The Difference You Can Feel: The Story Behind the Bottle

There's a lot that skincare packaging and marketing can't tell you.

A product can be beautifully branded, use all the right language, and promise clean, natural, effective skincare but it may still be hard to know who created it, what informed the formula, or how connected the founder is to what is inside the bottle.

In this episode, Summer shares what she has learned from working with skin for over 20 years and then stepping into the formulation side of the industry. It is a conversation about the difference between a brand built around an opportunity and one that grows out of real experience, care, and a deeper relationship with the work.

This episode is for anyone who wants to look beyond the surface of skincare and make more informed, choices about the products they use every day.

Listen to the previous episode on white-label skincare:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5BCXaSlOpKmglrZwzaPlxn?si=edfc6ce7470f4598

Discover Skin Frequency:

https://skinfrequency.co/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

What happens when we stop trying to fix the skin and start listening to it? This is Skin Freaks, a podcast about looking closer and discovering what the beauty industry doesn't want you to know. I'm Summer, an esthetician, holistic facialist, and formulator with over 20 years experience. Here we'll pull back the curtain and explore what truly supports the skin. For practitioners and conscious consumers alike, this is a space for honest conversation and new ways of seeing. Let's get into it. When choosing a skincare line, it can be hard to know what lies beneath the surface. You stand in front of a wall of products that all use similar language, clean, natural, results driven. But those words don't tell the whole story. They don't tell you how a product came to be, what shaped it, or the experience and intention behind it. When I first moved into the holistic side of skincare, I was lucky. I found a few brands early on that I resonated with. And through research, I got to know the people behind them. I knew what they cared about and what they were formulating from. I assumed that was just how it worked, that behind every product line was someone who understood skin and stood behind what they were putting into the world. It was only later once I started formulating myself that I saw the industry from the inside and I understood how rare that is. So this episode is a guide for looking past the sales language and packaging to get a clearer sense of what's underneath a brand. If you care about products that nourish and protect your skin while also caring about the values and intention behind the brands you bring into your everyday routine, this episode is for you. There are three things I pay attention to when trying to get to the root of a brand, along with a bonus fourth. Before I get into the three things, I think it helps to start with the two very different ways skincare brands can be built. One is a business that could be selling anything. The people behind it looked at the landscape, what's trending, what's popular, where the biggest market is, what people want, and build a product around that demand. The intention from day one is growth. The goal is to scale as quickly as possible, bring in outside funding from an investor to grow even faster, and an eventual exit. The product is a vehicle. It could be supplements, active wear, or dog food. It happens to be skincare because that's where the opportunity was. That is a very common energy in the entrepreneurial world. It's a normal way to build a business. But notice what that means. The product is always on its way somewhere else. It exists to get the company to the next stage. The thing in the bottle was never really the point. It's what carries them towards the point. The other kind is the artisan way. This is when someone has spent years working with skin or botanicals or healing in some form, and at some point, making a product becomes a natural extension of what they're already doing. It isn't a new business they strategically build, it's the next expression of something they've been living for a long time. It might be an aesthetician, an herbalist, a naturopath, someone already working with skin, already working with raw materials, already in the work of helping people heal. For that person, the product isn't a vehicle to get somewhere else. It's not about speeding towards the end in hopes of a big sale. The work is the destination. They are already there. Being hands-on is the destination. Choosing raw materials, working with small artists and distillers, putting together combinations that are unique, beautiful, and healing, and then connecting with the people that use them, educating, guiding, and supporting them. That's not the road to something else. That is the whole thing. So you have two completely different reasons a bottle exists. One is built around an opportunity in the market, the other is an extension of someone's lived work, knowledge, and care. And I believe that difference can be felt in the products that we apply every day. The first thing I look for is whether the founder was involved in developing the formulas themselves. There are a lot of different ways skincare brands can be made. Some founders work with the lab to bring their ideas to life. Some choose existing formulas and build a brand around them. And some are involved in every part of the formulation, sourcing the ingredients, understanding how they work together, creating something out of their own experience with skin. The last one is the one that I'm drawn to. If you listened to earlier episodes, we did one all about white label, which is a very common part of this industry, up to 90% of the products on the market. A lab creates a formula and different brands can buy or license it, each putting its own packaging, name, and price point around it. I had a moment of clarity around this a few years ago. I was filling out an application for a trade show, one where independent skincare brands can connect with potential buyers. And one of the questions on the form was, do you own your own formulas? My first reaction was honestly confusion. I remember reading it and thinking, who else would own them? What does this even mean? And that's when I started to understand how many brands were using formulas that belong to a lab or a manufacturer. Building a brand in a story around a product that dozens of other brands are also selling just under different names. So here's why this matters to me. When a founder develops their own formula, the formula is the center of the whole thing. The ingredients matter to them. Where they come from matters. How they work together matters because the product is what they're actually building. Everything else grows out of that. When a formula comes from somewhere else, something else has to be the center of gravity. And usually that something is a marketing, storytelling that can be written to say anything. So knowing whether a founder created the formula, was closely involved in it, helps me understand what I'm actually buying and where it came from. The second thing I look for is whether the person behind the brand has a professional experience working with different skin types and conditions. Creating stable formulas is one thing. Understanding how that formula will affect different people's skin is another. Do they understand which ingredients are more likely to trigger breakouts or irritation for certain skin types? Do they understand how a compromised