How the ranking works

Purpose

Spotlight exists to give readers a credible, review-led starting point for discovering South African skincare brands — not a popularity contest, and not a paid directory. Every score is computed from SkinLabs' own published product reviews, and no brand can buy a higher position.

What Methodology v1.0 actually measures

A brand's Spotlight score is the average of its SkinLabs product review score across every product from that brand SkinLabs has reviewed. Each product review scores four things out of 10:

• Efficacy — how well the formulation does what it claims, based on disclosed actives and available evidence.
• Value — price relative to formulation quality and local market alternatives.
• Texture — real-world usability: how the product actually feels and layers.
• SA climate fit — how it performs in South African heat, humidity, altitude and UV conditions.

A brand's four-axis average across all its reviewed products becomes its Spotlight score. This is recalculated automatically every time SkinLabs publishes or updates a review — it is never hand-typed.

What this version doesn't measure — yet

A more complete brand-ranking framework could also weigh things like ingredient-transparency disclosure, packaging innovation, customer-service quality or independently audited manufacturing standards. We don't have reliable, independently verifiable evidence for those criteria yet, and publishing invented scores for them would break the "review-led" promise this feature is built on. Methodology v1.0 measures only what SkinLabs has genuinely reviewed. Future versions may expand this scope once we have real evidence to back it — any change will get a new version number and be documented here.

Eligibility

• The brand sells skincare products to South African consumers.
• At least one product from the brand has a published SkinLabs review.
• Brands with 2 or more reviewed products appear in the main Ranked tier.
• Brands with exactly 1 reviewed product appear under New on the Radar until we review more of their range.

Movement

This is Spotlight's first edition, so every brand is labelled "New" — there's no prior snapshot to compare against yet. From the second edition onward, movement will reflect genuine score changes as SkinLabs publishes new or updated reviews, never a fabricated up/down.

Update cadence

Spotlight is intended to refresh as SkinLabs publishes new product reviews, with a full edition reassessment at least monthly. See the archive for past editions once more than one exists.

Commercial independence

Inclusion in Spotlight is never paid, and no brand can guarantee or purchase a ranking position. If SkinLabs ever has a commercial relationship with a featured brand — a gifted product, an affiliate link, a sponsorship — it will be disclosed clearly on that brand's profile and in the product review it's based on.

Limitations

A brand's Spotlight score reflects only the products SkinLabs has actually reviewed, which may be a small fraction of its full range. A high score means the reviewed products performed well — it isn't a guarantee every product in the brand's catalogue will.