2020 Trends In Ingredient Transparency For Clean Beauty

In every segment of beauty and ingestible supplements, there is a lot of white label formula production where a brand can not connect their ingredients to the source like the farm their star botanical comes from. As more consumers are turning their product around to read the label before they purchase, I think the next level of ingredient transparency consumers will or at least should want now that they are becoming aware of the safety profile of an ingredient is a level of being able to trace ingredient sources.

It can be hard to be truly transparent across the supply chain when you don’t have access to be able to ask questions like how is it grown, where is it originating from, and what are the conditions for the workers? I think being able to provide that level of transparency is going to be a point of difference clean beauty brands can compete on as the category gains in popularity and barriers to entry lower to launching a clean beauty brand.

Part of sustainability in skincare and ingestible products that uses raw materials like Moringa is sourcing responsibly. On a larger scale, I love the idea of brands sourcing from cooperatives in low-income areas where they are fairly compensated for their labor and the consumers have access to sustainably sourced ingredients. Now this doesn’t mean a brand has to share which farm they are sourcing from if they don’t own land of their own like Tata Harper or Juice Beauty. (Brand goals)!

If that information is shared, good luck being able to still get your favorite product once 20 more brands start sourcing from the same farm and depleting the supply. However, if members of the brand team are going to do a site visit, I’d like to see them take customers on that journey by providing them a peek behind the curtain on Instagram or Instagram Stories. White labeling aside, a brand will most likely be working with a manufacturer on some level and should be asking questions to get a greater understanding of their ingredient sources. As a consumer, you should be able to trust the brand did their due diligence because 99% of us aren’t going to have time to investigate the source of every product we use.

I saw part of this first hand when looking to make a CBD product two years ago, I ended up connecting suppliers with labs because I actually didn’t like where they were sourcing from or preferred an alternative extraction technique. The CBD source that I preferred actually needed to take control of the process further by purchasing their own farm as they said the product quality varied so much that they couldn’t always guarantee the same consistency in the oil they shipped to product development labs. After doing a site visit, I was impressed with their quality, but growing pains of sourcing from their own farm coupled with the rising demand in more brands wanting to start CBD lines led to there being a period of time when the supply had almost vanished so I moved on without adding CBD to stay on launch deadlines.

Ultimately I think there is a trend for consumer products where we are realizing a lot of the things we thought were good, aren’t, but I’d love to know at what level you are paying attention to ingredients. Do you read the labels of your skincare and supplements? Is it important for them to be Vegan? Organic? Clean? Do you care about where the ingredients are sourced from or ultimately trust the brand you are purchasing from?

DM me on Instagram at @JasminePennamma. I’d love to know your thoughts!