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Crow’s feet and fine lines are some of the most dreaded signs of ageing – it’s no surprise that many consumers are constantly seeking the elixir to youth, be it collagen supplements, eye creams for wrinkles, and even aesthetic treatments like Botox.

So when we heard that a New Zealand brand has launched a product that is said to be the ‘quickest, most effortless way’ to treat signs of ageing around the eyes, we knew we had to dig deeper to find out more.

ActivLayr: the quickest non-invasive way to get younger skin

ActivLayr’s 5 Second Nano-collagen Boost Patches are eye-firming masks that you can use at home as an anti-ageing treatment to reduce sagging and bags, fine lines, wrinkles, crows feet, puffiness, and dark circles. Composed of 100% natural sustainably sourced ingredients, marine collagen nano-fibres are infused with bio-actives to firm and restore the delicate skin around our eyes.

Activlayr

At first glance, these look just like ordinary eye masks. However, we were absolutely blown away by the before-and-after photos of a real user who tested this product on her eye area over seven days!

Before After Activlayr Oct 2019

Obvious reduction in crow’s feet and fine lines over 7 days

You may wonder if this is just a standalone miracle, but an independent clinical test found that test subjects experienced an average of 19% reduction in wrinkle volume, 16% improvement in skin elasticity, and a 15% improvement in skin’s water loss after daily application over just 7 days!

According to the brand, these impressive results can be attributed to the thin collagen nano-fibres that can deliver active ingredients to depths of 2.5mm into your skin, reaching the dermal layers where the ingredients can actually work. You can watch the video below to see how the collagen gets instantly absorbed by the skin:

We were highly intrigued by this never-seen-before skincare innovation that actually delivers results, so we spoke to Iain Hosie, CEO of Revolution Fibres (the company behind ActivLayr) to find out more about how this really works, as well as other possible uses of this technological breakthrough:

What inspired you and your team to create this skincare innovation? 

The ingredient, Hoki fish, inspired us. This was part of a research project where we learned how to make fibres from marine collagen. In New Zealand, the government has always been trying to help the fishing industry get more value from the whole fish, not just the fillet (which is used to make your Fillet-o-Fish!), so we worked with scientists to get the collagen from the leftover skin from the fish.

We didn’t expect initially to create a cosmetic product, but we noticed that it was absorbed very quickly into the skin. We got this wonderful material, so from there we explored how to create a product from it. I would call it serendipity?

What are some hurdles your team faced during the innovation process and how did you overcome them?

Our product is very different from what is being offered on the market, and that is where one of our biggest challenges arise from: breaking the perception of how active ingredients into the skin with creams and serums and traditional face masks. There is a need to educate the market – it’s not just about making a brand, it’s about educating the market about the problems associated with different collagen products and different ways of delivering collagen into the skin.

I would say that the biggest challenge in the cosmetics industry is marketing hype, so a lot of products make big promises and don’t deliver. This causes the market to be naturally skeptical. It is really such a challenge to prove that the products work to the satisfaction of all consumers because everyone looks at before and after pictures with a degree of disbelief.

However, when people understand that our ingredients are pure and 100% natural, they start to realise that the product must work – so as long as it is penetrating the skin, it must work.

On the technical side of things, we used a process called electrospinning to create the nano-fibres. It is an easy technology to execute but very hard to perfect, very hard to do it at a very large scale while making sure that you get consistent quality every time. We also discovered through trial and error what the best ingredients to use because some actually do not gel well together.

Are consumers worried about the high concentration levels of the active ingredients, since everything is absorbed so quickly into the skin?

We never put more active ingredients than you’ll find in a cream. We look at recommendations from manufacturers of the actives and stick to those so that we don’t overdose.

Could you share a little more about what is so special about marine collagen versus the usual type of collagen that other skincare products use in their formula?

We use Type 1 marine collagen that is on the nanoscale – this collagen is very easy to absorb into the skin and very water-soluble. We essentially solved one of the biggest challenges of using collagen in products, as it is typically very big and not very water-soluble.

