Musings of a Muse recently blogged about Estee Lauder’s DayWear Anti-Oxidant BB Creme so I thought this would make a good subject for a “Look at the “Label” post. But I was shocked by how difficult it was to find an ingredient list for this product!
Look at the Label – lost and found
I always check the manufacturer’s website first so I can get the information straight from the horse’s mouth, if you’ll pardon the expression. But in this case, Lauder chose NOT to share their ingredient info online. So, I tried my standard “go to” sites for ingredient lists including Amazon.com, Drugstore.com, Walgreens.com, as well as several of the department store websites. But information on the ingredients in this product (which by law, MUST be provided on the package) was apparently not deemed important enough to include anywhere online. Now, I realize that this product is new to the market and that it has relatively limited distribution because of the upscale nature of the brand but nonetheless I find this inexcusable!
Finally as a last resort I visited the nearest Nordstroms where I found the product on the shelf and took a picture of the back of the box with my smart phone. As you can (blurily) see from these two pics, there are about 100 different ingredients in this product which is unusual to say the least. I didn’t feel it was worth my time to manually retype the entire list, but here are a couple of highlights: the active ingredients are octanoate, octisalte, and oxybenzone and the product base consists primarily of water, dimethicone, a few glycols that help bond moisture, and esters and fatty materials that provide the emulsion base.
We deserve a hassle-free ingredient list!
This is the not first time that we’ve seen this kind of lack of information. In fact it seems that either omitting ingredients, or only show casing a few ingredients that make the product look good, is standard practice for many companies. Well, the Beauty Brains believe that we’re entitled to easy access to complete and accurate ingredient information for any beauty product that’s sold on the internet. There’s no reason, in this day and age, that such information should not be provided without us having to ask for it. Any company that doesn’t disclose their ingredient list is not respecting us and maybe it’s time we did something about it.
Image credit: beaut.ie/blog
What do YOU think about companies that don’t share ingredient information online?? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Most products from Estée Lauder (and EL’s subbrands, like Clinique) contain more than 40 ingredients. And EL (usually) doesn’t claim that these ingredients do anything. So, I guess the EL’s formulators add all these ingredients because they believe they work. Personally, I think the EL’s formulas are very irrational.
@Pedro: I tend to agree. 100 ingredients in a formula like this seems like over-engineering to me. I guess they care more about complexity than they do controlling costs. (Hey, if there are any EL formulators out there, leave a comment – we’d be glad to present your side of the story.)
Actually this issue has been dealt with before and encompasses one of the only benefits of the “Proposed Cosmetic Acts” that have gone through Congress in past years.
Proposed under the Act is a requirement that anytime a Product is advertised for sale online, the ingredient list “MUST” be included on the main page. I am in full agreement.
I speak with clients all the time and they are afraid that if they list the ingredients the competition will be able to knock-off their product. Realistically, any Cosmetic Chemists can still find this information and still do a knock-off. All part of the job. In this case it is really a Sales and Marketing issue to ensure the product sells.
I have worked with larger companies like the manufacturer before and we were instructed to purposely include any and all ingredients to the list. While this is actually correct, they were less worried about compliance and more worried about making a long and complicated Ingredient List. The mindset was the longer the list, the more perceived value.
@Mark: Thanks for the perspective! I wasn’t aware this was part of the proposed Cosmetic Acts. Hmmm, makes me wonder if we should consider alternate ways to keep this alive in case the proposed acts are never passed. Maybe a little pressure from the beauty blogging community could shame some companies into changing their behavior?
This is an issue that affects me quite a lot as I am intolerant to sodium lauryl sulphate and I would love to be able to just order things online, but I can’t as most manufacturers seem to keep their ingredients a secret on the web. It is very frustratiing.
I’m tired of it too. I’m also tired of daywear products with inadequate protection for UV-A, but that’s another story.
Is Estee Lauder hiding ingredients from users?
to mislead or not let users know how cheap or damaging or useless the ingredients are?
I’ve been searching all over for that list – you’ve told me all I need to know, though: a very risky ingredient list for sensitive skin. Shame on E.L. for making it so hard to find.
I’ve noticed this problem too. Manufacturer’s websites frequently don’t list all of the ingredients. It’s really annoying. I usually check drugstore.com next. They they almost always include an ingredients list. But sometimes the ingredients listed online aren’t the same as the ingredients listed on packages in stores. Maybe because the product has been reformulated or because they sell different versions in different regions? EX–BWC unscented hairspray. Some online ingredients lists say it contains PVM/MA, but the package in my store doesn’t list that ingredient.