Sometimes, for makeup products, we would get a prototype that might be someone's dress swatch, or the inside of a stiletto, something like that. And we'd be like, "Umm, how do we match that, how do we duplicate the leather on someone's shoe?" Or, if we're working on a cleanser, they might say: "It's gotta be a leafy-foam, like my doily that's sitting on my credenza." Really wacky examples. So, we'd often have to force the marketing team to give us realistic prototypes — something we can really work with and duplicate.It's not necessarily a secret, but when I've developed products for different companies over the years — whether it's makeup or skin care — we've used benchmarks of other competitors. We're looking at those products and we're basically trying to duplicate their texture or we're looking at the ingredients they used — and that's very common.For makeup, in terms of shade, everyone's copying everyone else. We may tweak them a little bit, but essentially, they're more or less the same. You'll see a lot of similarities in terms of textures and shades of beauty products on the market and that’s very much intentional.I worked on some of the original Clinique Turnaround products back in the early '90s and those ended up being some of the best-selling products at the time. That was a shining moment in my career — I was very proud of that. I'm working for the company, so the work I do is their property — everyone accepts that. But it would definitely be nice if one of those Clinique products read: Made By Ron.I was a cosmetic chemist for 10 years before starting my own company, BeautyStat . I always loved developing, but I wanted to get closer to the consumer (though I did frequently read reviews of products I developed for market research purposes — that's something I encourage all cosmetic chemists to do). Now, I'm able to use my expertise from the science side of cosmetics and bring that to content on my own website. It’s much easier now for me to see what’s just clever marketing versus what's breakthrough science, since I worked behind the scenes for so long. And though the work I do now is different from before, once a chemist, always a chemist.