Would You Buy a Label-Less Skincare Product?
A label-less product asks the question: Are you here for the brand, the bottle, or the oil blend inside?
The latest addition to my skincare lineup isn’t anything to look at. It’s an amber jar with a black lid. It has no other distinguishing features — no brand logo, no marketing lingo, no inch-high letters promising to smooth or soften. There’s no label at all.
Inside is an unassuming oil blend. It has six natural ingredients and all the nutrients the skin really needs: antioxidants, aminos, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins E and K, anti-inflammatory melatonin, and trace minerals. It cleanses and moisturizes, and can be used on face and body. It renders all other skincare superfluous. You could clear your entire shelfie but for this one, plain, label-less product.
Would you buy it?
Full disclosure: I did not technically buy it. The salve was a gift from Wilderness Club General, a family-run, Black-owned, self-described “holistic refillery” in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma that delivers its all natural, gathered goods locally and ships nationally. The company reached out to me to introduce its Cleansing Salve; I liked the sound of the ingredients and passed along my shipping address. I forgot about it until an email came in a few days later with the subject line, “It’s on the way! (Label Info Link).”
“We try to use as little paper as possible with our zero-waste line, so expect a label-less experience,” it said. Instead, the brand provided a digital label with all the necessary product information. “Please refer to the following product page link for all product details. It’s all here!”
I love this idea. I pitched something similar when I was a communications director at a “sustainable” fashion start-up in a past life (well, four years ago). The company was redesigning its packaging, and I suggested we eliminate all the useless paper that gets stuffed in shipping boxes: the receipt, the return info, the return label, the “about the brand” and “follow us on social” inserts. In their place, why not provide customers with a sort of QR code, something they could scan to access that information digitally? It was the most eco-conscious option, but…
An unadorned box or bottle doesn’t create excitement for the customer. It doesn’t capitalize on the high of the “Your Order Has Been Delivered!” email. It doesn’t cash in on that feeling of opening a present — and make no mistake, the experience of elaborate packaging is precisely engineered to do just that. It’s a tactic for customer retention and, if influencers and customers share it on social, customer acquisition.
The fashion company I worked for went in a different direction: a sturdy, laminated top-and-bottom box embossed with the brand logo, to be packaged in a separate box for shipping, filled with a “reusable” cotton bag, tissue paper stuffing, and three (I think?) different inserts with order information and brand details (each touting its “sustainable” values in one way or another). I wasn’t surprised. For the large majority of “eco” companies, sales come first and sustainability comes after.
Anyway!
My Wilderness Club General package arrived. The box was unmarked. The jar inside was bare, wrapped in plain brown craft paper for protection. The “unboxing” wasn’t particularly exciting. It was bland, blah, underwhelming. It was honest.
The laid-bare honesty of a label-less beauty product demands honesty of the opener, too.
It’s not a stretch to say that some (many? most?) of us buy new products, in part, for that “new product” feeling. It’s not our fault! Capitalism taught us to tie our self-assurance to stuff — every moisturizer a jar of hope, every serum a stab at self-esteem. These feelings don’t come from buying just anything; they come from buying the right thing. Companies use branding and marketing to convince us that their things are the things (read: feelings) we seek. (I don’t mean that as a slight — as a former marketer, that’s just what branding/marketing is.)
Over time, this culture of consumerism has shifted focus from what products provide (skin care, for example) to products themselves. I wonder if maybe shelfies — the ultimate display of consumerism — grew out of some subconscious need to prove to ourselves and others that we are buying/using the right things, we are worthy and happy and whole. (They certainly aren’t about skincare.) And whether we’re displaying them on Instagram or in our homes, the labels on our products amount to mini marketing moments — branded billboards in our bathrooms, affirming our purchase with every pump of probiotic cleanser.
(This parallels what’s happening in the skincare industry at large. Most products prioritize the appearance of the skin over the health of skin, attempting to engineer a shiny, flawless facade at the expense of the organ’s capacity to function. But I digress!)
