With the improvement of the quality of life, people pay more and more attention to and advocate natural, healthy and low-irritation washing and care experience. Consumption upgrading has brought opportunities to the high-end washing and care market. So we see that words such as "mild" and "no additives" frequently appear in the publicity of various brands. The so-called no additives does not mean nothing, but to remove relatively irritating ingredients in the formula and replace them with more gentle and safe ingredients. This is also the popular trend of high-end washing and care products.

Today, let's talk about various "no additives".

1. No silicone oil

Speaking of silicone oil, I believe everyone is familiar with it. In fact, the trend of silicone oil-free first became popular in Japan, and it has only become popular in China in recent years. After a big discussion about the pros and cons of silicone oil and silicone-free, the market gradually accepted the concept of silicone oil-free washing and care. Initiated by the local brand Seed, international companies such as Henkel and L'Oreal have joined the silicone oil-free camp, and silicone oil-free washing and care products have successively achieved success.

However, is silicone oil in shampoo really a highly toxic substance? In fact, it is not the case. Silicone oil is a kind of substance. As a hair conditioning ingredient with excellent performance, it has extensive application experience and safety data. The silicone oil used in shampoo is cosmetic-grade silicone oil, not the so-called industrial glue. The popularity of the concept of silicone-free oil itself gives us a good trend inspiration, that is, many consumers now pursue light, moist, and burden-free shampooing.

Some industry experts believe that silicone-free oil-based shampoo and care products can basically develop in two directions in the later stage: the first direction is to be gentler on the scalp on the basis of silicone-free oil, such as sulfate-free. The second direction is to make the hair smoother as much as possible, and even to achieve "hair repair", "color protection", "curl protection" and so on like traditional silicone oil products.

2. Sulfate-free

What is sulfate? In this field, sulfate mainly refers to sodium dodecyl sulfate and sodium dodecyl sulfate esters and other surfactants containing sulfate ingredients, which are the most commonly used foaming agents for our shampoo and care, and are also the main ingredients of many laundry detergents and dishwashing liquids. These surfactants have a characteristic of strong cleaning power and rich foam, but they are more irritating to the skin. If they are used as the main ingredients of shampoo, they will often irritate the scalp. Therefore, the trend of sulfate-free is actually to replace these ingredients that are considered to be more irritating in shampoo. The representative of them is amino acid.

Amino acid shampoo products use amino acid surfactants to replace the main surfactant of sulfate to reduce skin irritation. Such products are often milder, but the foam and cleaning feeling are not as good as those containing sulfates. In addition, sulfate-free shampoo has another function, which is to reduce the color loss of dyed hair.

As the formula of such products is continuously upgraded and optimized, its performance is also significantly improved. As a substantial mildness claim, we believe that it will be a major mainstream of high-end mild products. Of course, it should also be noted that amino acid shampoo is only a large category of sulfate-free products, and not all sulfate-free shampoo products are amino acid shampoo products.

3. No preservatives

The so-called no preservatives actually means that traditional preservatives that are harmful to the human body are not added, such as parabens, MIT, formaldehyde releasers, and kasons, etc. Instead, some moisturizers or antioxidants are used to inhibit the growth of microorganisms in the formula. Such claims have been widely used in more and more high-end skin care products. As consumers become more and more aware of the safety of preservatives and regulations become increasingly stringent, such claims will also have explosive growth in high-end cleaning products.

From the perspective of consumer psychology, the target consumers in the high-end cleaning market often have higher requirements for product quality, efficacy, safety and mildness, and are also willing to pay for these better technologies, which also indirectly promotes product upgrades.