Paula’s Choice is thrilled to welcome Paula’s Choice Thailand as the official Distributor for our products in Thailand.

From the beginning my goal has been to help women find products that will give them the skin they’ve always wanted. Over the years, I have watched my passion of providing brilliant skin care products for every concern grow from being just distributed in the United States, into Paula’s Choice products being distributed in 42 countries around the world. Adding Thailand to the Paula’s Choice family is a dream come true!

Visit the official Paula’s Choice Thailand website here!

Warmest regards,

Paula Begoun

Accutane was a brand name for an oral, anti-acne medication that is no longer being prescribed, but the active ingredient in it (isotretinoin) is now available as a generic. Accutane/isotretinoin has the potential to cure acne or at the very least make it go away for awhile. Once a round of isotretinoin is done, the acne may still return; however, if it does, it is rarely as bad as before.

Regrettably, isotretinoin is a difficult drug. There are lots of serious side effects such as elevated cholesterol, liver problems, loss of hair, unbelievably dry skin, birth defects if you get pregnant while taking it, depression (though that side effect is controversial), headaches, bloody nose, and on and on. But for me, my acne was even more difficult than all of those health risks, which is why, once I was fully informed about the risks, I still opted to take this medicine to help my acne.

Prior to Accutane, every morning for me was a living nightmare of having to look in the mirror to see what had happened to it overnight. It was agonizing and it was rarely good news. And then during the day I could feel eruptions developing as I touched my face or felt the small throbs where swollen bumps were growing. I even hated the word “pimple.” I found it embarrassing and insulting. I am sure anyone struggling with acne knows just how I felt, and how strong the desire for clear skin becomes.

When I finally decided to try Accutane it was with utter abandon. I would do anything to not have this struggle of seeing red, inflamed, white dotted lesions on my face.

When I started my prescription I noticed a difference within the first week. I’ll never forget the moment when I touched my face and felt nothing that I was so used to feeling. All I could feel was smooth skin! Much to my continued surprise, it remained that way for weeks. I had some of the side effects I was told about, including bloody nose, dry lips, and headaches. No one tested for liver function and cholesterol levels in those days and I was beyond getting pregnant so there is much I don’t know for what did or didn’t go wrong for me internally. What I do know is that it was the first time in my life since the age of 11 that I liked looking at myself in the mirror.

At the three month point I started experiencing hair loss and that freaked me out. As a result, I stopped taking the drug and, as expected, the hair loss stopped. The trade-off for stopping too soon to save my hair was my acne came back about two months later. I did a great deal of research and found that the dosage and timing was a big deal. A lower dose taken over a longer period of time seemed to be far better. I discussed this with a new physician and started another cycle of Accutane. Thankfully, it went much better the second time around.

Today, almost 17 years later, I still struggle with breakouts but nothing like I did before Accutane. I sometimes think I should have taken another treatment cycle but never did, not because of the risks, it was just that I never got around to it and I was happy enough with the results two rounds of Accutane provided.

Given everything known about isotretinoin/Accutane my only personal regret is that I waited so long to take it. I can only guess what my mornings would have been like in my 20s and early 30s had I taken the drug back then, and not wasted so much time and money on irritant-laden products that made matters worse not better. Like many of you, I just didn’t know any better and just kept buying product after product hoping something would work.

Everyone has to weigh the pros and cons of many things they do in life; for me, Accutane was a no-brainer. Whether you feel the same way is a decision only you can make, but if you decide to take isotretinoin, be certain you’re fully informed of the risks, particularly if you’re a woman of childbearing age.

A Facebook fan of ours wanted to know more about how I develop Paula’s Choice products from concept to the final version, ready to be launched. They also wanted to know how my process is different from the way other companies create beauty products. I have to say, I love this question!

It is astonishing even to me how incredibly different my product development methodology is from other cosmetic companies’.

Creating new products and improving our current formulations is my passion and it has been my life’s work. Every product is my achievement or concept and I personally oversee the formula from every perspective. That alone is rare.

