What this is
Skin Insider is a publication about the skincare industry: how a cosmetic is actually developed, who really formulates it, what a brand owns and what a factory owns, what the words on the pack are legally permitted to mean, and who profits from each practice.
It is not a product review site. It is not a dermatology site. We do not tell you what to buy, because the moment a publication tells you what to buy it acquires an interest in your buying it. Everything here is about mechanisms, incentives and rules, all of which are stable, checkable and useful for years rather than for a season.
It is edited and published by Northbank Media. Articles are written by the editorial team and are not attributed to invented authors.
What we will not do
- We name no brands, manufacturers, retailers or agencies. Not to praise and not to criticise. Every practice described here is described structurally, because a structural account is true across the sector and a named one invites a dispute about a single company instead of a conversation about a system.
- We invent nothing. No clinic, no product, no price, no margin, no study, no statistic. Where the trade quotes a figure that cannot be traced to a public source, we describe the mechanism and say that the figure is not verifiable.
- We take no affiliate commission. None, anywhere, ever.
- We accept no press samples, because we do not review products and therefore have no need of them.
- We publish no rankings. Not of brands, not of products, not of suppliers.
- We do not give medical advice. For a skin condition, see a clinician.
How this is funded, exactly
Two lines, both declared on every page.
1. A paid brand and supplier register. Companies can buy an entry in the register. Entries are published in alphabetical order, are labelled as paid, and carry only disclosed and verifiable facts: legal entity, registered number, the categories they work in, and the certifications they hold with a scope and an issuing body. There is no score, no ranking, no editorial comment and no recommendation. The criteria and the fee are published on the criteria and fees page.
2. Newsletter sponsorship. A single sponsor slot per issue, clearly labelled, at a published rate. The newsletter page carries the rate card and, more importantly, a written list of what sponsorship cannot buy. The first item on that list is that it cannot influence any entry in the translation index.
We take no programmatic advertising, no paid links, no sponsored articles, no paid guest posts, and no commission for introducing anybody to anybody.
Why the funding model is built this way
Because a publication cannot credibly explain an incentive it is subject to. If we earned money when you bought something, we could not tell you when not to buy. If we ranked suppliers, the ranking would be the product and everything else would be the marketing for it. If we accepted samples, the supply of things to write about would be controlled by the people we write about.
Independence in this sector is mostly a question of what you have arranged not to need. We have arranged not to need any of it, and the arrangement is published so you can check that it holds.
How we work
Every article is built the same way. A mechanism is described. Where a rule governs it, the rule is named and linked to its primary source: legislation, a regulator's guidance, a code, or a published ruling. Where a phrase is doing persuasive work, it is put through a translation. Where money is moving, a who profits block names the incentive generically.
We link only to sources we are confident exist and that a reader can check: legislation.gov.uk, the ASA and the CAP codes, the MHRA, the Office for Product Safety and Standards, the Competition and Markets Authority, Trading Standards, the ICO, and the medical and scientific literature. All external links are nofollow.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say that we did. Our editorial standards page sets out the full policy, including how corrections are marked and how long they stay visible.
Contact
Editorial, corrections, register enquiries and sponsorship all go through the contact page. Register and sponsorship enquiries are handled by a separate route from editorial, which is a small structural point that matters more than it sounds.