The Container or the Product?

I make skin care products from my little workshop next to my house. I’m only small scale and my premise is to provide good plant based skin care products with all the extra goodies of the big brands, but at a reasonable price.

I do this by using basic packaging and basic labelling. My products are functional, not pretty. I don’t expect my customers to pay for packaging, glossy magazine advertising and movie star endorsement. They should be paying for the product itself.

I was not surprised then, to find a prospective wholesaler tell me that she loved my products, but she wouldn’t sell them in her salon because of the packaging. She said the hair products were lovely and all my creams were just beautiful. But, she just couldn’t bring herself to put a plain packaged product on her shelves.

She has expensive, exquisitely packaged and labeled skin care products on her shelves already and was looking for another line, and, bless her, she wanted something local.

In the time I’ve been making my products, I’ve spent a lot of time researching skin and hair care products and what goes into them. I spend hours looking at labels when I go shopping and am amazed at the amount of rubbishy ingredients in top label products. Clinique moisturisers, for example, contain mineral oil. While mineral oil isn’t harmful, it is a ‘nothing’ ingredient. It doesn’t penetrate the top layers of the skin or nourish in any way. It will actually prevent anything else in the product from penetrating, making the product useless.

Worst of all, it is dirt cheap. Yet, Clinique market their Dramatically Different Moisturising Lotion for $74 for 125ml.

At the very high end, we have L’Occitane Immortelle Divine Cream at $140 for a mere 50ml. Containing nothing more than water, plant oils, waxes, vitamin E and A, in my mind, this is an abomination! The jar is absolutely beautiful, a collector’s item, but really, is that what you want to buy – a beautiful jar? Even worse is the variety of preservatives in this product, not one, but a whack of them, including Phenoxyethanol, Methylparaben, Ethylparaben, Butylparaben, Isobutylparaben, Propylparaben & Tetrasodium EDTA.

Then there’s the organic, pure and natural skin care ranges with nothing artificial, no ‘chemicals’, nothing man made. Packaged in expensive containers in lovely little boxes, these products have little more than water (pure spring water, of course), plant oils and emulsifiers in them. Yet, a product like Burt’s Bees Moisturising Day Crème costs $30 for just 57g.  The ingredients of this product are basically, water, oils, beeswax and borax (the emulsifier), thickeners and anti oxidants to prevent the oils going rancid. 

Do people really want a product because it’s in a beautiful double walled glass jar with a metallic gold lid? Does this make them feel the product inside must be so much better than anything in a plastic flip top tube?

If you’re interested in value for money, please be discriminatory and read the labels on your skin care products. Don’t pay for advertising, packaging and endorsements. Look for the products with the basic packaging, little advertising and great ingredients.