Greetings, skin microbiome enthusiasts.
A few weeks ago I wrote about the smell of Fafabiotic. Why it smells the way it does, what you are actually experiencing when you open the bottle, and why we chose not to hide it.
This week I want to go a layer deeper. Because something happened recently that I have been sitting with.
I have been making the rounds giving samples to spas and estheticians in the area. And the reaction has been almost perfectly consistent. The smell is a dealbreaker. Not “hmm, interesting.” Not “tell me more.” Full stop, before they even asked whether it worked.
Every single one.
And I have been asking myself: why?
My first reaction, honestly, was frustration. If you are getting a facial, a face massage, or any kind of skin treatment at a spa, are you not putting something on your face? Do you not want that something to be as natural, as close to biology, as possible? That was my assumption going in.
But then I started thinking about it differently.
Maybe spas are not actually in the business of skin health. Maybe they are in the business of an experience. The ambient lighting, the music, the warm towel, the scent in the air. Fragrance is not a detail in that world. It is part of the product. It signals that something good is happening. That you are being taken care of.
So when you hand them something that smells like fermentation, like something alive and biological, it does not just fail to fit. It actively disrupts the whole atmosphere they have built.
They are not rejecting the science. They are protecting the feeling.
And I do not know how to argue with that, even if I disagree with it.
What bothers me is the deeper question underneath it. Are spas optimizing for what makes the customer feel good in the moment, or for what is actually good for their skin? And is there a difference? Should there be?
I do not have a clean answer. I just know what I observed, and I think it is worth naming clearly.
Fafabiotic was not built for that channel. That is becoming obvious.
The people who love it are the ones who already think like scientists. Who read labels. Who have had enough disappointing results from beautiful-smelling things to care more about what is actually happening at the microbial level of their skin.
That is our person.
A spa shelf is probably not where she finds us. at least not the ones I have talked to so far.
And maybe that is fine. Maybe it is better to know that early.
Until next blog, cheers.
Farzaneh
