Talc, Sulfates & Luxury Products Worth the Price with Cosmetic Chemist Ramya Viswanathan
Gloss Angeles
Kirbie Johnson and Sara Tan
4.8 • 679 Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week we’re talking all things cosmetic chemistry with someone who really knows her way around a science lab: Ramya Viswanathan, founder of CMPRESSD Beauty — the zero-waste hair care brand making solid shampoo and conditioner bars that actually perform like your favorite salon formulas on all hair types. With over a decade in product development, formulation, and manufacturing, Ramya’s here to school us on ingredient “green flags,” misunderstood actives, and the real tea on shampoo bars.
We dig into listener-submitted questions from our Glamgelenos Slack, covering everything from the future of U.S. sunscreen regulations to the next big ingredient trend, whether skincare “dupes” can actually deliver, and if multi-active formulas are really worth it (or just marketing fluff). If you’ve ever stood in the aisle decoding an ingredient list or wondered what a chemist actually thinks about your favorite products, this episode is your backstage pass to beauty R&D.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | G.M. |
| 0:02.0 | Los Angeles. |
| 0:05.0 | Hi Kirby. |
| 0:07.0 | Hi, Sarah. |
| 0:08.0 | Welcome to Los Angeles. |
| 0:14.0 | Okay, so we teased this a little bit on Slack because we wanted to know what questions you had for a true cosmetic chemist. |
| 0:22.5 | And wow, you guys had a lot of questions and also really good questions. |
| 0:26.8 | Yes. |
| 0:26.9 | I was like, our listeners are so smart. |
| 0:29.3 | I said that to Matt yesterday. |
| 0:30.3 | I was like, wow, so smart. |
| 0:32.2 | So today we have a true cosmetic chemist on the podcast, friend of the pod, Ramya Vishwanathan. |
| 0:39.8 | You are cosmetic chemist and founder of compressed beauty, which is a zero-waste hair care brand. |
| 0:45.0 | You've been in the industry for over a decade in product development, formulation, and manufacturing. |
| 0:50.2 | And we're just so excited to pick your brain and ask you all these questions that our listeners had, but also Kirby and I have a bunch of questions for you too. Yes. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for coming on. I actually, before we get into all of these questions, can I just kick things off? Yes, please. So in 2020, I think it was 2024, Sarah and I predicted that bars were going to be very popular and not just bar soap |
| 1:11.9 | that you clean your body with, but for hair. We were starting to see a little bit of that get |
| 1:16.0 | popular. And then I think it kind of died down. Even though the skinification of hair was really |
| 1:20.7 | popular last year, we didn't see as many bars as we thought. Yeah. Enter compressed. Yes. |
| 1:26.4 | And now we have a really beautiful formula when it comes to hair care in a bar. |
| 1:33.3 | So can you talk a little bit about why you wanted to go the bar route? |
| 1:36.3 | It's really interesting because we've seen, you know, a lot of people ask me why I didn't do |
| 1:41.7 | skincare, but I'm like, we have enough serums. |
... |
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