REN Resurfacing AHA Concentrate at the skincare workshop in Ken's Apothecary

Last 2 weekends I was fortunate to be able to join other blog readers of Asia's top beauty blog, MyWomenStuff.com, to the REN skincare workshop at Ken's Apothecary, Bangsar Village II. 

Everyone was happy to have Ms Paris B, the person behind the uber-popular beauty blog, in the middle of the crowd. 

While addressing the crowd, she also mentioned that this is a good workshop to introduce REN skincare to us who's never used it or being able to better understand the steps to the right products to those who's already familiar with the brand.

It was a lovely afternoon spent with like-minded ladies who all want better skin in hope of achieving flawless skin. For me, it was an eye-opener to what Ken's Apothecary has to offer in their stores and the entire range of REN skincare that's available here in Malaysia. Seriously, before this, I didn't even know that it is that easy to obtain REN skincare. 

Some of the products nicely arranged on the table for us all to experience. 

REN is a skincare brand from the UK (although I initially thought it sounds like "people" in Mandarin haha) that uses natural ingredients in their products. The product is positioned as totally clean and completely effective. I don't want to delve too deep into the "all natural" or in this case, "clean" ingredients specifically because I am not really a pro in this. Even the people in REN mentioned, there are questions to how organic are organic products when only a percentage of the ingredients are of organic origin, that-sort-of-thing. How do you rate ingredients that are totally natural, how you rate those which can be presented as organic and so forth is a study that I probably need to do properly because I sometimes think that there are brands who magnify the positioning yet still get away with many synthetics and irritants in their list of ingredients. 

As per most natural products, packaging plays an important role too. For REN, I like the quality of the plastic bottles used on most of their products. Most impressive is when we were shown how their packaging (those that come with a pump) is air-tight to preserve the freshness of the ingredients. It's pretty amazing to see how the inside of a cleanser bottle looked like when the product is almost finishing. As for serums or moisturisers, the inner mechanics rise to the top, making sure the entire content gets swept up and you won't be able to see left-overs stuck on the bottom edges. That part I thought is brilliant.

When it first came into Malaysia, I was fortunate to have tried some of their products targeted for acne-prone skin. And it was a love and hate relationship then because as the products did work quite fairly, the one thing I couldn't really stand was the "natural" scent. I believe this is what you'd usually hear from the complaints of users of natural products since they usually do not use fragrance to mask whatever natural smell from the herbal contents. I remember quite clear the strong sulphuric smell of the mask I tried and I didn't use it more than 3 times. 3 times was all I could bear.

Now that my skin is not super oily anymore, I was quite taken in by this Radiance Range.

Funny that they would say this is a best-seller when I had just posted a write-up on exfoliating skincare the day before. I guess like me, a lot of women out there are already seeing good results from the help of AHA products like this. As I am also currently using an AHA product on and off, I was naturally interested to try this but I stopped short because I wasn't sure if REN will work well on my skin.

You see, I've tried a handful of other products claiming to have AHA but they can be too mild for my liking and may not show any good results at all. The claims - of an AHA product to resurface your skin mildly and help the biological process of skin shedding dead cells in a more effective manner vs. claims that it will also provide anti-aging benefits from emollients present in the ingredients list - would be something that I'd stop short in my tracks. I mean, you know that by exfoliating the horny layer of the skin would somehow in logic sense kind of scrub away fine lines while the skin cells would be able to produce collagen naturally in a more effective manner as you have already rid the dead cells which can prevent skin from behaving well. So if you have anything else to add to the concoction, I'm always afraid if it is too much for my not-so-young-not-old skin... it may turn out too rich, more suited for more matured skin and totally unnecessary.

I like that REN seem to have all the good ingredients in this promising bottle, like Lactic Acid, Pineapple Fruit Extract and Sodium Hyaluronate among others but I wanted to read more reviews on it first. With any skincare, 10 out of 10 women may love it but there is also that chance where you're the 11th one out. It's priced at RM199 in a 30ml bottle, and like I mentioned in my AHA post, I am using a serum in a 60ml bottle that lasts pretty long and priced almost the same since I get my stock from StrawberryNet. And that one already work so well for me.

I don't know. I can be fickle too at times and may just grab it once I'm done with my current one just so that I can do a proper review.

Therefore, I'd like to know if any of you have tried this before? I'd love to hear what you think of it. Some of the reviews I've read from abroad has a 50-50 rate to it - some women love it while some say it did nothing to their skin. I am not sure "nothing" would best describe a peeling product, so I'd really like to know how it fares.