1. Microfactory has been developing devices to measure the performance of antiperspirant products since 2014, would you like to tell us a little more about the Smart-Pore and the analysis services you offer to brands in the beauty industry?
Smart-Pore is a microfluidic technology that allows the control of flows on a very small scale and thus reproduces the sweating mechanism. Microfactory now offers either to carry out measurements on demand or to make our technology available.
Smart-Pore makes it possible to quickly evaluate the antiperspirant power of a formulation in half a day, ideal for an optimization search or for a better understanding.
2. The holding properties of foundations are at the heart of the claims of makeup products and you have been working for a few months on the development of a new analysis technology: U-Skin. What are for you, the novelties that U-Skin brings in the objectification and analysis of the hold of products for the complexion?
We have identified that the mimicry of fluid flows on the surface of the skin, are one of the major keys to understanding for future makeup formulations.
U-Skin is the result of three years of R&D and a patent that result in synthetic skin mimicking the mechanism of sweating or sebum production. U-Skin is an ultra-fast characterization tool to evaluate the main parameters of a foundation such as shine or hold.
U-Skin provides new information compared to voluntary evaluation in two ways. The first is the reproducibility of experiments based on extreme control of the entire measurement chain. The second is the continuous measurement carried out by the recording of regular image over the entire duration of the measurements.
U-Skin thus provides videos in different light of the behavior of a foundation subjected to a biomimetic flow.
3. The trend of tailor-made evaluations is becoming in the context of innovation in the world of beauty, an approach sought after by many cosmetic brands. To meet these expectations, since the creation of Microfactory, you have been offering R&D services, could you present the content of this approach and specify the advantages it represents for the R&D services of cosmetic brands?
Microfactory supports its customers by combining both the physicist DNA that is at the origin of the company and at the same time by focusing a sum of experience in the measurement of cosmetic products accumulated in recent years.
Here is an example to better understand the added value of Microfactory. In September 2020, a European customer contacted us to test a new asset. At that time, the health crisis related to COVID-19 slowed down the evaluation on volunteers. This customer provided us with a first batch of 5 products that we characterized in less than a week.
We were able to submit the idea of adding polymers to better control the rheology of spreading. In less than 6 weeks,we conducted 3 measurement campaigns and changed its formulations. Using the route based solely on a traditional assessment, it would have taken him at least 5 months.
4. As an expert in the quantitative objectification of perspiration, perspiration, could you tell us how you perceive the evolution of analysis technologies and what influences they will have on the development of new products in the field of beauty?
From my point of view, three points are worth looking at. The first is the common desire of the consumer and cosmetics groups to have as little influence as possible on the environment. This trend aims, among other things, to replace petrochemical ingredients with other bio-based products. The second is related to time. Under the impetus of the major global players, this replacement must be done quickly and formulators must learn to predict the behavior of these new ingredients.
Voluntary measures are expensive and often too long. It is therefore important to have alternative technologies in order to support and complement traditional techniques.
Finally, globalization and development towards new markets opens up new societal challenges to be met. U-Skin and Smart-Pore thus make it possible to test new active ingredients, new properties,to understand faster and to mimic all types of skin and experimental conditions. Our technologies value new raw materials, optimize future formulations and validate marketing claims.
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