An effective vitamin C serum, pleasant to use, well formulated, that doesn’t oxidize in a few weeks, and most of all, is affordable. It is the Holy Grail of every skincare addict! Today, let’s see if The Glow Maker antioxidant serum by the American skincare brand Maelove lives up to these expectations.
Vitamin C L-Ascorbic products are still a staple in my beauty stash! It’s been two years now since I added these kind of serums to my morning skincare routine, and I don’t intend to stop!
Vitamin C L-Ascorbic is indeed a great ingredient to give a lot of glow to the skin, and I also use it for its anti-aging effect.
It’s an antioxidant, so it protects the skin from environmental aggressions that cause it to age prematurely, and it also boosts the collagen production (I’m 40 so I definitely need it!).
If you read my focus on vitamin C L-Ascorbic, you know that it’s not easy to find a good serum with vitamin C at an affordable price, especially in the type of liquid formula I prefer.
Indeed, I prefer fairly liquid (or gel) formulas which contain water, which I find nicer to use than vitamin C products without water, usually too oily for my skin.
But these formulas are quite complicated to stabilize because vitamin C L-Ascorbic is very unstable in water.
In this product category, the most famous and oldest serum is the Skinceuticals C E Ferulic (which I reviewed last year). A very good product that I really liked but which is terribly expensive for a serum that I only use for 3-4 months!
Looking at the formula and the raving reviews, the Maelove The Glow Maker serum seems to be a very decent dupe of the Skinceuticals one, and it’s 5 times cheaper!
So I placed the order on their American website and I’ve been using it for several months.
Here is my mini-review!
Maelove:
Before I tell you more about The Glow Maker serum, I want to talk about the brand behind the product, Maelove.
It’s a very recent brand, they’ve been around for about just over a year now and they have a rather original approach to skincare. And that’s probably because, apart from the brand’s founder, no one in this company worked in the cosmetics industry before!
Jackie Kim, Maelove’s CEO, who has always been passionate about cosmetics, wanted to create a “radically affordable” skincare line (= their slogan). She finds that many of the skincare products on the market, even those recognized as very effective, are often too expensive for what they really are, especially when you simply judge their formula.
If you read some of my reviews, you already know that I definitely share this opinion! The price doesn’t always equal excellence in skincare, far from it.
Jackie Kim, with this in mind, decided to work with two of her friends, Brad and Rishi, graduates from MIT, who were working on artificial intelligence.
They were looking for a way to use artificial intelligence techniques in “unusual” industries, and decided to look more into Jackie Kim’s concept.
They started to look into online reviews for popular cosmetic products and used this information as a starting point to determine which ingredients were the most effective according to customers, and which ones were considered irritating.
To bring their idea to life, they recruited other people from their network, mainly from MIT, to help them continue their research and develop their product formulations.
Apart from Jackie Kim, the rest of the team had zero experience in the beauty industry when they started at Maelove! They were cancer and brain researchers, chemical engineers, lawyers, and doctors…
But according to the brand’s founder, this “inexperience” was favorable to them because none of them had any preconceived ideas about how to run their skincare business. On the contrary, it allowed them to think outside the box and find unique product concepts.
Basically, Maelove is a cosmetics start-up!
Once the formulas were ready, they had to manufacture them. And finding a trusted laboratory wasn’t an easy thing for the Maelove team, which had no connection in this field.
So Jackie Kim used a very simple tool to find the perfect lab for the production of their products: the good old Google search! (how millenial of her! 😉 )
She selected 297 people working in luxury brands she liked and contacted them by email to ask them for information about cosmetics laboratories. She received 37 responses. From these 37, 12 were willing to share specific information about laboratories, and some of them were so convinced by her motivation, even offered to help her pay for the first three batches of production! Jackie Kim is the proof that persistence always pays off! ?
As soon as their first product, The Glow Maker, was released, it was an instant hit, particularly on social media. Indeed, Maelove is one of those very popular modern cosmetics brands, which believe that quality skincare is a right for today’s consumer, not a privilege reserved only for those who can afford it. Their concept reminds me a lot of The Ordinary.
Margins are tight and marketing costs very low to ensure these affordable prices. Maelove favors good old-fashioned word of mouth to ensure the success of their products. Their communication relies mostly on social media.
The brand is very accessible and quickly responds to its customers questions (I experienced this myself several times already!).
Regarding the product formulations, they are simple and effective, without “controversial ingredients” to please the current “clean beauty” trend. The packaging is simple and classy, another aspect that appeals to many consumers at the moment.
The products are manufactured in small batches, to guarantee the maximum freshness of the ingredients. As a result, they are victims of their own success and often out of stock.
Maelove is still a very small company and unfortunately for the moment, they only deliver to the United States. I really hope that, with their success, they will soon be able to deliver anywhere in the world!
Mini-review:
I’ve been using vitamin C serums in my routine for almost 2 years now. As a result, the difference is no longer as visible as it used to be at the beginning regarding the results on the radiance of my complexion. The first time I used this type of product, I definitely experienced a “wow” effect!
From now on, I just want to maintain these good results on my skin.
I don’t really have any pigmentation issues, I never really used my vitamin C serums for that. So I can’t really judge the product on that aspect.
The anti-aging action is visible over the very long term, so it’s difficult to see a real difference about my skin’s collagen production.