In addition, collagen comes from cows or pigs, and people don’t like the chance of disease and more importantly, they don’t like the religious connotations of using these animals as well. Marine collagen has no religious connotations, and for us, it’s also sustainable because we’re getting our ingredients from a fishery that’s never going to die out. We are confident that no fish is being pulled out of the sea in order to create the product since we’re using the byproduct, the waste (i.e. fish skin).

We see that ActivLayr uses only four ingredients, which is quite rare, considering that most other products have very long ingredient lists. Is using fewer ingredients always better, and how does ActivLayr manage to use so few ingredients?

Activlayr

That’s the benefit of this technology! We do mix the marine collagen with water and other ingredients (including grape seed extract and kiwi fruit skin extract), but what is actually landing on the skin is the collagen, it’s a great technology for reducing the number of ingredients that you put on the skin.

Although I can’t comment on what all the ingredients in cosmetics do, I do know that even the most benign cream or serum has to have a huge number of ingredients to even just be in the form, in the colour that it has, and of course including fragrance. Once you start to add all these ingredients, you need even more ingredients to be preservatives, to be carriers, so you end up with this very long ingredient list.

We’ve managed to remove all these other ingredients simply because we use dry fabric. In liquids and creams, there’s a high chance of products oxidising, or having microbes build up over time, a lot of the ingredients in the creams are food for microbes and that makes the products go bad quite quickly. because we’ve so few ingredients, it is actually stable as long as our product is packaged well, so there’s no opportunity to go off.

How does ActivLayr compare to aesthetic treatments? Do you think that ActivLayr could potentially replace the need for aesthetic treatments like Botox?

I think Botox will still have its place in aesthetic clinics, but you have to remember that it is a toxin that makes the skin react to something that is foreign, but ActivLayr is a much safer option that you can do from home because it is food for the skin.

People inject Botox for deep penetration, and while ActivLayr might not have the long-lasting effect of Botox, it also penetrates the skin deeply and regular usage may be able to replace Botox, although that is not really its main goal. Most people use ActivLayr as part of a routine after cleansing, so it is more of a collagen boost after you’ve cleaned your skin.

You can even put a moisturiser and makeup just 2 to 3 minutes afterward because it penetrates the skin so deeply. This is in contrast to some creams and serums, where you can take a long time for the products to be absorbed.

What other applications can be created with ActivLayr’s technology?

I think there are a lot of active ingredients we can carry. Each has its own benefit and function – some will be cosmetic, some will be medical.

We are currently developing products made with active ingredients that work for acne, ingredients that are good for eczema. Using collagen nano-fibres is a better way of delivering active ingredients into the skin that is already inflamed because when you use a cream on inflamed skin, you’re actually damaging your skin while you’re trying to deliver the treatment. We think there’s huge potential in using collagen as a way of delivering these ingredients into inflamed skin.

What are the future plans for ActivLayr?

We are definitely looking at skin-brightening because there have been lots of requests for whitening agents for dark undereye circles and whole skin complexion. We’ve developed the formulation and will be releasing the products later this year.

Vitamin C was popular many years ago and disappeared for a while, but people have realised that Vitamin C is the best brightening agent you can get, so we’re tapping on this popular ingredient for our brightening products. Vitamin C is very potent, so you really want to make sure that 100% is absorbed by your skin, and you don’t want anything sitting on the surface of your skin. With creams and serums, some will be left on the surface, and you don’t know exactly how much is going into your skin or on your fingers – that’s where our easily soluble masks will come into play.

In addition, because our brand is from New Zealand, many people have requested for manuka honey formulations, so we’ve developed that as well. This is targeted at nourishing the skin and protecting it from external aggressors with its anti-oxidant and anti-bacterial properties.

ActivLayr 7 Day Under-Eye Patches Pack retails at SGD120 for seven pairs of 5 Second Nano-collagen Boost Patches and each box comes with a handy refillable water spritzer to help moisten the skin before application. You can purchase them online, as well as the following clinics in Singapore:

  • Advanced Centre for Reproductive Medicine (6a Napier Rd, #05-35, Annex Block, Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore 258500)
  • NoFrills Dental @ Marina Square (6 Raffles Blvd, #B1-11 Marina Square, Singapore 039594)
  • NoFrills Dental @ Suntec City (3 Temasek Boulevard, North Wing, #03-317 Suntec City, 038983)

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