In case you missed it, the hugely popular The Ordinary officially made its launch on Malaysian soil last July, bringing the highly anticipated flagship experience (finally!) to local fans. Known for its clinical approach to skincare, The Ordinary is the brand to thank for bringing more ingredient transparency to skincare formulas. Since it first launched back in 2015, it’s been making waves with its innovative formulations, clear ingredient labelling, and shockingly affordable price points.
Many skincare junkies (including this writer herself) credits The Ordinary for empowering us with the knowledge of ingredients, actives, and exact percentages – and making that a part of our daily standard. On the occasion of the official launch in Malaysia, we got the chance to sit with Amy Bi, Global Brand Vice President of DECIEM, and Joe Basham, Global Senior Science Communications Manager, to talk about the brand and its exciting products.
First off, congratulations and welcome to Malaysia! Many The Ordinary fans are super excited to have the brand finally launched here and to have the flagship experience too. How do you feel about this new milestone?
Amy Bi (A): It’s super exciting! The Ordinary is about accessibility to as many people as possible, so every time we expand into a new country, we’re thrilled to be able to bring our products officially to the area and more importantly, start to develop a two-way relationship with consumers.
The fact that we have two stores in KL already is exciting, and to hopefully bring our experience, our education, our team to get to know Malaysians and to be able to support their skincare needs is equally exciting. There’s so much opportunity and energy here, and in Southeast Asia overall, so we’re thrilled!
The Ordinary’s approach is to formulate “with integrity”. Why it was important for The Ordinary as a brand and DECIEM as the company to take this direction, especially when the brand first started 10 years ago?
A: For Brandon (Truaxe), when he founded The Ordinary, it was about a frustration with the lack of transparency in the beauty industry at the time. He saw a real need, which we still see today, to bring integrity, transparency, and honesty to the beauty industry.
So that’s really the mission of the brand – we talk about integrity in pricing, integrity in communication, and then ingredient integrity as well. We want consumers to not pay for the fluff, really what you see is what you get and you pay for real, quality formulations.
Joe Basham (J): To add to that, the way we name our products clearly with percentages and ingredient names, and putting that at the forefront of everything we do – it was because of the frustration of seeing ingredients like niacinamide, vitamin C, retinol that had been used for decades, but were being marketed as this innovation, this new exciting thing. When really, they are actually affordable and they’re very easily accessible. So, we thought, let’s put it in a formula at 10% and offer it to consumers at as affordable and accessible a price point as we possibly can. That kind of real integrity has been at the heart and the whole process of The Ordinary.
I think many will agree that The Ordinary led the charge for the trend of transparent, ingredient-based approach to skincare, empowering and putting knowledge into the hands of consumers. Now, this approach has become pretty much a standard in the industry. How does it feel to have impacted and changed the beauty industry in such a huge way?
A: Overall, we’re very humbled, honoured and excited by how well-embraced we are by consumers around the world. The Ordinary is such a mission-driven brand, which I think is also unique in beauty beyond creating great skincare products. We have a real human mission behind our team and our company, and so to be able to explore all the ways that we can continue to act with integrity and bring transparency and educate consumers is a really fun job.
J: Often, it’s very easy to be quite “defensive” when you see other brands copying you, right? But actually, we have to see it as a huge win. We didn’t want to just do it ourselves, we wanted to change the approach that the whole beauty industry has, to bring that transparency in. And also, by other brands taking a similar approach, it forces us to innovate and to do new things. We step into areas where we can launch growth factors or retinal, those ingredients that might have not been traditional commodity ingredients, but what we want to commoditize.
Tell us about the Body and Hair range – often the industry sees them as separate categories from facial formulas due to the different needs in the skin of each area. How does The Ordinary approach body and hair care solutions?
J: Around 96% of skin is on our body, not our face, so we really wanted to take that same approach and bring it into body care and say, ‘treat your body like you do your face’. Taking a similar approach [like we do with face products], like highlighting the active ingredients, really targeting it for what consumers need. For example, Sulfate 4% Cleanser for Body and Hair, it’s by no means our best-selling product, but it was a really big opportunity for us to do what we do best: communicate with integrity and honestly and dispel misinformation. There was a huge movement towards sulfate-free, and so we decided we’re going to use sulfate and put it on the front of the packaging [to address the misinformation].
A: I would say the formulations within the body care range are simple, but they’re super elegant. We personally love them and we hope that more people will want to try them. The Natural Moisturising Factors (NMF) + Inulin Body Lotion is an amazing, simple body moisturiser. The claims that we have for it are so outstanding in terms of the overall hydration that it offers your body and it’s lightweight and fast-absorbing. Then with Salicylic Acid 0.5% Body Serum and Niacinamide 5% Face and Body Emulsion, it’s that same philosophy of targeting key concerns.
