Getting to know Malin+Goetz in five steps

A walk down the personal care aisle of the grocery store or the beauty section of a department store can sometimes be an exercise in futility. Faced with so many brands with so many products that each seems to address every skincare concern imaginable, you either walk away with an entire product line (when you only needed a moisturizer) or with nothing at all. “Our joke is, we wanna sell you less skincare or as the French say, ‘Too much choice is no choice,’” says Andrew Goetz of his and partner Matthew Malin’s eponymous skincare line, Malin+Goetz (pronounced as “mah-lin and geh-tz”).

In the same way that Pond’s started out with a single jar of cold cream and Neutrogena with a clear bar of facial soap, Andrew and Matthew decided to start their company by focusing on the items of skincare that people truly need, and then developing them the best way that they could. Hence, the brand is known for its basic two-step regimen: the Grapefruit Cleanser followed by the Vitamin E moisturizer. That’s it. Any additional products are completely up to the customer’s discretion, based on necessity.

Having suffered from rosacea, eczema and seborrhea for most of his adult life, along with being allergic to synthetic fragrances, the principles of Malin+Goetz were basically founded on addressing Matthew’s own skincare issues. “The idea was that there wasn’t a brand as a skincare range in its entirety that was focusing on sensitive skin. Everyone has sort of like a product or a range for sensitive skin, but nobody was saying, ‘Well if you make it simple and you start with the most difficult of skin, anyone could use it and it could be easy,’” he says.

And by anyone, Matthew does mean that anyone could use their range of skincare products — men or women, Asians or Caucasians (or Africans), and people with oily, dry or sensitive skin. Since the brand started in the multicultural city of New York, that also experiences the most extreme weather situations (Hurricane Sandy, we’re looking at you), it gave the brand a multi-faceted customer base. “If you sell a skincare range in New York City, you can sell it anywhere in the world,” Matthew says. Or as Andrew puts it, “Your skin is an organ. And to say your skin is different from my skin is like saying your kidney is different from my kidney. Yes, there are cultural differences, but essentially, they’re the same thing.”

Here, Andrew and Matthew talk about their best-selling products:

1. Grapefruit Face Cleanser

“What we always say is if we’ve already created the best cleanser, there’s not a reason to create another one. Whether the pendulum swings to dryness or the pendulum swings to being oily, everyone has combination skin. If you have a great cleanser as ours and it’s amino acid-based, so it’s never going to strip or dry, it’s going to remove the dirt and oil from your skin and the amino acids are going to hydrate, your skin’s going to be PH-balanced,” Andrew says.

What makes Malin+Goetz’s facial cleanser so unique is the fact that it completely eliminates the need for a facial toner. “I always ask this question: Do you know what a toner does? People don’t even really know that it is going back to cleanse the skin because your cleanser wasn’t efficient enough or it was leaving residue on your skin so you have to go back and clean the residue. Also, toners have a very good deal amount of alcohol in most of them and alcohol’s one of the worst things you can put on your skin,” he expounds. However, you also might need to take a look at the quality of the water that you’re washing your face with. “If you don’t want to drink it, you don’t want to wash your face in it,” he recommends.

2. Vitamin E Face Moisturizer

Made with soluble fatty acids, which allows for quick absorption, this oil-free and residue-free moisturizer is a real time-saver, especially for women — and it makes a great base for foundation. Matthew explains that the moisturizer even helped assuage the eczema that was located on his chest and on his back. Doing so, he says, helped build a barrier on his skin in order to protect it from “environmental factors that are otherwise exacerbating the problem.” In other words, it helps to protect your face from exposure to cigarette smoke, pollution, dust and dirt, and so on.

3. SPF 15 Face Moisturizer

While most beauty experts recommend a minimum of SPF 30, Malin+Goetz goes against the grain once more by saying that SPF 15 is all you really need. “Sun Protection Factor is the number of times you would naturally burn. I’m very fair, so within 30 minutes I would be red if I had no SPF on my face. So, if it takes me 30 minutes to burn and I have an SPF 15, I now have fifteen times the natural time it takes for me to burn — or about seven and a half hours. And I’m never really in direct sunlight for seven hours at any given period of time,” Matthew explains.

“And one of the things they should actually be looking into is not so much the SPF factor, but is your sunscreen UVA and UVB protection? UVB is what causes cancer and UVA is what causes your skin to burn. So you need a balance there. And we’re both a UVA and UVB protection,” Andrew adds.

4. Detox Face Mask

Still, despite your best efforts, your skin is still exposed to several harmful environmental factors. Worse, you may be causing the harm yourself with unhealthy habits, like smoking. “The reality is, neither Malin nor Goetz are saints. We’ve all had our mea culpas and we’re all human beings and we all do things that we’re not supposed to do. Using our Detox Face Mask is going to help pull toxins and impurities from your skin, it’s going to give intense hydration and intense cleansing and help to assuage the effects of the toxins and the bad lifestyle that people live,” Andrew says.

5. Acne Treatment

A boon for adults who still suffer from acne. “We created this acne product, which is really successful. It’s highly effective and we’re extraordinarily proud of it. It’s basically a nighttime spot treatment, so when you have the occasional adult pimple that just pops up whenever, you just dab the skin with a little bit of this. So you use it overnight, wash it off in the morning and basically the acne is gone,” Matthew explains.

However, Malin+Goetz recommends this product only for occasional adult acne. For those who suffer from chronic or acute acne, they would point you in the direction of a dermatologist’s clinic. “I think this is where the transparency of our brand comes through,” Andrew says. “We cannot be all things to all people.”

While Malin+Goetz has already been around for more than eight years, they only have three standalone stores — two in New York and another in LA. As for introducing additional products to their brand, they remain cautious, especially after seeing how some family-owned skincare companies are eventually bought by multinationals and have their having their product lines expanded and diversified. Truthfully, they would much rather keep things simple.

“I think our intent is to stay as focused as possible. I think a real opportunity is not about adding more products for the sake of getting our existing customer base to buy more from us, but hopefully expanding our customer reach with the idea of what we can provide. I also think the idea of simplicity is really what people are buying from us and the fact that you can have the same results, and sometimes better results by keeping it simple and uncomplicated,” Matthew explains.

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Malin+Goetz is available only at Adora, 2/F Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center Makati (tel. no. 217-4029).