LAB NOTES

→ この記事の日本語版はこちら / Read in Japanese

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

→ この記事の日本語版はこちら / Read in Japanese

In the last piece, I wrote about the despair that pushed me to start making my own product.

Today, I want to pick up the story from there — the winding, mostly chronological record of how Leave-In Treatment Mist No.115 & No.215 actually came into being.

The Concept Was Clear Long Before the Ingredients Arrived

Honestly, the concept for this product was locked in long before I sourced a single raw material.

The non-negotiables, laid out plainly, looked like this:

• The base must contain zero water
• You must be able to feel the benefits of argan oil
• Keep the formulation as simple as possible
• Above all, never heavy
• After application, each strand should stay crisp, dry-feeling, and fully independent from the next
• The shine should not be oily shine — it should look like the natural gloss of undamaged, healthy children’s hair
• It must prevent static

Of all these, today I want to zoom in on the first one — no water in the base — and the unexpected detour I took while sourcing that one ingredient.

Why I Was So Stubborn About “No Water”

This product had to be effective, specifically, as a tool for high-heat styling.

The reason is simple. Around 90% of the stylists at our salon — myself included — work with dry cutting techniques. That means blow-drying and high-heat flat irons come into the equation constantly during the cut.

And when the hair still holds too much moisture at the moment the iron touches it, that moisture turns into steam. That steam is the enemy. Proteins denature under heat-plus-moisture, and the texture of the hair drops visibly — you can feel the quality collapse under your hands.

In salon work, there are countless moments where you pick up an already-dry head of hair and reach straight for the blow dryer or iron. To protect the hair and lift both its texture and its workability in those moments, a product like this isn’t a luxury — it’s indispensable. And to prevent that steam from forming at all, a waterless base was, for me, non-negotiable.

The Base Was Already Decided (Or So I Thought)

So, what do you use instead of water?

I already had that answer, too. An oil widely used in cosmetics — foundations and the like — with a very strong safety profile. A liquid that spreads more thinly than water, with surface tension even lower than water’s.

…Forgive me for not naming the specific ingredient here. It sits too close to the core of the formulation.

I’d worked with this material before, back in Japan, so I knew its feel in my hands. I sourced a small quantity through that same route and brought it with me to the U.S. as carry-on. That was my starting material for prototyping.

At the same time, I placed an order with a U.S. supplier for the same ingredient — same INCI name, same spec. It arrived quickly.

Same name. Same standard. The story should have ended there.

The Closest Word Is Vertigo

I tried the U.S.-sourced material, and for a split second, I got dizzy.

“Wait… this isn’t the same…!!??”

The INCI name was unmistakably identical. It’s a completely standard cosmetic ingredient, widely circulated in Japan too. But the finish was different. My hands could feel it.

How was it different? It’s genuinely hard to put into words, but let me try.

A base material, in theory, should leave “no benefit of its own” behind. That’s the ideal. But the version I’d used in Japan left behind something — a faint, never-excessive, perfectly calibrated trace of moisture on the dried hair.

The U.S.-sourced one — and, as it turned out, almost every one I tested from other U.S. suppliers afterward — left nothing. As if the ingredient had simply evaporated alongside the water, leaving the hair as if nothing had ever been applied.

…Not good.

No — this was a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.

The Detour I Didn’t See Coming

From there began the grind: ordering small quantities of the exact same ingredient from a handful of different suppliers and testing every single one.

This phase — choosing the base — was supposed to take a moment. That was the plan.

It took time. It took money. Bottle by bottle, I checked the feel and the finish, took notes, and placed the next order. Quiet, repetitive work with no visible end in sight. Honestly, there were a few moments along the way where a weaker voice in my head said, “Couldn’t you just use the batch you brought from Japan and be done with it?”

But the whole premise of making and selling this in the U.S. falls apart without a supply chain I can keep running from inside the U.S. Cutting that corner would have quietly undermined the product’s identity.

I kept telling myself that. And I kept testing.

And, Finally — There It Was

After several suppliers, I finally hit one that made me go, “This is it.”

I was relieved. Genuinely, deeply relieved.

But at the same time, something cold ran down my spine.

Even when the ingredient name is 100% identical, what’s actually inside the bottle differs subtly from one supplier to another.

Grade. Purification level. The profile of trace components. Lot-to-lot variation. The kind of thing you’d find buried in a footnote of a cosmetic raw-materials catalog.

But when your own hands tell you, “the INCI is the same and yet the finish is not,” that footnote stops being a footnote. It becomes the whole story.

I’m the One Putting Myself in This Spot

Honestly, this is a level of difference that most people would never detect.

But for better or worse, I’ve spent far too many years with my hands in hair. Every single day, dozens of heads. Drying them, ironing them, finishing them. That accumulation has left me with hands that can’t not notice the smallest shifts in finish.

I’m the one putting myself in this spot.

That, I think, might be the exact phrase for it.

Even something as simple as choosing a base turned into an episode like this. Before I started, I never imagined a single raw material could cost me this much sleep.

And only from here did I finally get to the part I’d actually been looking forward to — layering in the ingredients I actually wanted to do the work, on top of that base.

Next time, I’ll write about the second round of headaches — this time, about my relationship with argan oil itself.

