It's official: Queen Cosmetics products rival luxury cosmetic brands!

Well, it's been a busy few weeks what with visits to sunny (no, it wasn't) Telford for an ingredients' suppliers exhibition and orders for Queen Sensiderma Renew & Refine, our super-duper new anti-wrinkle cream for sensitive skin (in case you didn't know!).

The exhibition was thankfully worthwhile as it was a fair old trek from Sussex and traipsing around exhibition halls is hell on the feet. We met a great supplier of organic and non-organic oils and hope to start experimenting with some of their organic fruit and seed blends soon to get our organic range up and running.

We met the manufacturer of the peptide for our anti-wrinkle cream there and had a good chat with him. His company is small but very hi-tech with a fantastic research arm and they are beginning to get some of their wonderful products out into the market, including sale of one of their peptides to a one of the premium brands. This company is marketing the cream which contains the peptide at 200 euros and the only active ingredient in the cream is the peptide. Our cream is a mere fraction of this at £35.25 (and it's currently on offer at £30.00!) so let's hope that, in this horrid economic climate we are all facing, people realise they can get a similar cream from Queen Cosmetics and save themselves a fortune. They won't go back to their old brand if they do!

In fact, we have just had a new customer on the telephone say as much:

 "I am used to spending a lot of money on cosmetics," she said, "but I have found your Moisturiser rivals anything I have previously used and I can't believe what good value it is. I want to try the rest of the Queen range now!" 

In fact, we have had quite a few new customers over the last couple of weeks which is great news, even if it's taken some of them a whole eight months to place an order after first having free samples! Either our samples are just too big or it is true what marketing experts say about people needing six or seven exposures (i.e. a letter, seeing advertising or an article, visiting a website, hearing about it from a friend etc etc) to something before taking the plunge of buying.

There's not really much to report his week. We are nearly completely out of Theatrical Cleansing Cream, our preservative-free cleanser for removing even stubborn (e.g theatre) make-up, and so that's on the manufacturing agenda for tomorrow. In fact, stocks of most products are looking quite low so we will hopefully have time over the quiet Christmas period to get the stirrers whirring.

See you soon

The Queen Team

Technorati Tags: Queen Cosmetics,anti-wrinkle cream for sensitive skin,peptides,Moisturiser,Theatrical Cleansing Cream,sensitive skin

A little look at these nano particles in cosmetics

I've been reading lots of press coverage this week about the potential danger posed by nano particles in cosmetics. The renewed interest (the issue was first raised by the Royal Society back in 2004 and then again in 2006) has been sparked by a report issued last week by consumer watchdog Which?

The Which? report, entitled Small Wonder: Nanotechnology in Cosmetics said that 'nano materials are being used in a wide range of cosmetic products despite unresolved issues surrounding their safety' and raised concerns about the fact that most nano materials 'do not have to undergo an independent safety assessement'.

While the watchdog was clear that it wasn't saying the use of nanotechonology in cosmetics was a bad thing, it was concerned about safety testing and that so few companies came forward when asked for information about the nanotechnology used in their products.

As you know, Queen does not operate at the glamorous end of hi-tech cosmetics (although we have finally dipped our toe into the anti-wrinkle cream market - more of that later), preferring to continue to plow our lonely furrow of highly effective yet simple, high-quality, unperfumed products exclusively for sensitive skin. As such, nano-particles are not something we have looked at. Yet, the fact that so many companies are using them - some Which? says without even declaring that they are doing so - just underlines yet again how the industry is marketing driven, with companies desperate to be able to offer consumers the non-invasive (painful and costly) equivalents of Botox injections and other surgical procedure.

So, what exactly is nanotechnology and where is it used in the cosmetic industry? According to Which?, it's 'a revolutionary new way of manipulating materials on a tiny scale, giving them new properties and potentially beneficial capabilities'. There are nano emulsions which are used to preserve active ingredients such as vitamins and anti-oxidants and which enable creams such as sunscreen to be very light and transparent and also carbon fullerenes which are used in anti-ageing products.