There are no owners or formulators for cosmetic companies who have spent the past 30 years writing 18 books on skin care and makeup. Most of the people developing skin-care products either don’t take the time or they don’t know how to evaluate a peer-review scientific study.

Many of the scientists who work for cosmetic companies are not penetrating past the claims of one product, or they don’t actually understand or are involved in an entire skin-care routine. You only have to look at the vast number of products in jar packaging, or that contain alcohol among other notorious irritants, or are antiquated formulations; for some reason this still shocks me.

My team and I always obsess over:

1. What the research says about the ingredients we want to use.
2. Analyze what the actual overall benefit to skin will be for a specific skin type or concern based on published research and then on our own clinical panel testing.
3. How it compares to other products (if I can’t make it far better and sell it at a more reasonable price than other cosmetic companies, we won’t make it).
4. Most importantly, it must work within a framework of superior skin care (gentle cleansers, toners loaded with “bio-active” ingredients, sunscreens enhanced with antioxidants, moisturizers and serums containing substances that repair skin and fend off environmental damage, effective exfoliants—not scrubs which tear at skin, etc).

What makes our process different is basically the following:

1. I have a unique concept of skin care based on published research about different skin-care concerns ranging from acne to rosacea, wrinkles, sensitive skin, oily skin, and dry skin, etc. Most cosmetic companies don’t approach skin care in a cohesive, systematic fashion; they follow trends or an exotic ingredient they can build a story around.
2. We never jump on bandwagons. Just because apple tree stem cells or ingredients claiming to work like Botox are being thrown into moisturizers, I would never include it simply because it would make for good ad copy or a fashion magazine editor would think it was new and different. The research must be there to support adding it to a formula.
3.  My fundamental philosophy is to never harm skin: Irritation and inflammation is bad for skin. There is no contradictory evidence on this one. Other companies throw in known irritants ALL the time because it sounds natural or they just don’t know what they are doing.
4. In the world of cosmetics most product development people are in the marketing department (that never fails to kill me). They decide they will be able to build a story around some new ingredient and then give that information to the chemists and a new product is born. That process has nothing to do with skin care.
5. Because my team and I have reviewed thousands of products and have spent every day poring over published research about skin, we know up close and personal what hundreds of other brands are creating and understand their formulations. We have a bird’s eye view of the industry and we can avoid formulary mistakes and can discern formulary excellence from every angle.

I’ll never forget the time when my product development manager, Kate Mee, and I met with a prominent cosmetic lab down in California (they did work for many of the major cosmetic companies). We sat around the table with three of their cosmetic chemists, two of the owners of the lab, and two of their main sales representatives. When we began discussing the formulas they had been working on for us, they were taken aback at the research we had done and the meticulous detail we went through to evaluate the ingredients.

I said, “Doesn’t every cosmetic company you work with do this?”
They said, “None of them do this.”
I said, “Then what do they do?”

Their response was that they “talk marketing ideas and what star ingredient they want the product to contain, or how the product should smell, or what natural ingredients we can put in it, but never research and definitely not an analysis of every ingredient.”

I said, “But if the product is for acne and they don’t have acne, or if the product is for dry skin and they don’t have dry skin, why would they try it?”

Their response: “They don’t really care about the ingredient deck. The people we meet with are from the marketing team; they don’t know anything about the science of skin, skin problems, or cosmetic chemistry. They care about appearance and how they can sell the product.”

Geesh! That was one of the most eye opening experiences of my career. I have written extensively about what can and can’t benefit skin. As new research comes to light we change or improve what we do. As new requests come in from our readers or customers we examine how we can meet those needs—often we can, but often we can’t. What we will never do is pretend a product can do more than what is possible. All of this adds up to skin care you can trust, whether it is from my product line or from other cosmetic companies’ products we recommend on Beautypedia.com.

After a flurry of meetings in the office the other day, I sat quietly at my desk for just a moment before the phone rang. I picked up the receiver and said, “Thank you for calling Paula’s Choice, this is Deborah, how can I help you?”