J: To add on about NMF + Inulin, we took a very simplistic approach to that product, and instead asked how do we innovate in the testing? With this, we not only studied the impacts of it on the skin immediately and long term, but we also had people shower after using the product and then measure the hydration afterwards. We can show it’s not just providing that hydration right now, it’s throughout the day even after you’ve showered. These kind of things are exciting, where can we bring that innovation not just in the product but in our testing and how we communicate as well.
Is there a growing trend in skincare and beauty that you foresee will be the next big thing for the market?
J: Not a specific trend, but something wider is, as The Ordinary steps into a place of democratising innovation, I think we’ll start to see a lot more of that [across the industry]. We launched our Retinal 0.2% Emulsion recently, and we’ve already seen other brands launching new retinal products. So I think that’s an exciting opportunity for us to open that space up and create consumer demand, which then creates choice for consumers, and more options for people to be able to try out new ingredients, new formulas. We’ll see, hopefully, a movement towards democratising typically out of reach technologies that were not as accessible to as many people.
I’m sure many are already familiar with The Ordinary’s bestsellers, but what other products would you recommend for Malaysians to try?
A: In terms of Prep and Seal – so cleansers and moisturisers – given the humidity and warmth here, one of my favourite products is the Glucoside Foaming Cleanser. It’s very good for that type of muggy, congested, maybe oily-prone skin, but actually we’ve tested it on all skin types, even for babies. It’s very gentle, and just a great cleanser for this environment.
From our moisturisers, NMF + Beta Glucan, the lightweight moisturiser, is beautiful. It’s a very unique gel moisturised texture, but I think that lightweight hydration is perfect for Malaysians. Similarly for body, the NMF + Inulin Body Lotion, I think is a hidden gem for us in our overall portfolio. The testing, as Joe mentioned, was very innovative, it’s a lightweight body moisturiser, which I think will work very well here.
J: I’ll mention some from the Treat section. First, Alpha Arbutin 2% + HA is really great for targeting dark spots, dark marks, and also evening the skin tone and targeting discolouration. Another one of my faves is Aloe 2% + NAG 2%. Alpha Arbutin is great for helping to target the brown pigmentation that comes with post acne marks, but often a lot of skin types will experience redness as well. So Aloe 2% targets both the red and brown elements of those post-acne marks, it’s a really great all-rounder.
The other product I’d like to mention is Multi Peptide + Copper Peptides 1% Serum, really quite an extensive formula that contains multiple different peptide technologies for firmness, elasticity, fine lines and wrinkles, crow’s feet, you name it. It also has that Copper Peptide at 1%, which is again, traditionally a very expensive technology, but we’re really trying to democratise and making it as accessible as possible. It’s fantastic for advanced age support, but also helping to renew and support the skin by targeting natural skin repair, and visibly improving signs of aging.
Finally, what’s next for The Ordinary?
A: We have a very exciting new product called Sulfur 10% Powder-to-Cream Concentrate. We’re so excited for this one in terms of being a really strong and unique acne offering. The claims and the research that we have on it are incredible, even like a one hour reduction in the exposed acne mark.
J: [Sulfur] is not just a new ingredient for us, but it’s also a new product format. It requires a really precise approach to make sure that we get everything right, from the lab through to manufacturing at scale. And as Amy mentioned, some of the best results that I’ve seen, like a 30% reduction in breakout redness which is fantastic.
A: If you think about what The Ordinary tries to do with products and how popular pimple patches are now, sulfur is kind of our point of view on that from both an experience and a price point standpoint. One bottle of sulfur is equivalent to about 150 patches, and if you think about the price difference, its uniquely democratising that type of spot treatment, which we know is so popular especially with Gen Z today, and also in a more environmentally sustainable format as well.
J: There is a place for both pimple patches and also sulfur. Sulfur really comes into its own on when you’ve got those red, angry kinds of breakout – it’s good at helping to soothe, reduce, and calm the appearance of breakouts. But sometimes you might have one that’s not red and angry, but it’s still got a whitehead and that’s where a pimple patch is going to provide the results that you want. So there is a space for both and they work really well side by side, depending on what your needs are.
Shop The Ordinary products at the two flagship stores in Pavilion KL and Mid Valley Megamall, or online at theordinary.com.
More beauty stories here.
Photos courtesy of The Ordinary