Is This the Most Transparent Skincare Range Ever?
The skincare industry has no shortage of brands claiming to be ‘transparent’. The Ordinary and The Inkey List practically built their entire businesses around straightforward formulas, clear pricing, and a more honest relationship with the customer. But the word gets thrown around so much now that it’s almost lost all meaning. For some brands, transparency is explaining a hero active in great detail; for others, it’s just a more legible INCI list.
But Nip+Fab’s upcoming launch, The Fix, is putting the meaning back into transparency — and taking it to a whole new level. We’re talking exact ingredient percentages, the true cost of creating each product, and the full results of its testing, including those that aren’t so flattering. Yes, we’re serious.
All of this information will be published when The Fix launches with a serum, cream, and daily SPF at the end of September.
Products are designed to work as a streamlined three-step routine, to be used after whichever cleanser and toner work for you. The Serum contains 3% Bio-Placenta, 30% Solalift WP, 5% Niacinamide PC, and 0.3% CycloRetin; the Cream includes 2% RejuveNAD, 2% Cellaigie, 5% SK Influx Evolve, and 0.3% CycloRetin. The final step is the UVA Day Shield, an SPF 50+ with PA++++, five-star UVA protection, and broad-spectrum coverage. Its sun protection was tested to ISO 24444, 24442, and 24443 standards, as well as the Boots Star Rating System.
The range was tested in a 12-week, independently conducted clinical study involving 60 volunteers, using a half-face design. Nip+Fab plans to publish these testing reports in full, including its clinical study, laboratory results, and supplier data. Everything is going to be on the table, not just the very best results.
For each formula, the brand plans to share every ingredient’s percentage, allowing the totals to add up to 100%. For an industry built on proprietary blends, vague clinical claims, and actives that can appear in formulas at almost imperceptible levels, that is a genuinely unusual proposition.
There is one exception, though. The Fix’s UVA Day Shield uses a seven-filter UV system that makes up 23% of the formula. While the brand will name the filters and disclose the total percentage, it will not reveal the individual percentage of each filter, at the request of its manufacturing partner.
The final layer of transparency is commercial, with Nip+Fab promising to share all costs associated with creating each product and the structure behind its pricing. It is a notable move, particularly in a category where you’re never really sure what you’re getting for your money.
“This is not simply another product launch, it is a movement, the setting of new industry benchmarks in transparency, just as we did 15 years ago,” says Michael Hume, Managing Director of Nip+Fab and creator of The Fix. “Skincare has become noise and misinformation, and we wanted to remove it rather than add to it.”
Will the rest of the industry follow suit? We’ll be watching. But for now, Nip+Fab has well and truly raised the bar, and we’re here for it.
The Fix launches exclusively at nipandfabthefix.com on 29 September. A US launch date is yet to be announced.