skin barrier, inflammation, congestion, and sensitivity change the way someone responds? Have they worked with people with different concerns and stages of life? Do they have a background in aesthetics, dermatology, herbalism, or another field that's given them a practical relationship with skin over time? For example, a specific oil might be wonderful for dryness and barrier support, but too rich for someone who is also prone to congestion or breakouts. So it's not about always formulating for dry skin or congested skin. It's about understanding how to support both at once and knowing which ingredients can do that without creating another problem. A lot of skincare founders' stories begin the same way. Someone felt confused by the skincare industry, looked for natural products they could trust, couldn't find any, and decided to make something themselves. I can understand that this industry can be confusing, and wanting better options is a great place to begin. But I don't think being confused by the industry gives someone the experience needed to make products for other people's skin. And often, in that scenario, the next step is to work with a white label lab, choose a formula that already exists in dozens of other versions. Skincare isn't something you use once. You use it morning and night, day after day for years. And I think that's a responsibility worth taking seriously. The third thing I look for is production. This is separate from formulation. Someone can develop their own formula and then have a contract lab manufacture it. So I look at whether a brand is making the products themselves. Do they have an in-house lab? Are they the ones overseeing how each formula gets made? For some brands, once the formula has been developed, production is handed over to a lab. That frees up the brand from working on the pesky product to focus on marketing, distribution, and growth. But for a more hands-on brand, the sourcing of the raw materials, the physical act of putting it together, all of that shapes what you end up with. Freshness is also a big part of this. When you work with a lab to produce your products, the minimums for each product are very high. Usually somewhere between 5 and 15,000 units of a single product. The lab needs you to make a lot at once for it to be worth their while. And it can then sit for months before it's reaching the person who's going to use it. And then there's true white label, which is a step further remote, and that's where a brand isn't even producing its own formula. It's choosing off a menu of stock formulas the lab already makes and then putting its name on it. Those minimums can be much lower, a few hundred units, because the lab is already making that base in larger quantities for many different brands. But when you have your own lab, you're making small batches regularly. It's a completely different situation. We have 11 products and we're formulating multiple times a week. By the time something reaches you, it's usually made within the last few weeks. When you're making fresh in small amounts, you can also work with living plant materials, and you don't have to rely on heavy synthetics and strong preservatives to keep something stable on a shelf for long periods of time. This is also where your sourcing control comes in. When you're making everything yourself, you decide where the ingredients come from and the quality that you'll accept. Once production goes to a lab, a lot of those decisions are no longer under your control. There are larger brands that have kept production in-house as they've grown. And I have so much respect for that. It means that at different points when growth would have been easier to hand off to a lab, they chose to keep control over the entire process. And for me, that says a lot about what they value. So those are the three things whether they create their own formula, whether they understand skin, and whether they make it themselves. Being on this side of the industry, I have seen how rare that combination is and how often the person whose name is on the brand has very little connection to what's inside the bottle. I'd come into holistic skincare through brands where founders were connected to every part of it. They were the formulator, the educator, the person physically making the products. Something I've noticed about brands that check all three of these boxes is there's usually something beneath the product, an education mission, a particular approach to skin, a deep belief in botanical medicine, nervous system health, ingredient integrity, or simply doing things different from conventional skincare. Usually it's something that existed before the brand, and something that would still matter to that person even if the business stopped. Now onto the bonus section. The first three things are things you can ask about. You can look into them. The next is softer, but I think it adds a depth to a brand that's difficult to create any other way. There is a Carl Jung quote, only the wounded physician heals. It speaks to the idea of the wounded healer, that the ability to guide someone through something difficult can come in part from having lived through your own version of it, not only studying it or treating it in other people, but knowing what it feels like from the inside. In skincare, I think there can be a difference between someone who understands how to support healthy skin and someone who knows what it's like to struggle with their own. To try many different things, to feel let down by products or advice. That kind of experience can create a particular sensitivity. It can make someone less likely to oversimplify and more committed to understanding what's happening and create new solutions. This isn't something every founder needs to have. It's not a requirement for making good skincare, but when it's there, I think it can shape the way someone formulates, educates, and supports the people using their products. Something I personally believe strongly in is the power of intention. That is the meaning behind skin frequency. The frequency reflects the care, experience, and healing intention behind the formulas, shaped by more than 20 years of working with people and their skin. The power of intention can apply in many areas of life. For example, in the treatment room. Two facialists can have the same technical training, work in a similar environment, and both use high-quality products. One might simply be going through the motions, following the steps of the facial. The other is taking an active interest in that person's skin, paying attention to what's showing up, bringing care and healing intention into the treatment. Those two facials will feel very different, not only in how the person experiences it, but also in the results that come from him. That way of creating is what sits underneath everything I've shared today. There are many wonderful brands working in this way. I can think of several of them, but when you hold them up against the rest of the industry, they're a very small fraction of the market. But they are out there. And I hope this episode makes them a little bit easier to recognize so you can find them and support them. And it's not only skincare, when you bring something into your life that's made by hand with care and intention behind it, it has a different frequency that you can feel. Skin Freaks is brought to you by Skin Frequency. Formula is built around what the skin actually needs and nothing it doesn't. If this episode resonated, share it with someone who'd find it useful and subscribe so you don't miss the next one.