A label-less product forces you to face this reality. It makes you mine your motivation. Do you want skincare products or actual skin care? Are you purchasing pre-packaged “sustainability” or practicing actual sustainability? Are you here for the brand, the bottle, or the oil blend inside?
I didn’t see myself as someone who chased that “new product” feeling; I barely use products! I tell other people not to use products! I spread the gospel of “non-skincare skincare”! I cringe at shelfies! I constantly question how eco-friendly a nearly $40 billion industry can possibly be! And yet, as I opened my WCG Cleansing Salve, there it was: some small, secret part of me — a part of me I thought I’d discarded — that was ever so slightly let down by the label-less-ness, even though I already knew I liked the ingredients inside. (Olive oil, witch hazel, squalane oil, L-lysine, melatonin, and calcium bentonite, for the record.)
I think that’s normal. I don’t think there’s any shame in that twinge. It’s an unavoidable side effect of living under capitalism. We’re exposed to product propaganda in both obvious and under-the-radar ways— commercials; sponsored social media posts; branded editorial and influencer content; product placements in movies and television; ads at the top, side, and bottom of every .com landing page — each one making us crave the pretty products, the same way a McDonald’s ad makes us crave a Filet-O-Fish. (Just me?) It’s only natural to be affected by it.
What’s important is awareness: acknowledging the feeling, acknowledging where it stems from, and — the big one — acknowledging that we are literally paying corporations to make us feel this way.
An Atlantic investigation into brand-name products versus private label products offers insight into that last point. “I came to think of some brand-name consumer products as things people pay extra for so the companies that make them can spend that extra money on getting people to buy more of those products in the future,” reporter Joe Pinkser concluded. Branding and marketing require money. That money is acquired through price mark-ups. “In other words, consumers are picking up the tab for the advertising they themselves get bombarded with.”
In forgoing a physical label — forgoing all traditional branding, really, from logo-ed boxes to uniquely shaped bottles — Wilderness Club General refuses to participate in that particular brand of capitalism.
In forgoing a label and the materials that make a label (the laminated paper, the ink, the glue), it prioritizes sustainability over sales tactics — a refreshing change from the recent rush of “sustainable” skincare companies that are maybe well-intentioned but mostly out to make a buck off the “buying into sustainability” boom. (Side rant: Ocean waste plastic bottles are still plastic!! Post-consumer recycled plastic bottles are still plastic!! We don’t need more brands selling more plastic bottles, period! We need to reduce consumption!)
In forgoing a label, it makes itself accessible. One jar of Cleansing Salve covers all your head-to-toe cleansing and moisturizing needs for a few months at least, for under $28.
In forgoing a label, it encourages curiosity and self-education. To know how to use the Cleansing Salve, you have to click and scroll and read the digital label. And in doing that, you’re almost guaranteed to learn something — like, that olive oil protects the skin from oxidative damage, or that witch hazel has anti-inflammatory properties, or that squalane supports healthy sebum production, or that the amino acid L-lysine is involved in collagen formation, or that melatonin lowers cortisol levels through the skin, or that calcium bentonite not only contains necessary trace minerals but also “has electromagnetic function, so it essentially recharges the skin,” as Fegan, the herbalist who created the blend, told me. The “label link” includes more mind-expanding information than could ever fit on the back of a bottle.
In forgoing a label, it forces introspection.
Would you buy it?
An addendum:
Yes, labels are more than just branding — they often (not always) contain a certain amount of product information required by the FDA (there are lots of loopholes). Two things can be true at once! Labels contain legal information, and labels are baby billboards for consumer culture. This article is an exploration of the latter. Here is an exploration of the former, also written by me. Acknowledging the existence of multiple truths and accepting that not every piece of content can (or even should) address every possible angle and every possible issue associated with any particular topic will set you free from the prison of internet judginess!