→ この記事の日本語版はこちら / Read in Japanese

→ Next in the series: LAB NOTES #3 | The 0.01% World — My Battle with Argan Oil

→ この記事の日本語版はこちら / Read in Japanese

Ever since I moved to the United States, I’ve been searching for one thing.

A leave-in treatment — what you might call a detangling mist. The kind that smooths the comb through, gives hair just enough slip, cuts static. Not glamorous. Not exciting. But for me, it was an essential tool. Especially here in San Francisco, where every client who sits in my chair brings a completely different hair type, texture, and care routine. Something that makes any hair easier to work with — that’s not a luxury. That’s a necessity. Particularly for someone like me, who cuts dry.

Back in Japan, I had a product I loved. An argan oil–based spray with a fine mist and a light touch. Perfect weight, perfect control. I used it on every single client, every single day.

There was just one fatal problem.

It was an aerosol.

You can’t bring aerosols on a plane. Which meant I couldn’t bring it to America. Which meant I had to find a replacement.

Not a “Product” — a Tool

“Argan oil is the key ingredient. The U.S. market is enormous. There must be something.”

That’s what I told myself.

I was wrong.

The American hair oil market is massive, and argan-based products are everywhere. I bought one after another. Tested dozens. Threw most of them away before they were half empty.

The problem was always the same. Nearly every product on the shelf is designed to impress the consumer — to deliver instant impact, a dramatic before-and-after moment. That means heavy texture. You apply it, the hair shines, there’s an obvious “wow.” But it interferes with the cut. It weighs down the design. It kills volume. Drugstore products in Japan have the same issue.

That’s not what I needed.

What I needed was something subtle. Something that works with every hair type and never fights the style — especially volume. A quiet sheen, not a glossy coat. Moisture without weight.

Something that supports the hairdresser’s work from behind the scenes. Not a “product” in the consumer sense. A tool. The kind of thing that should always be within arm’s reach on a professional’s station — invisible, reliable, and precise.

I couldn’t find it anywhere.

Then one day, I did.

I won’t name the brand, but I finally found something close to what I’d been looking for. Light, refined, and it stayed out of the way. I was so relieved that I started ordering it twelve bottles at a time.

…And then it was gone.

One day, with no warning, the company reformulated the product. Same packaging, completely different formula. The lightness I relied on had vanished. It felt like every other product on the market — heavy and indistinct.

I stood there holding a bottle from my stockpile, and it hit me.

Back to square one.

The thought of starting that whole testing process over again — spending months buying products, trying them, being disappointed, throwing them out — was genuinely devastating.

Despair Was the Turning Point

But that despair was exactly the turning point.

For the first time in my life, a thought crossed my mind: What if I made it myself?

I’d never considered that before. Not once. Products are something you buy. Manufacturers make them. A hairdresser’s job is to cut hair, not to formulate cosmetics. That’s what I’d always believed.

But the thing I depended on had disappeared. Nothing on the market could replace it. And I absolutely, truly did not want to go through that cycle of buying and discarding again. The money, the time, the disappointment — no. So maybe… I should just make it? That might actually be faster? But it can’t be that simple, can it? Then again, I really don’t want to keep throwing money at products that don’t work…

I went back and forth with myself for a while.

Then I started researching. And what I found genuinely surprised me.

In the United States, a remarkable number of cosmetic-grade raw materials are available for individual purchase. I had no idea. In Japan, this is essentially impossible. Regulations are strict, and professional-grade ingredients are almost entirely gated from individual consumers. That’s true not just for cosmetics — in my experience, Japan makes it quite difficult for individuals to source specialized materials of any kind.

But here? The infrastructure exists. The raw materials are accessible. The information is out there. If you’re willing to do the work — wait. Could I actually… do this?

That was the beginning. In a sense, it was also the beginning of a long, difficult road. I didn’t know yet what was coming. All I had was a fire in my chest and a very clear picture of what I wanted to create.

A product that surpasses everything I’d ever tested. My ideal texture, my ideal finish. It’s hard to put into words, but my hands know. After testing dozens upon dozens of products, my fingertips know exactly what “right” feels like.

And as a side effect of all that testing, I already had a rough sense of which raw ingredients produced the qualities I was after.

I ordered the materials immediately.

And a second kind of hell began.

The most enjoyable hell I’ve ever been through — though “easy” is not a word I’d use.

Leave-In Treatment Mist No.115 & No.215

…That’s how Leave-In Treatment Mist No.115 came to exist.

A leave-in treatment mist I made for my own daily salon work — designed to be used on every client. Born from despair with what the market offered. A hairdresser’s first self-made formulation.

The rest of the story — the trial and error of formulation, the endless testing, and how No.115 and No.215 finally came to be — I’ll save for the next piece.

→ Next in the series: The Tiny Differences That Drive Me Crazy — A Story About Cosmetic Raw Materials

A hairdresser making his own tool. It might sound like a dramatic claim.

But when it’s something you reach for every single day, you don’t want it changed on someone else’s terms. You want to trust your own senses completely and shape it with your own hands.

For me, at least, it was the most natural next step I could have taken.

→ この記事の日本語版はこちら / Read in Japanese