JOHOR BARU: There is hope to make the first eco-friendly nanotechnology beauty product by a Malaysian research team more affordable for Malaysians.
SHE Empire Sdn Bhd, a company founded by a research team from University Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), has sold two new products nationwide under the Micellar series this month.
Their first 10 products were sold two years ago.
The two new products are the Micellar Cleanser and Micellar Mist at RM69.90 and RM89.90 respectively.
Its director and UTM lecturer /researcher Associate Professor Dr Siti Hamidah Setapar said she researched micellar technology for over 15 years and her aim was to make high technology-driven beauty products accessible to everyone.
(Micellar technology is applied in a lot of skin care products in the market now, where tiny oil molecules are in soft water to draw out impurities from the skin without drying it out).
She said the Micellar series was one of the pioneering nanotechnology beauty products in Malaysia.
“We use 98% natural ingredients to ensure the quality of the product.
“Currently, all of the eco-friendly nanotechnology beauty products are imported from other countries, making it very expensive,” she said.
(Nanotechnology involves realms of atoms and nanostructures that are one to 100 nanometres in size).
Siti Hamidah added that her team of seven researchers, including one PhD student and three Masters students, used the revenue from the sales of the previous 10 products to fund their research.
“We started researching the product at least three years before launching it and we hope to introduce more such high technology products in future.
“We have received orders from neighbouring countries and we have sales agents in Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia,” she said at a press conference after the launch of the Micellar series in UTM.
The public can buy the products from sales agents nationwide or via online platforms including Facebook and Instagram.
“We will focus on research and development and empower our sales agents for now, while plans to open retail shops are part of our future plans.
“The beauty product market is flooded with so many new products every day, and we make our presence significant by providing something different, which is affordable green nanotechnology products,” she said, adding that they expect to sell 5,000 units of the Micellar series products by June this year.