Welcome ENBA community, natural cosmetic aficionados, and beauty innovators,
Inspired by all of the disruptors we met at the ENBA gala, we are kicking off a new series: Formulating with ENBA Award-Winning Ingredients.
The Origin by Ocean team is deeply honored to be a two-time winner of the ENBA Ingredient award, and to celebrate, we are opening up our application lab formulation notebooks to share practical guidelines, technical insights, and bench-tested advice to help you design luxurious textures and high-performance products with our award-winning ingredients, fellow winners, shortlisted ingredients, and other innovative, disruptive material suppliers.
As a cosmetic product developer with over 25 years of experience innovating in and out of the lab, I know firsthand that the most revolutionary and sustainable materials are only as good as the formulas they live in; the awards recognized our potential, and now I’d like to help you unlock it.
In Volume I, let’s talk about SERUMS.
One of the biggest complaints we get from brands and consumers about natural formulations is that they don’t have an elegant texture and that consumers prefer to purchase synthetic formulations that dry down more quickly, and don’t leave the skin feeling sticky.
It’s true that natural gums like Guar Gum or COSMOS certified biotech materials like Xanthan Gum can give your formulation viscosity and body, but these natural gums can be very slow to dry, feel slimy and unpleasant on the skin, and leave a film on the skin that can pill with other product applications.
2025’s Sustainable Ingredient of the Year, OCEANTHIX™ LV was designed to solve this problem; it acts as a viscosity booster with natural gums, allowing you to achieve your desired viscosity with less, and creates a film-forming effect upon application, allowing for your formulation to dry down more quickly.
Our Jelly-Break Serum formulations are an exercise to showcase how different grades of Xanthan Gum work synersitically with OCEANTHIX™ LV to create a wide range of textures; from a soft, fluid-gel to a transformative K-Beauty inspired jelly-to-water feel, by simply modifying the supplier and ratio of Xanthan Gum, you can achieve a texture that perfectly suits your needs.
In addition to OCEANTHIX™ LV, this Jelly-Break Serum formulation contains the 2026 Sustainable Ingredient of the Year, OCEANBOOST™ LF. Backed by a wide range of clinically proven claims, it delivers increased hydration, reduced TEWL, reduced skin sensitivity and visible redness, as well as improved smoothness, firmness, and elasticity. Just as importantly, the base formulation functions as a versatile chassis that can easily accommodate a wide range of other water-soluble active ingredients.
The most important points to remember when formulating with OCEANTHIX™ LV, is that it is pH sensitive, and should not be used in formulations with a pH below 4.8.
Download the formulation booklet for Jelly-Break Serum series here and don’t forget that these are designed as guidelines; if you find the formula too thick or too thin, you can scale the amount of thickeners up and down to your liking, as long as you maintain the ratios established in the formulas.
Whether you’re working on a face, body, scalp, or even intimate care serum formulation, please reach out to us to receive samples of OCEANTHIX™ LV, OCEANBOOST™ LF, or any of these prototypes. We are happy to support your development of next-gen ENBA-winning formulations in any way we can!
Send a request to sales@originbyocean.com and we will get back to you shortly.