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Dear Valerie

Sourcing Cosmetic Raw Materials

More formulators demand "country of origin" information.

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The need to know an ingredient’s origin can come from brand values as well regulations.
Dear Valerie: I work at an ingredient manufacturer, and we’ve been getting a flurry of inquiries quite recently regarding the country of origin of the raw materials we use to manufacture our products. Are you aware of something that’—Origin Story

Dear Origin:
I’m a bit guilty myself of asking this question when I request all the regulatory documentation for an ingredient from raw material suppliers. Some of the brands I formulate for have requirements that the ingredients they use can only come from certain parts of the world. For example, a brand might only allow the use of ingredients from a particular country, like the United States. Or they might disallow the use of an ingredient from a particular region.

Sometimes, this requirement doesn’t stem from brand values, but rather is a regulatory requirement. I recall in my previous role as an executive at a salon brand, we had an international distributor that restricted the use of ingredients from a certain geography. Every time we went to register a new product with our distributor, we had to be mindful that it couldn’t contain ingredients from country X, or else we had to fill out a slew of documentation that was (quite frankly) not worth the headache.

There is also a concept of “beauty miles,” which paints a loose picture of how far every aspect of a product has had to travel to get to you. For example, your product may be distributed out of Los Angeles, but was produced in Omaha, filled into packaging that shipped from China, contained ingredients shipped from France, and the feedstock of those ingredients came from Indonesia.

A more structured way of utilizing this information is in evaluating a product’s life cycle analysis and carbon footprint. I suspect this is the most likely reason you are receiving an increase in these requests since more brands are looking to quantify the environmental impact of their products, and this analysis goes up the whole supply chain for every single facet of a product. Of course, consumers are demanding more and more transparency, even if the consumer doesn’t understand the context of the information being supplied to them, so the brands may simply be looking to answer their customer’s questions.



Valerie George
[email protected]
 
Valerie George is a cosmetic chemist, science communicator, educator, leader, and avid proponent of transparency in the beauty industry. She works on the latest research in hair color and hair care at her company, Simply Formulas, and is the co-host of The Beauty Brains podcast. You can find her on Instagram at @cosmetic_chemist or showcasing her favorite ingredients to small brands and home formulators at simply-ingredients.com

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