How You Know

Field Notes — February 2026

There's a moment in every batch when I stop measuring and start paying attention to what's happening in the pot.

The thermometer says 150 degrees. The beeswax has melted into the sunflower oil and the surface has gone from cloudy to clear — a warm, deep gold that catches the light differently than either ingredient alone. I add the glycerin, and for a few seconds it sits on top, a dense bead refusing to incorporate. Then I stir, and it pulls in. The color shifts. The viscosity changes. Something that was two things becomes one thing.

I've made hundreds of batches at this point, and that moment still tells me more than any instrument. The way the mixture moves on the spoon. How quickly it coats and releases. Whether the glycerin incorporated cleanly or left streaks that suggest the temperature was off by a few degrees. These aren't mystical observations — they're data. They're just data that comes through the hands instead of through a screen.

I was trained as a scientist, and I think like one. Every recipe we develop at NICER has a documented scientific basis with peer-reviewed citations. Every ingredient is justified at its specific concentration. Every batch follows a written protocol with temperatures, masses, and timing recorded to the gram and the degree. I am not, in any way, a "go by feel" formulator.

And yet.

The products we make are physical objects that will be touched, warmed, smelled, and absorbed by human skin. The science tells you what to put in and how much. It doesn't tell you what the finished product should feel like when someone warms it between their fingers at seven in the morning before they've had coffee. That knowledge comes from a different place.

BARRIER is a good example. The formula is three ingredients at fixed ratios — sunflower oil, beeswax, glycerin. On paper, it's arithmetic. In practice, it's a balm that's solid at room temperature and becomes something entirely different when it meets skin. That transition happens because beeswax melts at roughly 144 to 147 degrees Fahrenheit, and the surface of human skin sits around 92. The gap between those two numbers is where the product lives — firm enough to hold its shape in a jar, responsive enough to soften and release when you touch it.

Getting that transition right took more iterations than I expected. A percentage point more beeswax and the balm resists too long — you're working it between your palms wondering when it's going to give. A percentage point less and it's too soft in the jar, especially in summer, and the first impression is greasy rather than rich. The window is narrow, and you find it by making batch after batch, adjusting, and running your own hands over the result each time.

No lab report tells you the difference between a balm that works and a balm that someone wants to keep using. That second thing — the wanting — lives in the physical experience. The slight resistance giving way. The warmth that develops between your palms. The moment it stops feeling like a product and starts feeling like something your skin is absorbing because it recognizes what it needs. Those aren't things I can cite a study for. They're things I learned by paying attention.

TEXTURE came from a haircut.

I was in the chair and the stylist reached for a jar of styling clay. I asked to see the ingredients — a reflex at this point — and we ended up having a conversation I didn't expect. I walked through the label with them, explaining what long-term exposure to some of those compounds actually means: the endocrine disruption data, the accumulation profiles, the gap between "approved for use" and "proven safe over a career of daily application." They were shaken. They'd been working this product into clients' hair with bare hands, eight hours a day, for years.

They asked if I could recommend something better. I couldn't. Nothing on the market met my standards for a styling clay.

So I made one. A single jar — bentonite and kaolin clays in a beeswax and oil base — and brought it back to the salon. I wasn't sure they'd expected me to actually follow through. They used it that afternoon on clients.

That evening, I got a message: the whole shop loved it. They wanted to order a dozen jars. I didn't know what to charge. I didn't know what size jar was right for a salon. I hadn't thought that far ahead — I'd just made a thing because someone needed it and the existing options weren't good enough.

But the part that stayed with me was how immediately they knew. Not after a week of testing, not after reading my scientific rationale. They knew because they worked the product between their palms and felt what it did. They knew because they ran it through a client's hair and watched it disappear into texture instead of sitting on top as a coating. The proof wasn't in my formulation notes. It was in the touch.

That experience taught me something about the relationship between making and knowing. The science tells me what to put in the jar. The craft of having made it — dozens of iterations, adjusting the ratio of structure to slip, testing how it behaves at hour one versus hour four versus hour eight — is what makes it a product someone reaches for again the next morning.

Getting those forces into balance so the product disappears into the hair — so you feel the result but not the product — required test batch after test batch where the only meaningful variable was how it performed over the course of a day. Did it stiffen? Did it lose hold? Could you rework it with damp hands in the afternoon? These are questions no instrument can answer. The instrument is you. The data is experience over time.

I think about this tension a lot — between the rigor of formulation science and the irreducibly physical reality of a product that someone puts on their body.

The beauty industry tends to resolve this tension in one of two directions. Mass-market brands optimize for consistency and cost, which means sensory experience is engineered by fragrance houses and texture consultants working from consumer preference surveys. The product feels the way focus groups said it should feel. Indie and "artisanal" brands sometimes swing the other way, leaning into intuition and handmade-ness as virtues in themselves, as if precision were somehow at odds with care.

Neither approach satisfies me. I want the science and the hands. I want a documented protocol that I follow precisely and the knowledge that comes from having made this thing hundreds of times, from knowing by touch when the glycerin has incorporated properly, from recognizing by scent when an essential oil has been added at the right temperature versus too hot.

That dual knowledge is what small-batch production actually gives you. Not "handmade" as a marketing word. Handmade as in: I have handled every stage of this process enough times that my hands carry information my notes don't fully capture. The way a properly emulsified batch sounds different when you stir it. The way BLOOM's bergamot opens up at 130 degrees in a way it doesn't at 140. The way you can tell from across the room whether a cooling balm is going to set at the right firmness.

These aren't romantic observations. They're the kind of tacit knowledge that exists in every craft where a person works closely with materials over time — the baker who knows dough by feel, the woodworker who reads grain by touch, the winemaker who tastes the difference a week of sun makes. The science is essential. The science is not sufficient.

People ask me sometimes if I'll eventually move to contract manufacturing — send the formulas to a facility that can produce at scale, with machines that meter ingredients to the hundredth of a gram and fill jars at ten times my speed.

Maybe, eventually. But there's something I'd lose, and I want to name it honestly.

I'd lose the feedback loop between making and knowing. I'd lose the moment when a batch teaches me something the recipe doesn't contain. I'd lose the reason I catch a problem before it becomes a problem — because I felt it in the stir, or smelled it in the pour, or noticed a texture that was correct on paper but wrong in the hand.

The products we make are simple. Three to nine ingredients. That simplicity is the whole point — it's what allows for transparency, traceability, and scientific accountability. But simple doesn't mean automatic. Simple means every variable matters more, every small adjustment is perceptible, and the person making the product needs to be paying close attention.

Right now, that person is me. And what I can tell you is that every jar, every bottle, every balm that leaves our workspace has been through my hands — not as a quality control step at the end of a production line, but as a continuous conversation between a formulator and his materials.

That's not scalable, and I know it. But it's how you make something you can stand behind completely. Not just the ingredients. Not just the science. The thing itself — the physical object that someone opens and touches and trusts with their skin.

That's the thing about craft. The proof is always in the touch.

— James Birchler, Founder + Chief Scientist

NICER is handcrafted in small batches near Park City, Utah. Every ingredient is validated by peer-reviewed science, sourced from certified organic and regenerative farms, and made by hand — because some knowledge only comes through touch. Learn more at feelnicer.com.