Hi everyone, it’s Yeannie! 🫡 I’m back again this week. You know how I always share a little something from behind the scenes here every week? Well, today’s one you really don’t want to miss. We work side by side with buyers from all over the world, every single day. And lately, whether I’m sitting in a meeting, brainstorming with our PM team, or reading through an overseas inquiry — the same question keeps coming up, almost like clockwork: “I want to launch my own K-beauty brand — but what should I actually build it around to make it sell?”…
Author: SPS.TREND
The dermatologist tip that keeps resurfacing in under-eye content is small enough to sound like nothing: apply the eye cream straight after cleansing, before moisturiser and before any serum. Not at the end of the routine, which is where most people put it. The reasoning is mechanical rather than magical. Skin over the orbital bone is thin, and high-concentration actives applied directly to it — retinol and ascorbic acid in particular — are a common source of stinging and flaking. Going first with a lighter, buffered layer puts something between that skin and the stronger steps that follow. It also…
The brief that keeps landing on formulators’ desks Two or three years ago, an exfoliating scrub brief from a brand partner usually said one thing: make it stronger. Higher acid percentage, coarser grit, faster visible result. That brief has largely been replaced by a harder one — combine a mild physical particle with a low-concentration acid, and make the safety story legible on a 40mm label. Glycolic acid sits at the centre of most of those requests. It’s the smallest molecule in the alpha hydroxy acid family, which is why it moves through the stratum corneum more readily than lactic…
The brief moved from the strand to the scalp A shampoo pitch used to be written almost entirely about the hair shaft — shine, softness, split ends, the before-and-after on dry lengths. Briefs arriving now open somewhere else. They start with the scalp, cite pH, and treat the fibre benefit as the second chapter. That reordering has a practical cause. Dryness on the lengths is mostly cumulative damage: heat styling, colour and bleach services, UV and chlorine, mechanical wear from brushing. None of it is reversible in the chemical sense. Cuticle lift can be smoothed, protein loss can be partially…
A second SKU inside a routine that already exists Lash primer used to reach the shopper as an upsell — a white tube sitting next to the mascara at the counter, explained by whoever was standing there. It now reaches them through search. People type the word before they own the product, which changes what a brand has to do with it. For anyone building a colour cosmetics line, that shift is the commercially interesting part. A routine that was one purchase becomes two, at similar margin, with no new shelf education required. The base is easier to formulate than…
“Matte” stopped describing a finish For most of the category’s history the word meant one thing on a spec sheet: no reflective particle. It was a negative definition — whatever a shimmer was, this wasn’t. The briefs arriving from brand partners now use it differently. They want a powder that photographs as matte and still reads as skin in person: no chalk, no flat grey cast, no visible sit-on-top layer at the crease. That is a texture target, not a finish target, and it is considerably harder to hit. A shadow with zero reflectance and a high filler load will…
New South Wales has moved microbeads out of the voluntary phase-out era and into enforceable law, and the exfoliating scrub category is absorbing most of the impact. The NSW Environment Protection Authority now polices a ban on rinse-off personal care products containing plastic microbeads, with penalties running as high as AU$550,000 and further amounts for continuing breaches. What makes this version of the rule harder to work around than earlier ones is the definition. NSW treats polylactic acid and cellulose acetate as regulated plastics. Both are routinely marketed as biodegradable, and both have been used as the compliant-looking replacement in…
What the exemption actually covers Liquid-solid forms now qualify for reporting-based release rather than full regulatory review under the functional cosmetics framework. That is the whole change, and it is narrower than the coverage around it suggests. Reporting-based release does not remove the safety file. It removes a review queue. A formulation that would previously have waited on an assessment decision can be notified and launched, with the responsibility for the underlying data sitting entirely with the manufacturer. For a brand planning a launch window, that is a scheduling difference measured in months — which is why the question arriving…
The waiver, in plain terms Certain solid formulations no longer require the full data submission package that would previously have preceded market entry. The stated aim is to stop documentation volume from being the bottleneck on formats that are, chemically, often simpler than the liquids they replace. What the waiver does not do is transfer risk. The manufacturer still holds the safety file; the regulator has simply stopped asking to see all of it before launch. For a brand, that’s a timing benefit and an accountability shift in the same sentence, and the second half is the one that tends…
One product, two jobs, one rinse A scrub face wash has to strip sebum and makeup and remove surface cells, in about sixty seconds, without leaving the barrier worse than it found it. Those requirements pull against each other. A surfactant system strong enough to clean thoroughly has already softened the lipid layer that the abrasive step then works on. That tension is the whole design problem, and it’s why the category splits so cleanly between products that are cleansers with grit added and products built as exfoliants that happen to rinse. Buyers usually know which one they want. They…