First up, it's time to decide on a formula. Various essential oils, emollients, and conditioners go into lipsticks in different concentrations. These vary from natural extracts (like shea butter) to vitamins to texture-based ingredients like film formers and gels. The exact mix depends on the formula; moisturising lipsticks and shiny formulas contain very different ingredients from matte, long-lasting formulas. Boots does extensive customer research to come up with the exact concentrations for each product.