Skincare reformulation and rescue
Formula failing stability, feeling wrong on skin, costing too much, or needing an ingredient swapped out? Existing products get diagnosed and fixed.
Reformulation work usually arrives as one of four problems. The product is separating, discolouring or losing potency. It feels wrong on skin in a way customers are commenting on. It costs too much to make at the price you are selling it. Or an ingredient has to come out — because a supplier discontinued it, a retailer will not accept it, or a regulation changed.
Each of these has a different root cause and the first job is diagnosis rather than reformulation. A serum that separates at month three and a serum that separates at week one are telling you different things, and swapping the emulsifier before understanding which one you have is how brands end up paying for the same fix twice.
Cost-down work in particular is easy to do badly. There is almost always a cheaper version of any formula; the question is which reductions the customer will notice. Sensory quality, active concentration and preservative robustness are not equally negotiable, and the ones that show up in reviews are not always the ones that show up in the cost sheet.
The deliverable is a corrected formula plus an explanation of what was actually wrong — so the same failure does not reappear in the next product you develop.
What's included
- DiagnosisWhat is actually failing and why, before anything is changed.
- Stability fixesEmulsion, pH, preservation and packaging-interaction problems addressed at the cause.
- Cost-down reformulationReduced cost-per-unit with an explicit view on what the customer will and will not notice.
- Ingredient swapsReplacing a discontinued, restricted or retailer-rejected ingredient without losing performance.
- Revised documentationUpdated specs and notes for your manufacturer.
What's not included
- Third-party stability or preservative efficacy testing — coordinated, billed by the lab
- Manufacturing the corrected batch
- Recall management or regulatory response
- Reverse-engineering a competitor’s product
Who this is for
- Brands with a product already in market that is underperforming
- Teams facing a supplier discontinuation or a retailer ingredient restriction
- Founders whose COGS no longer works at their current retail price
Common questions
Do you need the original formula to help?
It makes the work faster and cheaper, but it is not always essential — the failure mode itself often indicates the cause. If you do not own the formula because it came from a private label supplier, that constraint is worth discussing early.
My product is already at a manufacturer. Is it too late?
No, though it is more expensive than fixing it at bench scale. Committed inventory and in-market customers both constrain what can change, so the sooner the diagnosis happens the more options remain.
Can you reduce cost without changing how the product feels?
Sometimes. It depends on where the cost sits. If the expense is in a hero active your claims depend on, the honest answer may be that the price is the price — and you will get that answer rather than a quiet downgrade.
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