Maelove The Glow Maker serum lasted me a little over 3 months, using it once a day in the morning.
I really like its texture. It’s ideal when, like me, you do skincare layering and it’s the first product you use before the rest: it’s super liquid and absorbs in a few seconds into the skin. It’s not sticky at all, it’s really a lightweight serum!
I don’t find it at all irritating on my skin, despite its rather low pH. It’s also not drying, thanks to all the moisturizing ingredients in its formula.
I can definitely see its effect on my skin’s radiance. It maintained the good results I obtained with the other vitamin C serums I used before.
It’s a stable formula and even after more than 3 months, it still wasn’t oxidized!
As a reminder, you can see that a product with vitamin C L-Ascorbic is oxidized with its color. If it is dark orange, it’s ruined, and you shouldn’t use it because it has the opposite effect of what you are using it for (= it becomes oxidizing)!
In conclusion:
I totally understand that Maelove The Glow Maker serum is often out of stock. It’s a good product and it’s one of the best value for money on the market for this type of formula!
It’s pleasant to use, the formula is simple but with super effective ingredients, and very well done.
Its only con is that it’s really not easy to get your hands on it at the moment if you don’t live in the US. Indeed, at the moment, the company doesn’t deliver outside the United States. I asked them via email if they were planning to deliver worldwide soon and they told me that it was planned and that they hoped to be able to do so in a few months. Fingers crossed!
I repeat myself every time I leave a comment at your beautiful and smart beauty magazine: thank you for another of the complete and detailed reviews you are so famous for. I trust your beauty expertise and such opinions unequivocally. Your review on The Ordinary Vit C introduced me to that ‘wow’ factor you noted after use. I was sold and was not disappointed.
Here again, I just placed an order for maelove after reading this review. Looking forward to its arrival.
Thank you for sharing with us this gem of a magazine! ?
Thank you so much for your kind words. Everytime you leave a comment, you’re making my day ❤️❤️❤️
I really like this Maelove serum, especially for the price! I wish it would be more available worldwide, it’s really it’s only con!
Hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did!
Please feel free to share your thoughts about it here if you want to ?
Enjoy Maylove the glow and Hadalabo serum very much!
I found your blog 2 weeks ago, haven’t stopped reading it since then. Your blog/magazine is truly deserved 5 star award in this vast and confused skincare world we live in now.
Thank you for your expertise and honesty. Please continue your writing, don’t worry about how long the article will be, someone like me will read every word of it. Keep your French humor too!
Stephanie.
OMG Stephanie, thank you so much for your super kind words!!!
I really appreciate!
Your comment makes me really happy and definitely motivates me to keep going!
So glad you like my long articles ah ah ah ah 💕💕💕
The two Glow Maker serum I ordered back in Oct. 2019 never arrived at my place despite Maelove claiming to have tried 3 times. The refund promised never materialised either. I am now without the products and without the money I paid up. Unless I receive an explanation and a refund, this is what I would call a SCAM.
Oh I’m so sorry you had this experience with the brand! 🙁 I ordered several times from their website and I never had any problems with it.
I hope they can help you resolve this issue! 🤞
Hello,
My Glow Maker serum is coming today and I am very excited to use it. I have been using The Ordinary brand which I love, but I don’t really like their Vitamin C products. I have tried three of them. Didn’t really see any improvement with any of them, plus I prefer a liquid serum as well. I am a little concerned that Maelove is a new company, I just hope they have done a lot of trials to make sure the product is safe and effective. My question for you is this: should I apply the Glow Maker Serum to my face first after washing and then my hyaluronic acid from the Ordinary? I then use Rose Hip oil, face lotion, eye cream and finally sunscreen. I do have a whole night time routine using the Ordinary products including Retinol, and glycolic acid on altering nights, but the one item I am missing is a toner after washing my face. Do you have a suggestion for a good toner. I have dry, aging skin. Thank you!
Hi Laura! 🙂
Yes, at least that’s how I use my vitamine C serum: right after cleansing 😉
I did a lot of review on toners and essences that you might like, you can have a look here:
https://btyaly.com/reviews/?fwp_product_type=essence
I also wrote a dedicated article to explain the differences with toners and essences:
Do you need an essence?
Hope it helps! 🙂
I just purchased MaeLove retinol and now GlowMaker is on the way! I am so excited to try it. I ordered MaeLove on a whim when I was reading InStyle magazine and it’s soooooo in my budget! I think I have found a little piece of heaven. I have, for years, used MANY products that state they will work, to no avail. The only lotion I put on in the morning is my Olay Regenerist cream. I tanned for years and definitely see the damage it’s done…The lines on my neck are ridiculous! I don’t wear any makeup except eye liner. I am 46 years old and need to take better care of my skin from now on. I think the GlowMaker will smooth my skin and hopefully makes it brighter and glows!!! Thank you so much for the review! I am in heaven!!!
I’m so glad ☺️❤️👍
Maelove is a HORRIBLE company. Most, if not all the reviews are fake and the company is established on its marketing. I tried two of their products and found the vitamin c serum to be ok and the eye serum to be horrible. It is nearly impossible to reach the company. They told me that I need to wait 2 to 4 weeks to write a review and that they would send me a link, as the website has no option of leaving them there. After over a month and numerous emails, they still will not allow me to write my honest review.
Oh wow, I’m so sorry you experienced that! That’s definitely not good at all 🙁