I've heard from so many of you over the years that you're looking for a product to help keep your pores clean and fresh each day in between the more intensive peels or deep cleanses that you do weekly or even every other week.
The two words that came up the most often were "gentle" and "effective," in that order.
We heard you. A gentle daily product that'll help stay on top of pores after they're effectively cleared out with the intensive weekly product. This way, you can stay on top of that cycle where impurities (blackheads, whiteheads) build up faster than you can clear them out with your weekly product.
So we set out to create a refreshing daily toner that would help keep those pores sparkly clear.
The Good Acids Pore Toner includes incredibly soothing ingredients like turmeric, allantoin, and aloe, but the real balance was in getting the active levers right: the pH of the formula, the % of glycolic acid and the % of salicylic acid, in combination with the % of all the other ingredients.
The actual pH of the formula will impact how strong or gentle the acids in the product are, so all these levers needed to be seen as independent variables, and were meticulously tweaked and tested to find the sweet spot combination.
There are literally over one million permutations of how this formula could have been combined - adjusting the pH, the % of each ingredient - and that's not even getting into the process steps (which are akin to the steps in cooking a meal - you can change the order of things in creating the formula and that can impact the formula greatly).
So, we had to be incredibly meticulous and thoughtful about how to triangulate towards the sweet spot we needed to produce results you have all been asking for.
There were many, many steps we iterated and adjusted, but one of the most interesting happened while testing varying levels of glycolic acid. We started with 5% glycolic acid, and found that for a daily toner, this was too irritating. So we took it down to 4.9%, then 4.8%, then 4.7% and so forth. We found after extensive testing, that at less than 1%, the formula was both effective and super gentle. Pores were being maintained daily while skin was kept ever so gently exfoliated, without redness or sensitivity created from overdoing it with acids.
Over the years, I've garnered a bit of a reputation with our partner labs. Typical comments include: "Oh, Alicia is here, you know, the client who wants to tweak a formula by a hairline and test that..." or "Alicia and her team have their own binder of documents recording every little tweak..." or "We've never worked on such exacting standards before..." or my favorite; "Alicia, don't you think the two formulas with the smallest change in them feels sort of the same?" (Answer: not to us). We cultivated a strong relationship with our partner labs, and a lot of the banter stems from the fact that we did things entirely differently with them.
We didn't have a product development timeline, and instead had only very specific goals and vision for each product. We truly believed that achieving that vision would set the timeline - the product is ready when it's ready vs. the product being ready because there's a deadline.
This allowed our team and partner labs to really test very specific hairline changes to formulas because at the end of the day, we truly believe that these differences - however small - make a world of a difference on skin. As an example, even if a formula is gentle enough, if it's used daily for a long time, eventually it could become irritating. Or on the other hand, if it's not very effective, over time, the specific skin concern one is trying to address could become more exacerbated. We believe skincare is sort of like walking in a specific direction for a long time. In the beginning, the tiniest difference might mean facing less than 1 degree in a particular direction, but after a few miles of walking, that difference is much more felt. That's why we believe in exacting standards and taking our time with product development.
The sheer amount of permutations that went into this toner is an achievement itself. However, we believe your skin deserves the best, and we are excited to have created a toner that can help keep your skin refreshed and gently clarified each day without becoming raw or irritated over time. Bottom line, it's an easy-to-use product. You can honestly use it every day without worry. However, if you want to use a different toner on some days, and The Good Acids just a few times a week, that also works. The formula is great for daily use for those with oily skin and equally fantastic for those with very dry skin. Try starting with just a couple times a week to keep skin refreshed and radiant.
I hope that The Good Acids Pore Toner can be a powerful product on your shelfie to help you keep your pores in great shape whatever your skin type.
Thank you for being our inspiration as we went to work on this formula. We kept you in mind - and all your comments over the years - while formulating, and as you already know, we always will.
