I’m not a chemist. My educational background is in psychology, although my interests and experience extend far beyond that.
For example, I worked for a cutting edge top nutritional company that created what are now known as nutraceuticals (nutritional formulations that give results as obviously as pharmaceuticals do).
The formulators there were quality obsessed. Even their vitamin C was from Hoffman-LaRoche. They were uber results oriented, and no expense was spared to create products that actually generated results.
My temperament is similar (I’ve been called an anal retentive, quality obsessed maniac, and I tend to agree 
), and I picked up lots of practical knowledge there.
I have enough knowledge to be able to find & work with good chemists, and, perhaps more importantly, to be able to know who’s trying to pull the wool over my eyes, and who’s not. (there’s far more fraud in the “science” related industries than there should be – too many tiny labs that are all willing to fudge their numbers)
Back when we started, we were much better funded that we are now, and did more inhouse than we do now. Just like Erox/Pherin, and KioTech, we started quite a bit of optimistic investment, that needed to be adjusted in relation to market realities.
Today, most of the truly high end work is outsourced to various experts, all of which are here in the US. (which has actually ended up being a superior approach)
These days we have two lab techs make most of the products on a small scale. One of them, Scott, doesn’t have the official educational background of the other, but he’s very detail oriented, which is primarily what we need.
We need precision, and adherence to the multitude of laws and rules involving the manufacture of cosmetic products – GMP, FDA cosmetic guidelines, etc.
Large, private label batches (25k bottles and up) are compounded and filled by a partner outside of us. (this actually actually makes large orders easier for us to fulfill, as we supply components only)
In the cosmetics industry, there are quite a few bad batches that get sold off as “normal”. You especially see this among pheromone products, few brands of which are consistent whatsoever (LaCroy probably being an exception here). We’re one of the few companies that is quality focused.
You have to remember, we were the ones that introduced the concept of dosing to pheromone products. Dosing and consistency is a very important issue. We don’t let anything go out that isn’t as perfect as can be.
Often times, when it comes to chemicals you can smell, there is no “fixing” of batches. You do everything right the first time, in the proper sequence, or you leave a batch behind.
Perfume, for instance, must be mixed in a certain order. If you change the order whatsoever, the scent changes. This is hit you over the head obvious when formulating fragrances.
Just because it’s harder to discern those changes with pheromones, doesn’t mean the same things aren’t going on. Pheromones are basically human musks, after all, so many of the same rules should apply to formulating pheromone products as apply to overt fragrance products.
Due to that, we’d rather discard a batch, or sell it as damaged, and start over.
Many aspects of the chemicals of olfaction are still unknown. There’s not enough knowledge to take a completely dominant, top down approach.
In this field, reality has to take precedence over assumption… and the reality is that chemosensory science is still in it’s infancy, with far more unknowns that knowns.
You must err on the side of caution to make good, consistent, consistent olfactory products – and that’s what we do.