While this greeting is considered standard in the world of customer service, something at that very moment struck me and I realized just how different Paula’s Choice is when it comes to our level and dedication to customer service. In fact, we are by most measures fanatic about it. Our company culture truly believes in service at the highest possible level. Each and every department in our organization wants the best for the Paula’s Choice consumer and while we want to generate orders, we think it is far more important to be sure you get the right products (not just sell you more and more products or, even worse, the wrong products), along with services that make you feel comfortable and safe and better help you navigate the complicated world of skin care and makeup.

Upon reflection, I am proud to tell you that many of our meetings are about what we can do for YOU. From specials and upcoming articles to packaging, customer service troubleshooting, generous return policies (better than almost any other company we’ve heard of), easy refunds or credits when you have any problem, and even free rush shipping when we make a mistake. You are always the focus. Although I personally hear from many of you that we are meeting or beating expectations, I thought, why not open this up to further discussion? What I want to know is: Are we meeting the mark we strive for daily? Are we truly stepping up to serve you at the highest level possible?

We do a lot of talking to answer your questions, but we also do a lot of listening and I am curious to hear what you have to say. So now it’s your turn. What’s on your mind about how we can do more for you here at Paula’s Choice?

Call in & ask Paula your skin-care questions during her live Internet talk radio show,
Be Beautifully Informed with Paula Begoun,
The Cosmetics Cop.

Every Thursday beginning
6pm PST, 8pm CST, 9pm EST

• Best & worst products for the week.
• Behind-the-scenes look at cosmetic tips, advertising, & procedures.
• Call in & get personalized advice from Paula.
• Select callers can win free products on every show!

To tune in…
Call (347) 426-3783 to listen live & ask questions at show time, or listen to live & archived segments online .

My partner and I recently took a trip to the beautiful Chelan area of Washington State, an area known for its scenic beauty as well as an abundance of wineries. Given that we enjoy Washington wines immensely, both of us were eager to explore some wineries and see what was new.

While visiting a hilltop winery that overlooked Lake Chelan and the surrounding valley (a stunning view), I struck up a conversation with the young woman in charge of the winery’s tasting room. After small talk and lots of accolades from me about the wines she was sampling that day, she asked what I did for a living. I mentioned I was a writer, which immediately prompted my partner to chime in “He’s a published author who writes books with one of the best-selling beauty authors of all time!” Well, so much for being low key about my career…

Once she learned this, she paused mid-pour. Then she asked for the name of the book. I told her it was Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me—and she went nuts. “Are you serious? I love that book. We all do.” I have to admit I was a bit surprised this young woman (she was only 20) had heard of the book. Come to find out, she holds a second job as a saleswoman for Lancome at Macys in a neighboring town. She told me that her district manager is a big fan of Paula’s work and insisted her teams have our book at their cosmetic counters! Imagine that!

I stopped to enjoy a sip of some estate-grown Syrah before responding, after which I asked “But didn’t your manager notice that we don’t say a lot of nice things about Lancome, especially their skin care?” She knew, but apparently that didn’t bother her. In fact, the young woman stated that she agrees with a lot of what we wrote, but was glad we were complimentary about Lancome’s makeup (Lancome has always excelled with makeup). As it turns out, she and her co-workers routinely consult the book while at work! They use it to learn more about what they’re selling as well as what neighboring lines offer.

I can’t tell you how great it was to visit a small town and run into someone who was not only aware of the books I write with Paula, but truly appreciated our hard work (really hard work!). In fact, as a thank you, she gave me a complimentary bottle of merlot (we bought a few bottles of their other wines, too). I felt like a celebrity.

Most of the time, and understandably so, cosmetic salespeople are quick to dismiss the vast amount of work that goes into each book unless we only write positive things about the brand they represent. I definitely raised a glass to this young woman’s cosmetics manager for not being afraid to show her team the perspective of someone not unduly influenced by cosmetics industry’s hype! And that brief exchange set the tone for a great weekend; after all, who doesn’t enjoy hearing that what they put out there in the world makes a real difference in the lives of lots of women?

