Thoughtful Science™, From The Beginnings

Actives International started as a research lab with a simple approach: leverage eastern and western medicines and remedies to discover new active ingredients, and use purification science to turn them into something brands would love and formulators could use. We became a custom ingredient house, and one of the first to use fermentation to create genuinely new actives that go beyond natural extracts.

For nearly 3 decades, our work has been grounded in collaboration, creation, and curation. We’ve partnered directly with leading beauty brands to develop custom ingredients built around a specific need. We’ve created entirely new actives that fill gaps in the market. And we partnered with cutting-edge companies to curate ingredients where the right solution already existed.

That approach produced some genuine firsts. In the mid-1990s, Actives International brought one of the first biotech-derived hyaluronic acids to market, demonstrating similar activity to animal-derived alternatives at a fraction of the cost. Around the same era, we created ViaPure® Coleus — a Coleus barbatus extract traditionally associated with slimming and firming — which became one of our earliest examples of custom ingredient creation, developed to support a smoother, more toned, contoured appearance for firming and body-care formulas.

Nearly thirty years later, we remain an innovation house, collaborating where brands need a partner, creating where nothing else solves the problem, and curating where the right answer already exists.