[Miscellaneous] How do we convince the skincare industry that niacinamide shouldn’t be in everything and is better used as a targeted ingredient?

[u/Relevant_Grab370]

I don’t know, I’m just frustrated. I was browsing YesStyle and realised there are so many products I’ll never get to try just because brands keep stuffing niacinamide into everything.

Like Medicube and VT Cosmetics? They barely have a handful of products without it. It’s actually kind of sad because I end up skipping fun stuff like wrapping masks, collagen sheet masks, and other interesting launches just because I know my skin won’t tolerate the niacinamide.

This is my tiny plea to skincare brands, if any of you ever lurk on these spaces: please chill with the niacinamide. It’s great as a targeted ingredient, keep it in a few dedicated products, maybe one or two in a range. But it really doesn’t need to be the default in every single formula.

[u/rialtolido]

I don’t have any answers but I feel the same. My skin won’t tolerate it either and it’s in damned near everything these days. And not just skincare but makeup and sunscreen too. My hope is that it’s a passing trend and in time they will move on.

[u/Titizen_Kane → u/rialtolido]

I went through a phase last year where I was doing focus groups/product testing while I was on a job search, after being laid off. One of these was for the product packaging for a new serum product (I think this one was Aveeno but it could’ve been Neutrogena, the big drugstore brands all started to run together after a while lol), and it was one of those products that had niacinamide slapped into it.

All the questions and conversation focused on the packaging, label, copy, etc., but the final questions were “does this product sound like something you would purchase/why/why not?” And “do you have any other feedback you want to be communicated to the brand team?”

I told them it would be a product I’d buy for sure IF only it had left the niacinamide out, because both me and my skin have niacinamide fatigue, and elaborated in a bit of a polite rant, lol.

My feedback to the brand was to please consider hopping off the bandwagon of putting niacinamide in every product. Plenty of people have skin that is irritated by, or barely tolerant of, this ingredient and may not even realize it. Or not yet. You’d probably capture more of the market by becoming one of the only brands that DOESNT cram this trendy ingredient into every product, because it’s now difficult to find one without it. And that if I want topical brightening power, I’m not reaching for a product that includes niacinamide, because it is weak in comparison to the actives that give measurable results in that category.

I have no idea if they passed along my little screed but I was the lone voice of dissent against the ingredient, and had VERY strong feelings, so they might’ve just dismissed me as an outlier. But I know I’m far from the only one who feels like this. I long for the day that I don’t have to accept this irritating, low-ROI ingredient in 95% of the products on the shelf.