We're not taking the moral high ground here (look how we've bowed to demand for an anti-wrinkle product!) but if, as I'm sure is the case, these nano-particles are so great and perfectly safe, the big cosmetic players should surely be prepared to be more open or the industry risks shooting itself in the foot. So far, there has been a government voluntary reporting scheme on the use and development of nano particles (to guide the development of regulations). This has had limited success so more stringent regulations are bound to be brought in, perhaps without input from the industry. Regulation is, of course, a good thing but wouldn't it be great if it was the cosmetic companies proactively saying ''we welcome regulation, this is what we're doing and here's all the safety assessments etc', thus building confidence in an industry which feels as if it is always being knocked by ingredient scare story after ingredient scare story. Not only does trust in the industry suffer but consumers may end up not benefiting from ingredients such as nano-particles which could be the best thing to happen to cosmetics.

If there was more trust in the industry or the industry was prepared to be more forthcoming and open, perhaps the whole parabens scare wouldn't have been so dramatic and had such far reaching consequences. In an article in November's SCP about preservatives, the article's author Chris Nichols writes:  'The story behind the parabens problem is not a new one...popular ingredient gets attacked by poorly thought out/poorly researched/poorly written science..story gets picked up by press/internet...industry bows to remove ingredient......What is different in the case of parabens is it is the first time that this level of damage has been sustained by such a widely used ingredient and one universally regarded as 'safe'.'

He goes on to say that as one permitted (on the EU Cosmetic Directive list Annex VI) preservative is knocked down so the next one in line is exposed and there are not an infinite number of them.

At the end of his article, called 'The Preservative Paradigm', Chris Nichols says: 'We use preservatives to comply with the cosmetic directive that "cosmetic products should not be harmful under normal or foreseeable conditions of use". It is getting harder to find preservatives that are acceptable to much of our target market. If we continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, we will eventually run out of options'.

Anyway, enough of all this serious stuff. We are pleased to say great feedback for our Sensiderma Renew & Refine (our anti-wrinkle cream for sensitive skin) is flooding in. 'Ooh, yes I can already see a difference,' says one customer upgrading to full-size bottle after trying her sample. 'It's lovely, light, feels really nice on my skin and I need some more.' Keep using it, we say!

Have a good weekend.

Technorati Tags: nano-particles,nanotechnology in cosmetics,Sensiderma Renew & Refine,anti-wrinkle cream for sensitive skin,Queen,parabens

Mother knows best when it comes to sensitive skin

A young woman came down to our HQ this morning. She said 'my mum usually comes but she's broken her wrist'. 'What would she like', I asked. 'Oh, it's not for her actually, it's for me. I need an Eye Make-up Remover. I've been using it for years. I've got really sensitive eyes and can't use anything else without them becoming sore and itchy.'

I love this. She is only 26 and is already a devoted Queen customer. Mark my words she will be complimented on her amazingly youthful skin in thirty years or so! She was introduced to the products by her mum like so many of our customers. We've had quite a few mother/daughter orders this week. One  such order came in on Wednesday. This particular daughter places an order once or twice a year for them both and they stock up on everything they are likely to need (and they also like to try any new products so Sensiderma Renew & Refine was obviously a must!).

It's interesting the different ways in which customers behave. One particular client orders a 50g jar of one of our moisturisers every two weeks. We have suggested that it would be cheaper to have a 100g jar every month but she prefers it her way. Others will place a bulk order every 6-9 months

One of the questions we ask on our online survey (see our homepage at www.queen-cosmetics.com to take part) is 'how long does a jar of cream or a bottle of cleanser last you?'. Almost 60% of respondees say a month or two but this doesn't seem to correlate to how most of our clients actually do order which is certainly less frequently. Do they go without for a few months/weeks or does time just fly so fast that they don't realise more than a month or two has gone by? I suspect it could be the latter.

Some more nice feedback this week. A new customer writes: 'I have been using your products since August and I am very pleased with the results. I have very sensitive skin but I have had no bad reactions to your products,  just nice smooth skin.'

She adds: 'I recently bought a trial size of the anti wrinkle cream, Sensiderma Renew & Refine, which I also like very much and would be interested in trying your organic cream too.'

Excuse all this self-congratulatory stuff but if we don't tell people how fabulous our customers think Queen products are, who will?!

Elsewhere, Sensiderma Rich Hand Cream, currently on special off at just £6.00 (buy some, buy some at www.queen-cosmetics.com) is the order of the week. Fair flying off the shelves it is. Having suffered some criticism of our 'tottles' (sort of tube/bottles and not the prettiest receptacles, we do realise), this week they have been getting some positive reviews. Phew! We always find it hard to find packaging we can buy in small minimum quantities so I will perhaps hold off a bit before researching some replacements.

Right, time to get the orders ready for the postman.

Have a good weekend.

The Team at QC