My [Esthetician Approved] Places to Shop for Skincare 🛍

Recommending skincare items and where to purchase the best product is one of my favorite parts of my job. I often help my skincare clients navigate the many options we have and help them choose the best option for their skin. While I carry fabulous product lines like Josh Rosebrook, PCA, Ology Essentials, and my own skincare line (scrub me), there are times when there are better options for a specific client elsewhere. Trust me, I will find you the BEST option, not just choose from what I carry.

I find myself recommending where to shop so often that I figured I should write a blog post about it! Today I’m going to share with you the top 3 places I shop for skincare 🛍

scrub me secret: I really like helping with skincare product guidance! Often my clients, friends, and family will show me a skincare item they currently have or are considering purchasing and ask for my advice. I’ll read over the ingredients label and research the product a little bit so I can give them my best advice as to whether the product will work for them.

Where I shop for skincare:

Credo

Credo is one of my favorite places to shop for skincare and makeup and explore new products. I feel like I can really trust that the items carried in this store are healthy for our skin and bodies. Credo has what’s called “The Dirty List”; a list of over 2700 ingredients they ban from products they sell. This means they only partner with and carry skincare lines with ingredients they trust and approve of. These banned ingredients include cancer-causing ingredients, known allergens and irritants, and ingredients that are toxic to the body and/or environment.

These beauty stores have multiple locations around the US and Chicago houses 2 of those! I love to pop into this store to shop from time to time. I also send my facial clients over to purchase specific items and/or shop for clean makeup products. Ordering online is also super easy for those who don’t have access to a store. I’ll actually be heading over in the next few days to pick up an ILIA mascara and who knows what else!

scrub me secret: I actually first discovered Josh Rosebrook skincare products a few years ago while I was shopping at Credo. I fell in love with the advanced hydration mask from that skincare line and actually kept going back to buy more so I could use it on my facial clients. I did this for months until I scored a Josh Rosebrook partnership account of my own. Of course I still shop at Credo, just not for my Josh Rosebrook 😉

Boutique skincare stores that offer facails

Okay, so you’ll have to bare with me because the next 2 recommendations aren’t for specific places. These are types of places I am drawn to for shopping for skincare.

A skincare boutique that offers facials is a type of place where you are likely to find high-quality, well-formulated skincare items. Am I biased because I own this type of business? Maybe, but I also know from experience that these places usually carry skincare product lines that are curated by an esthetician. I trust these types of businesses even more than larger spas, salons, and med spas. This is because I feel a smaller, boutique business is focused more on the right skincare items vs. the most popular, exciting, or expensive skincare.

An example of this type of business would be HeyDay, Face Foundrie, scrub me skin care, and your local esthetician with a skincare shop.

scrub me secret: candid moment! in 2020 I moved my skincare studio from a private wellness rental space to a salon suite setting. And let me tell you, while it was the best choice for my business at that time I was not thrilled to move from a multi-room space to a singular salon suite. How would I have my cute retail space and skincare studio if I only had one room? I figured it out and worked hard to transform the salon suite space into a serene skincare space where you can both get a facial and browse my shelves of skincare items. It’s lovely!

Apothecary/Wellness Shop

Very few things bring me as much joy as exploring a new apothecary does. An apothecary is a store where wellness items like skincare, body care, hair care, vitamins, nutritional snacks, and living essentials are carried. Every time I visit a new place I like to research apothecaries I can visit. In some instances, you might want to search for both “wellness shops” and “apothecaries” when googling stores in your area.

I often find great skincare, haircare, and body items when shopping at these kinds of stores. I think since these stores are geared toward wellness there is a nice selection of skincare. Not to say that every, single item in these stores are going to be esthetician approved but I would say usually a good amount of the items are ones I would approve for use. These are such fun places to shop!

If you want to be the most savvy skincare shopper I suggest you still check out the ingredients label of a skincare item before purchasing it for use. Even if you are shopping at any of these esthetician-approved places. Resources you can use to help you decipher skincare ingredients and product labels are: “Tips to Navigating your Product Label” and the EWG skin deep database.