Subscribers to Beautypedia.com know that our Web site is home to reviews of thousands of skin-care, makeup, hair-care, and body-care products. From Avon to Zo Skin Health, if it’s on the market, Beautypedia probably has a review of it—or we’ll get to it eventually!

Part of my job as Beautypedia Database Coordinator at Paula’s Choice is to keep our Web site’s information as current as possible, and that means tracking the launch of all new beauty products as well as discontinuations and reformulations of existing ones. Something as innocuous as a single new shade of a foundation means that research must be done—in fact, any change to a product means that its review needs to be revisited and potentially revised. With over 300 brands represented on Beautypedia, simply saying that keeping up with the industry is “a lot of work” is somewhat of an understatement. Sometimes, my head swims just thinking about it! But thanks to our readers, my job and that of the rest of the Beautypedia team isn’t nearly as difficult as it could be.

On a regular basis, my inbox teems with your insider tips, alerts and feedback. Many of our Beautypedia subscribers have become an important part of our Cosmetics Cop Team. Fielding these emails is a part of my job I always enjoy, because I’m continually impressed at the insights, knowledge, and tenacity of our readers—and I’m grateful for their willingness to share information with us! Those of you who take the time to let us know what cosmetic counter representatives are telling you, or what you’re seeing (or not seeing) on stores shelves are helpful to us in ways that defy words.

Not surprisingly, a good number of our readers are industry insiders themselves, and they let us know what new products are in the works, or just take the time to thank us for our hard work and dedication to holding this industry accountable for the empty promises it makes to consumers. And let me tell you, those thanks fill us with a lot of pride in what we do!

The email product alerts we receive makes Beautypedia (the big, beautiful, information-laden beast that it is) a more interactive experience for us and our subscribers. What amazes me about this process is that the information you give us gets cycled through Paula and the Cosmetics Cop Team and right back to other subscribers. And often, there’s very little lag. If a reader alerts us to a reformulation, we can research it, confirm it, and have the team revise the review and rating, usually the same day. Same thing goes for discontinuations. That’s pretty cool, and it makes Beautypedia more than a Web site—it’s an active community of fellow Cosmetic Cops!

I was sitting on an airplane (once again) when the woman next to me asked what I do for a living. Somewhat evasively I told her I owned an Internet company. I rarely start off saying I own a cosmetics company because inevitably the questions that follow leave me feeling awkward and sounding juvenile. It’s not that I’m not proud of what I do; rather, I don’t know how to succinctly, logically, or with any panache explain what Paula’s Choice products are all about. That could be about to change with your help, so please read on!

It’s silly for me to not just say from the get-go that I own a cosmetics company because, as usual, this woman asked, “What kind of Internet company do you own?” I gulped and responded that I own a cosmetics company. She said, “Oh really, what kind of cosmetics?” I said, “A skin-care and makeup company.” She asked, “Whose products do you sell?” I answered, “I sell my own products, the formulas I developed.” Then, in understandably typical fashion she asked, “What kind of products are they?”, and that’s when I get stumped.

When a woman asks me what makes Paula’s Choice special or what kind of products I sell I know what she really wants me to say. I’m supposed to respond by saying my products are all natural, or organic, or herbal, or plant-based, or contain essential oils, or contain vitamins, or some miracle ingredient from some exotic locale that only I know about, and of course the products get rid of wrinkles, stop aging, work like Botox, or cure blackheads, or oily skin and on and on. Of course, I can’t say any of that. Aside from being completely useless, simplified, inane descriptions, none of those tidbits other cosmetic companies spew like a bad case of food poisoning have any basis in creating a superior or even decent skin-care routine.

So because I can’t use the same misleading information every woman is waiting to hear, I just sit there and say something like, “Well, they’re my formulations based on what the research says is good for skin.” That goes over like a lead balloon. Even I think it sounds dull and uninteresting.

