Too big is no good, too small feels underwhelming. The battle with glitter.

After an incident (?) where gold and silver kept sparking, I suddenly started wondering: What would happen if someone with a metal allergy put silver-plated or gold-plated glitter on their lips?

We chose titanium coating (though, as before, it can’t be microwaved),
and after that, it was all about getting the formula right.

The glitter size
is measured in microns,
and the raw materials supplier had told us that once you go over ● microns, it gets heavy, so it’s not normally used in lipstick.

First, we tried mixing in glitter of various sizes to see how each one would sparkle.

But to get that “Cute!” “Beautiful!” reaction,
we weren’t satisfied unless we included some glitter that was just over ● microns.

The developers and I felt the same way about what looked beautiful, and after many rounds of testing, we finally found an amount that we thought would be just under the limit for causing irritation.

To see if it would make someone else’s heart flutter,
we decided to ask one of our employees to check it out.

We had an employee in trade administration who loved all things sparkly, and we called her
“Glitter Boss.”

Whenever the Boss said, “Cute!”,
the development team and I would talk about whether there was some way to make a product with glitter this size.

We decided to give the Glitter Boss a sample mixed into the base formula.

The Boss said, “What?!!! Wow! It’s so cute!”
We pumped our fists and decided, “This is the one.”

From there, we got a glimpse of the development team’s endless experiments and hard work, but
their breezy reply, “Well, we’ll give it a try,” came with an expression that seemed a little excited, too.

SACHIKO KAKEGAWA