How I Know This One Won’t Pill...
Look, I’ve made a few questionable decisions in my time. Like…
The time I tried to dye my hair red.
Or this one - which was far more expensive.
There is nothing quite like the feeling of knowing you've stuffed up at work. Humbling, to say the least. On this occasion, it was also expensive.
When you’re sampling skincare or makeup during product development, it doesn’t come in the bottles it's sold to you in, it usually comes in little white plastic jars or clear pump bottles. No labels. Just stickers on the lids.
Hydraglow our day and night moisturiser took us around a year to formulate from start to finish. During this time we had few formulas to test. One by one, we would dissect what we didn’t like about it, then have the engineer change it, and repeat this process until you end up with the product you're happy enough to put your name beside and sell.
So December 2024, I'm living in my Chinese apartment and I have 4-6 of these little white jars in my bathroom. Same packaging. Same white lids with tiny stickers on top.
The stickers? All in Chinese. I can’t read Chinese FYI.
At this stage of my life, I had a busy social calendar, it wasn't uncommon for me to arrive in my bathroom in the early hours of the morning, take my makeup off and then go to moisturise my face amongst my collection of little white jars.
So every night, I’d unscrew a lid, try a little of it on my hand or face and by process of elimination, find the sample that was the best at that stage and lather it over my face before putting myself to bed.
It never crossed my mind - until it was too late… that each lid actually needed to stay with the jar it belonged to.
Eventually, I landed on a formula I loved. No pilling. Hydrating, light, beautiful under makeup. I used it for weeks and thought, this is it. I confirmed with the factory the code on the jar and paid the invoice.
8 weeks go by and the finished product arrives at my door. At this stage, I’ve run out of my little white jar of the final product, so I am so happy to see this box arrive at the door of my shoebox apartment. I open the box, get the product out… Rub it into my face…. And as I am rubbing it into my skin… I can feel these little balls forming… And I realise tha…. this is a prior version… That got rejected… Because…. it pilled. I tried a couple more from the box, sure enough, exactly the same…
I think WTF they have made the wrong formula. I call the factory and say, what’s gone wrong, we have produced hundreds of units.. From what I understand to be the wrong formula, how did this happen…
Mariah, my main contact at the factory at the time.. Comes back to me and says
“Christina, dear, is there any chance you may have swapped the lids?”
Ahhhh, yes
Yes, there was a chance Christina had swapped the lids.
A very, very big one.
And to cut a long story short, Christina had in fact swapped all the lids and approved and paid for the wrong formula. The one that pilled. The one that had already been rejected.
And I didn’t realise until it was sitting in boxes in my living room. Hundreds of units later.
So that’s the story of how I became 100% certain that this specific product, the one you're holding - will not pill on your face.
Because I’ve already made the version that did.