LAB NOTES #3 | The 0.01% World — My Battle with Argan Oil

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I still remember the first time I seriously put 100% argan oil on my hair.

I’ll be honest. …I burst out laughing.

“Wait — is this it? This has to be a joke, right?”

The stickiness, the weight, a strangely clumsy heaviness. My hairdresser instincts — after years of handling dozens of hair oils — gave their verdict the instant it touched my hair: “Nope. Not usable.” Great on my skin, though. I’ll give it that.

The Previous Chapter, and Today’s Opponent

In my last post, I wrote about how I got stuck before the real work even began — the unexpected “battle with the base material.” Once the base was finally settled and I was thinking, OK, now the real work begins, what actually waited for me was the main ingredient of No.115 / No.215: the battle with argan oil.

From what I’ve seen, argan oil–based haircare products only really flooded the professional industry over the last ten years or so. But today, even products that don’t put argan oil front and center often contain it — you just have to read the ingredient list. The professional line, especially.

For the Record — The Benefits

In the haircare context, argan oil’s benefits boil down to three things:

• Rich in Vitamin E and polyphenols — protects the hair surface from oxidation, preserves shine
• A good balance of oleic and linoleic acids — penetrates into the hair’s interior, lends suppleness
• Relatively light molecular weight — doesn’t weigh the hair down; blends naturally

…there you have it. The spec sheet.

But honestly, none of that ever mattered much to me.

The Real Magic Lives in the Senses

What I actually fell in love with was the change — what happens when you apply it on hair 【at the right concentration】.

It’s hard to put into words. It’s purely visual and tactile.

If I had to try: an elegant shine, moist but not heavy, an unprecedented smoothness. …No. That doesn’t capture it at all. (laughs)

It’s spectacular. I love it.

Concentration is Magic

That said — and I’ll say it again — 100% argan oil is useless on hair as-is.

What makes developing haircare products both punishing and endlessly fascinating is right here:

✨ Concentration is magic.
Concentration is everything. Control concentration, and you control everything.

…you find yourself wanting to invent little aphorisms about it. (laughs)

That’s how much raw materials can transform with concentration. There is one thin, almost invisible point — a single sweet spot — where you lose your mind to how good it is. I’m not exaggerating!!!

To put it plainly for non-professionals: a 0.01% difference in the total concentration is something we professional hairdressers can clearly feel in the result.

A Two-Year Record

It took nearly two years to find that point.

And what made it harder: at the testing stage, you can’t mass-produce.

For a leave-in treatment mist like No.115 / No.215, the amount I could make per test batch was about 50g. Dialing a 0.01% adjustment inside that volume puts kitchen scales out of the question. I ended up investing in a research-grade precision balance (accurate to 0.001g).

…I still remember that particular night.

I’d stopped counting, but it was probably somewhere around the 80th test batch. Closing the salon, past 10pm, I’d try the newest batch on my wife’s hair. Every one of those moments was where hope and despair traded places.

That night, the moment I started combing — my hand stopped.

…there it is, I thought.

“A sweet spot where you lose your mind” turned out to be literal.

Even so, I kept tweaking for another full year, convinced there had to be something better still. In the end, reaching a “more or less” satisfying concentration zone took one year. From there — mixing in the other ingredients — another year to really finish it.

Big Makers vs. Developer-as-Tester

After two years, something struck me.

Normally, at big manufacturers, the product developer and the product tester are two different people. On the surface, that looks like proper division of labor.

But once you step into the world of 0.01%, people inevitably split into “those who get it” and “those who don’t.” And discussion between the two sides quickly drifts into territory where it’s hard to respect the other’s senses. That part, anyone can imagine.

The flip side: when you’re in a small development environment where the developer and the tester are the same person, your own fingertip sensation becomes the final judge.

You can refine until you’re actually satisfied. And even after release, you can keep fine-tuning while working with the product on real clients. …isn’t that, for consumers, a rather big reason to root for small businesses?

In Closing

How far are you willing to go into the madness of 0.01%?

Into the territory that the big manufacturers will not enter — or, more accurately, structurally cannot. Trusting nothing but your own hands and senses, running tens, hundreds of batches. There is a thin, thin single point you can only reach that way.

That, I think, is the real difference between a mass-produced “good product” and an Artifact shaped by a single hairdresser’s own eyes and hands. …Isn’t it?

A side note: the name “No.115” actually comes from the version number of the batch that finally hit the concentration I’d been chasing.

→ この記事の日本語版はこちら / Read in Japanese