ANDREA MITAROTONDA

Neal’s Yard Remedies, United Kingdom

Once I read an interview to John Carson, 35+ year experience in major players of the cosmetic industry.
When asked what was helpful to his job in his first position in the early seventies, he replied “…the ingredient list…”.
The ingredient list, or INCI list, can be a real goldmine for those skilled in the art: understanding what other Formulators use when developing a cosmetic product is an interesting part of our job.
It is educational as well as insightful.

Experience, science and bibliographic research are all elements behind effectively reading and fully understanding an INCI list: Formulators of all seniority levels benefit from this activity.
And it is sometimes comforting and reassuring to see that the “big guys” use (more or less!) the same ingredients as everybody else.
Unfortunately, it is common to all of us nowadays to be facing over-busy days: frantic NPD timelines do not give us many opportunities to sit down and do a bit of “INCI reading”.
Especially the more junior Formulators spend their days entirely at the bench, with little or not at all time left to dedicate them to this import ...