Then it dawned on me in a recent meeting with my customer service team that no one in my company, not even me, can explain or has a concise understanding of what makes Paula’s Choice products unique, and they are absolutely unique. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized they’re unparalleled in the world of skin care. I can say that confidently because I’ve reviewed thousands upon thousands of products, more than enough to know what’s brilliant and what’s terrible for skin. During that meeting the most outstanding thing happened: I finally grasped how to view and relate what my products are all about. Here it is:

Paula’s Choice is a range of skin-care products that work together synergistically in comprehensive skin-care systems to address a wide range of concerns including wrinkles, acne, oily skin, dry skin, rosacea, and sensitive skin. All of our formulations are state-of-the-art, based on published scientific research, designed to give skin exactly what it needs to be as beautiful and healthy as it can be.

Does that make sense? What do you think? If you were sitting next to me on a plane and I explained my products in this manner, would that make sense to you?

Let me know, I really want to grasp this. It’s about time, don’t you think?

If you’re a fan of Paula’s books and Web sites, you’re well aware that she’s a big proponent of using skin-care products that contain antioxidants. Research has shown time and again that topically applied antioxidants have multiple benefits for skin, particularly in the presence of sunlight. What I didn’t fully realize was how critical antioxidants are as we age. Here’s what I learned from a recent article published in the peer-reviewed journal Cosmetic Dermatology:

• Skin exposure to UV radiation can completely exhaust the skin’s natural supply of antioxidants. With continued unprotected sun exposure, UV rays can act like a kid in a candy store, indiscriminately “helping themselves” to your skin’s support structure. It’s as though your skin’s soldiers (its natural supply of defenses against oxidative damage) have laid down their arms, allowing the enemy to win the war. The result? With continued unprotected sun exposure, skin’s oxidative defense system becomes incapable of fully regenerating itself. What’s worse, the little that does get regenerated is consistently weakened and less capable of defending skin from damage.
• Topically-applied antioxidants not only prevent damage from reactive oxygen species (or ROS, rouge molecules generated by free radical damage) but they also help prevent the conversion of normally harmless or helpful substances in skin into pro-oxidants. Imagine that: going without sufficient antioxidant protection and ignoring sun protection means innocent substances in skin begin acting like criminals, looting your skin of what it needs to look youthful and resist damage.
• This last point I already knew but it bears repeating: there is no single best antioxidant. In fact, shopping for skin-care products centered around one antioxidant (like vitamins C or E) means you won’t be giving your skin its best chance of recovering from the various types of damage caused by oxidation and sunlight. There are thousands of antioxidants available, and among those that have the most research, one thing has become clear: different antioxidants have different strengths and weaknesses. For example, although vitamin C is involved in collagen synthesis, it isn’t fat soluble. That means it needs help to penetrate the lipids (fats) naturally present in skin if it is to reach its target and do the most good. Some antioxidants are all-around free radical scavengers while others work better to regenerate substances in skin that work to defend it from oxidative damage and inflammation. The bottom line is that taking a cocktail approach to using antioxidant topically is best. Variety is the spice of antioxidants!

I am continually fascinated by new research concerning how antioxidants impact our skin and overall health. Learning about how and why they work and how they should be formulated for maximum efficacy is one of the most exciting parts of my job. Best of all is the feedback we get from customers who’ve used our antioxidant-rich serums and moisturizers. The changes they see in their skin are exactly how well-formulated products loaded with antioxidants are supposed to work. Couple this with daily sun protection, a healthy diet, and smart lifestyle choices and you’re well on your way toward keeping skin’s defense systems ready to handle the reality of living in an oxygen-rich world.

E xciting News! Paula will be giving a free presentation on skin care myths in the cosmetics industry. She is armed with the most current research from her latest editions of The Original Beauty Bible and Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me and will be signing copies for attendees.

• Find out how to look younger without spending a fortune.
• Learn why typical acne products can make breakouts worse.
• Organic and Natural products – the reality vs. the hype.
• Book signing.
• Get FREE samples of skin care products.
• Win a $100 Paula’s Choice gift certificate!

Friday, December 11th, 7:30pm-9:30pm
Barnes & Noble
Brier Creek Commons
8431 Brier Creek Parkway
Raleigh, NC 27617

RSVP Here!