I was sitting in front of a bathroom counter with 14 products on it. I had purchased each one based on a specific need — hydration, anti-aging, eye care, SPF, night repair — recommended by different sources at different times. I realised I could not name the function of every product, the order they should go on, or which ones could be eliminated without consequences. I was a professional brand strategist, and I could not navigate my own skincare routine.
The industry has a structural incentive to sell more products, not better outcomes. Each new product category — eye cream, serum, essence, ampoule, sheet mask — was created to open a new revenue stream, not to fill a biological gap. The evidence that most of these categories provide benefits beyond a well-formulated single product is weak. The evidence that they reduce compliance through complexity is strong.
I started reading ingredient lists across all my products. The same ingredient appeared in multiple products — niacinamide in the serum and the moisturiser and the eye cream. I was over-applying some ingredients and missing others entirely. The multi-product routine is not targeted — it is redundant and incomplete at the same time, depending on the ingredient.
The next five products I looked at from different brands shared similar base formulations — water, glycerin, emulsifiers, preservative — with different active cocktails at concentrations well below clinical levels. The differences between products were primarily sensory: fragrance, texture, packaging. I was paying for variation in customer experience, not variation in biological effect.
That is when I stopped being a customer and started asking whether the industry's model — more products, more steps, more sensory variation — was compatible with actual skin biology. The answer was no. Everything I designed since has been an attempt to build the alternative: one product that works, with no unnecessary ingredients, in a package that preserves what matters.