our all-natural skin care products. The ingredients are expensive, but we prefer them because we believe in making synthetic-free, purely botanical products for our customers.

We use rosehip seed oil, primrose oil, kuikui oil and other essential oils. Many other body care products have a few cents’ worth of these ingredients and are mostly composed of inexpensive ingredients. Also, as mentioned above, coming up with new products takes thousands of hours manpower.

Natural Ingredients

The preservatives we use are essential oils, vitamins and citrus seed extracts. These extracts cost up to hundreds of dollars per gallon, while most synthetic preservatives are very cheap. Problem — because our products do not last for years, we must make sure they sell fast. We do guarantee them for a year, but they do need to move quickly.

Using only agricultural ingredients leaves vulnerable to Mother Nature. When you benefit so greatly from her, you must also pay the price. For example, a few years ago the almond crop was small due to poor weather. That made the price of almond oil triple overnight.

 

My reason for taking all this risk and trouble is that preservatives irritate the skin. Many people break out because of the preservatives and fragrances in commercially-produced products. Therefore, the preservative and fragrance system is an important part of the product manufacturing. It’s equally important for consumers to learn about and recognize the significance of the ingredients in their skin care products.