Founder's Notes #2 | Rethinking the Rituals

When I first created Venin's rituals, I called them Ascend, Release, and Preserve. I loved the idea behind them.

Ascend was about preparing your skin for the day. Release was about washing away everything the day left behind. Preserve was about supporting your skin and giving it what it needed to recover.

They gave Venin a structure. More importantly, they gave me a way to talk about skincare that felt more intentional than a list of steps. But the more I developed Venin, studied formulations, and thought about what I actually wanted to teach people, the more I started questioning the system I had created.

Not because the rituals were wrong. Because I realized I was still organizing skincare around a routine. And I'm not sure that's how I want us to think about our skin.

When does your skin need niacinamide?

It's a strangely simple question that helped unravel the whole thing for me.

Morning? Night? For six weeks? Until your skin improves? What if your skin responds well to it and you simply continue using it?

The same questions started appearing everywhere.

Why should a barrier-supporting serum belong to nighttime skincare if someone's skin would benefit from it in the morning? Why should peptides belong to a morning ritual? Why do we automatically assume a product labeled "night cream" belongs exclusively beside our bed?

Some ingredients do have reasons to be used at particular times. Some products have very specific instructions. Sunscreen obviously has a job that depends on UV exposure.

But many of the rules we associate with skincare aren't quite that rigid. And I realized I had unintentionally created some of my own.

I was organizing products instead of needs.

That bothered me.

Venin is supposed to teach people to understand their skin and make thoughtful decisions about what they put on it.

Yet here I was essentially saying:

This goes here.
Use this then.
This belongs in this part of your routine.

The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Because your skin doesn't know what step you're on. It doesn't know that the internet calls something a toner. It doesn't know you're performing your seven-step nighttime routine.

It responds to what you put on it, the environment around it, its current condition, and a very complicated biology that doesn't particularly care whether you remembered Step Four.

So I started thinking less about routines and more about purpose.

Cleanse. Care. Enhance.
These are Venin's new rituals.

But I want to be very clear about something:

They are not three steps.

You don't need to Cleanse, then Care, then Enhance every morning and night. They're simply three reasons you might choose to use a product.

Cleanse is about removing what doesn't need to stay. That might be makeup. Sunscreen. Sweat. Excess oil. The remnants of a long day. Sometimes that means one cleanser. Sometimes it might mean two. The answer depends on what you're trying to remove—not whether someone told you that everyone needs to double cleanse.

Care is intentionally broad. Hydration is care. Supporting a compromised barrier is care. Exfoliation can be care. Addressing uneven pigmentation can be care. Using niacinamide every day because your skin genuinely benefits from it can be care.

This category isn't meant to tell you which concern you're supposed to have. It's meant to make you ask what your skin actually needs.

And then there's Enhance. Enhance might be the ritual I appreciate most because it doesn't pretend everything we put on our faces needs to solve a problem. Mascara doesn't need to improve my skin barrier to deserve a place in my life. Lip color doesn't need to stimulate collagen.

Sometimes I want to take care of my skin. Sometimes I want really good mascara. Both can exist without pretending they're the same thing.

Maybe we should stop building routines backward.

The beauty industry has become very good at giving us categories.

• Cleanser.
• Toner.
• Essence.
• Serum.
• Eye cream.
• Moisturizer.
• Exfoliant.
• Mask.
• Treatment.

And when we see those categories often enough, it's easy to start thinking we're supposed to fill every one of them.

So we ask:
What toner should I use?

Maybe the first question should be:
Why do I need a toner?

What are you trying to accomplish?

If there's a good answer, great. Now we have something worth investigating. If there isn't, maybe you don't need one.

That doesn't make toner bad. It doesn't make a ten-step routine bad, either. If you understand every product you're using, your skin tolerates it, you enjoy the ritual, and you're happy with the results, I'm certainly not going to tell you to throw everything away.

The point isn't minimalism for the sake of minimalism. The point is intention.

Your routine isn't supposed to be permanent.

Your skin changes.
Seasons change.
Hormones change.
Your environment changes.
Your habits change.

Sometimes your skin needs more support. Sometimes it needs less interference.

That means a good skincare routine probably shouldn't be something you discover once and follow unquestioningly forever. It should be something you understand well enough to adjust.

That's ultimately what I want Venin's rituals to represent.

Not instructions. A framework.

Cleanse what needs to be removed. Care for what your skin needs. Enhance what you want to. And understand why you're doing each one.

Venin is allowed to change, too.

There's another reason I wanted to write about this instead of quietly replacing three words on the website.

I changed my mind.

Ascend, Release, and Preserve were created thoughtfully. I still like what they represented. But Venin is clearer about its purpose today than it was when I created them.

If I'm asking people to pay attention to their skin, question assumptions, learn, and change their approach when something no longer makes sense, I think the company should be willing to do exactly the same thing.

So this isn't really a story about renaming three categories. It's about understanding the question Venin should have been asking all along.

Not: What does your skincare routine say you should use next?

But: What does your skin need, and why are you choosing this?

That's the kind of relationship I want people to have with skincare.

And it's the kind of company I want Venin to become.

Choose with purpose.
-Taya