Ingredients, suppliers and cost

One order covers everything obtainable

Every outstanding item is stocked by Lotioncrafter, who you already have an account with. Buying it as a single cart means one shipping charge instead of four. Click each name to go straight to the product page.

The one thing you still cannot buy

Every ingredient bought to date, grouped by the order it arrived in, checked line by line against your order confirmations. Postage is charged per shipment, so items sharing a shipment show grouped and the shipping cost appears once on the subtotal line. For what still needs buying, see Section 01.

One batch is 2,000 g and fills eight 8 oz (250 g) bottles. These figures assume you have placed the Section 01 order. Read down the Batches column — the smallest number is your run size and that ingredient is the constraint.

Shampoo

Conditioning gel

Every price below is from a confirmed invoice or a live product page — there are no estimates left in either table. One batch of 2,000 g fills eight 8 oz bottles, so grams per bottle is grams per batch divided by eight. Shipping is excluded and handled at the end.

Shampoo

Conditioning gel

The conditioner was specified around brassicamidopropyl dimethylamine with starch hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride for slip. Neither can be bought. ProCondition 22 is stocked by no small-batch retailer and is quote-only through Univar Solutions, whose listing shows no pack size and no price; the starch cationic has no retail seller anywhere. Rather than leave the product blocked on two ingredients you cannot order, it has been rebuilt around Polyquaternium-10 raised from 0.3 % to 0.8 % — material you already have 500 g of.

What you give up, stated plainly

Polyquaternium-10 gives real wet-comb improvement and slip. It does not give the rich, cushiony feel of a salon cream rinse, because that feel comes from a fatty alcohol building a lamellar gel network, and this formula has no fatty alcohol in it. Call it a conditioning gel and it is honest; call it a cream conditioner and customers will find it thin. If you want the richer feel you have to accept a fatty alcohol, and that is a real trade-off rather than a free upgrade — see the table.

One section per ingredient: what it is, why it is in the formula, who supplies it, and exactly what to write on the order. The supplier marked primary is the one currently used.

INCI: Glycerin. Used in both products. Organic grade is achievable and preferred. Coconut or rapeseed origin must be confirmed by declaration from the supplier. Wheat-derived glycerine exists in trade; it must be explicitly excluded.

INCI: Sodium Phytate. COSMOS-approved chelating agent. Rice bran is the preferred feedstock. Confirm feedstock in writing; wheat bran is a published production route.

INCI: Sodium Cocoyl Sarcosinate. Primary surfactant in the shampoo, selected in place of sodium cocoyl glutamate (unavailable at US retail). An N-acyl amino acid surfactant derived from sarcosine (N-methylglycine) and mixed coconut fatty acids. Same functional class as sodium cocoyl glutamate — amino acid-based, very mild, COSMOS-approved, and appropriate for hypersensitive skin and scalp. Confirmed in stock at Formulator Sample Shop in liquid form. At 30 % activity, gram weights in the formula remain 300 g per 2,000 mL batch and no water adjustment is required.

INCI: Sodium Lauryl Glucose Carboxylate (and) Lauryl Glucoside. Supplied as Plantapon LGC Sorb (BASF). The combined INCI should appear verbatim on the CoA. Glucose feedstock declaration required; wheat starch is a possible source in some European supply chains.

INCI: Cocamidopropyl Betaine. Grade specification is critical: low residual amidoamine and DMAPA are the sensitising impurities in standard CAPB. Both should be below 10 ppm. RSPO Mass Balance (RSPO MB) certification required for COSMOS compliance on the feedstock. This is the one non-organic COSMOS-approved ingredient in the system.

INCI: Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride. Used only in the cannabinoid premix (4 g per 2,000 g shampoo batch). Organic grade is available and preferred. Coconut-derived C8/C10 fractionated; confirm no C12 or above, as Malassezia can metabolise longer chain fatty acids.

INCI: Gluconolactone (and) Sodium Benzoate. Supplied as Geogard Ultra (Arxada, formerly Lonza). A patented blend; the trade name is the most reliable way to ensure the correct ratio and COSMOS-approved specification. Generic gluconolactone/sodium benzoate blends exist but may differ in ratio and certification status.

INCI: Citric Acid. Used as a 50 % solution (w/w in deionised water) for pH adjustment. Dissolve anhydrous powder in deionised water in the laboratory. Food-grade anhydrous is entirely adequate for this use; cosmetic grade is not meaningfully different for a pH adjuster. Non-GMO preferred. COSMOS-approved. Used at approximately 8 g per shampoo batch and 6 g per conditioner batch — pennies per batch regardless of supplier.

INCI: Polyquaternium-10. Conditioning agent in the conditioner. Quaternised hydroxyethylcellulose — a cationic cellulose polymer derived from cotton or wood pulp. No legume input, no gum, no fermentation substrate. Carries a positive charge that deposits onto the negatively charged hair cuticle, improving wet and dry combing. Extensively used in baby shampoos and sensitive skin formulations. Water soluble powder — no emulsification step required; disperses directly into warm water and is more forgiving than guar-based polymers at this concentration — guar is excluded from this formulation entirely. Used at 0.8 % (16 g per 2,000 g batch) as the conditioner's sole cationic — see Section 05 for why. COSMOS-permitted.

Both are in the shampoo at 1.5 % each (30 g per 2,000 g batch), added in the cool-down at or below 95 °F / 35 °C. d-Panthenol is also in the conditioning gel at 1.0 % (20 g). See the manufacturing protocol, Phase F.

d-Panthenol

INCI: Panthenol. d-panthenol (dexpanthenol) is the active enantiomer — converted to pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) on the hair shaft, where it acts as a humectant, improves elasticity, and reduces breakage. The d-form is the correct specification for a hair care active; dl-panthenol contains 50 % inactive l-panthenol. Ordered from Making Cosmetics, 60 ml liquid, $41.54.

Niacinamide PH

INCI: Niacinamide. Niacinamide hydrolyses slowly to nicotinic acid (niacin) in acid conditions, and nicotinic acid is what causes scalp flushing. What a high-purity grade buys is a low residual nicotinic acid carried in from manufacture — it does not change the hydrolysis rate, so the useful specification is a written ppm limit on the CoA plus a sensible shelf life, not a grade name. At pH 5.4–5.6 and 1.5 % the risk is low. 99 to 100 % purity, GMO-free, vegan. Ordered from Making Cosmetics, 800 g, $59.90.

INCI: Hydroxyethylcellulose. Non-ionic cellulose thickener, the single ingredient responsible for both products having any body at all. Cellulose backbone from wood or cotton pulp with hydroxyethyl groups; no charge, so it does not interact with the cationic or anionic surfactants around it. Grade matters more than supplier here. A dispersible “R” grade is treated so the particles wet out before they start to swell; a non-R grade forms a skin on contact with water and produces lumps that never disperse, however long you stir. Use at 0.6 % (12 g) in the shampoo and 0.5 % (10 g) in the conditioner.

INCI: Sodium Citrate. Buffer, shampoo only, 0.2 % (4 g per batch). It exists in the formula for one reason: the preservative slowly hydrolyses gluconolactone to gluconic acid over the product’s shelf life, which drags the pH down. Unbuffered, a shampoo that leaves at 5.5 arrives at the customer nearer 4.8 — below the point where the sarcosinate starts coming out of solution. Four grams of a $9.45 ingredient is what stands between a stable product and one that separates in the bottle after two months.