S-7 Development Notes #2 | The More I Read, the More Questions I Had

← Entry #1: The Shampoo I Made for Myself, Not in a Boardroom

The first thing I did after deciding to make it

Last time, I wrote about how I decided to make a shampoo for myself.

Put that way, it might sound like the very next day I lined up beakers and breezily started mixing prototypes. But it wasn’t like that at all.

I’d decided, sure — but I genuinely had no idea where to even start. The one thing I knew at that point was: “Even I can buy raw materials.” That was it. (lol)

First, I read a book

So the first thing I did was read. I bought an ebook covering the basics of making shampoo. In English, of course…

As you probably know, I’m not a chemist. I’m not a formulation pro, and I never studied cosmetics at university. I’m just a hairdresser who has washed, cut, and dried people’s hair every single day.

So all I could do was read the basic books and materials, build my own “this is probably how it works” hypotheses, and check them against my own hands and hair. Having absolutely no one to ask was harder than I’d imagined…

And the moment I started reading, one thing became clear right away.

The more I read, the more — instead of feeling like I understood — the questions piled up. And because it was in English, the reading took an absurd amount of time…

So… now what? Early signs of giving up, already. lol

Sodium Lactate tripped me up right away

The first thing that snagged me was a humectant called Sodium Lactate.

According to the book, it’s an excellent moisturizer that can stand in for glycerin or aloe. “Huh, interesting,” I thought — and then read on, where it also said: since shampoo gets rinsed off in the end, adding this doesn’t really mean much.

…Wait, which is it?! If it’s a great moisturizer I want it in, but if it just rinses away there’s no point. So should I swap it for something else? Aloe, glycerin, panthenol? And honestly — if it “doesn’t really mean much,” then why even bring it up in the book?!

Looking back at my notes now, I agonized over this one single ingredient for a surprisingly long time. Normally it’s “if it rinses off, leave it out,” and you’re done. But something about it nagged at me. No reason. lol

But I suppose this is what people call intuition. That small snag would end up meaning something later. I’ll write about that a few entries down the line, though.

All I could do at the time was jot down “don’t know — on hold.” And yet, for some reason, I bought it. This ingredient.

No reason. lol (round two)

Isn’t there a bit too much surfactant?

There was one more thing that bothered me when I built my first formula by copying the book.

This recipe — isn’t the surfactant ratio pretty high? The version I mixed exactly as written felt like the cleansing agents were pushed too far forward.

Of course, at this point it was only a “felt like.” I had no real conviction. But the sense in my hands — hands that have washed people’s heads every day — was quietly saying, “this is on the strong side.”

I jotted that feeling down — the one I couldn’t put into words yet — just in case.

I’m not a scientist, so rather than rolling it around in my head, it’s faster to just move my hands. So — let’s just make one, whatever happens. That’s what I thought.

The very first prototype was…

Lather it, rinse it, dry it. The whole time, I kept my attention on how it felt against my hands, my scalp, my hair.

The foam was better than I’d expected. Honestly, a little surprising.

But the viscosity was just too thick. It wouldn’t spread in my palm, and it even took some force to squeeze out of the bottle. I’d made it exactly as the book said, and yet my hands were telling me, “this is wrong.”

The slip, too — it didn’t catch, exactly, but the way my fingers moved through was one step short of smooth.

The good and the not-good were living together inside a single bottle.

I couldn’t tell whether it had worked

Honestly, I couldn’t land on “this works” or “this is no good” either.

The foam is good. But the viscosity is thick. The slip is one step short. So where do I adjust next? — I had absolutely no idea.

For starters, I still hadn’t grasped how the “texture” of foam and slip differs from one surfactant to another. I couldn’t tell by hand which one was doing what.

What I did understand was: “I don’t have a yardstick to judge by yet.” Or, to flip it around — building that yardstick by hand is exactly what’s about to begin. So that’s how it is. Endless!!!

What was left in my hands after rinsing wasn’t success or failure — just a few complaints.

It’s exhausting. And yet, somehow, it’s fun.

But the homework, at least, was clear

Foam. Slip. Viscosity.

After washing with that first bottle, these three were the things that became clear. I didn’t know what the right answer was. But there was no longer any doubt that these were the three things my hands cared about.

Too light a foam feels lacking; too heavy and washing gets tiring. Too little slip and it catches; too much and it feels like something’s left behind. The viscosity — this bottle was clearly too thick.

These three, I would check one by one, by hand.

At this point there was still no name “S-7,” no fragrance, no finished formula — none of it.

What I had were the questions that had piled up from reading, and three complaints: foam, slip, viscosity.

I needed to pull these complaints apart and figure out which ingredient was behind each one. Endless!!! (round two)

Next time, I’ll start with the very first of the three I ran into — foam — checking it one surfactant at a time, by hand.

I share S-7’s launch news first with the people who’ve joined the launch list.

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