About us
Expert-level skincare, at a price that makes sense.
MIE is an independent British skincare brand. We were set up in 2021 by chemists with more than twenty years in cosmetic formulation, for one reason: the gap between what skincare costs and what skincare does had got ridiculous.
What we believe
Every claim we make is clinically tested and proved by an independent lab. Not because a regulator makes us — because it is the only way you can tell the difference between a formula that works and a formula with a good story.
We talk in plain English. Skin, not epidermis. Puffiness, not inflammation. Blood flow, not blood circulation. If the average person would not know what a word means, we do not use it.
And we keep the range deliberately small — each product with one clear job, each formulated with its key actives at concentrations high enough to matter. We would rather make a short range properly than a long one cheaply.
Where we came from
You may know us as Instant Effects. That was the original name, and it is still printed on our older cartons and clinical reports. MIE is the same formulas, the same lab and the same people, under a name that fits the brand better.
Most people met us on live television — QVC-style shopping channels in the UK, the USA, Canada and Australia, where you get eight minutes to prove a product works in front of a live audience. That is a hard school, and it is why our claims are the fast, visible kind.
Over a million units and a hundred thousand customers later, MIE is now a trading name of Elan Cosmetics Ltd, alongside CULT51.
In numbers
Twenty years of formulating, distilled into a very short list.
The formulas
What goes in, and why.
The list is not long and it is not secret: AHAs and BHAs, calendula, green tea, seaweed, peptides, Norwegian birch sap, soluble collagen, ceramides, peach kernel, hyaluronic acid, stabilised vitamin C, pomegranate, salicylic acid, walnut extract, pectins and liquorice root.
Two things are ours. OX2 Pro is an oxygen-carrying system that delivers oxygen into skin that has run short of it — you can read exactly what it is on the results page. And argan kernel extract is the ingredient behind the instant tightening in the eye, hand and neck serums.
Everything is fragrance free unless the product needs it, paraben free, cruelty free, and packed in recycled and recyclable cartons.
Questions? Ask a person.
We are small enough that a real person reads every email. If you want the full ingredient list, a clinical report, or advice on where to start, just ask.