Why there are no devices here

There are three tools in this shop. A gua sha, a silicone cleansing brush and a cooling face roller. None of them has a battery, a charging cable, or a mode.

That is not an oversight or a gap we intend to fill later. It is a rule, written down before the shop opened, and this is the reasoning.

What we mean by a device

Anything powered. Microcurrent wands, LED masks, radiofrequency handsets, ultrasonic spatulas, IPL hair removers, heated eye massagers, the vibrating things with four intensity settings. If it needs electricity to do the thing it is sold for, we do not stock it.

A stone you move across your own face with your own hand is not in that category, and neither is a brush.

They are not cosmetics, and the difference is not cosmetic

A jar of cream sold in the EU sits under the cosmetics regulation. It needs a named Responsible Person at a real EU address holding a safety file, and a notification on the CPNP portal before it can be sold. We ask for both, per product, in writing.

A powered appliance sits under an entirely different set of rules: CE marking against electrical safety and electromagnetic compatibility directives, technical documentation held by the manufacturer, battery and electrical-waste obligations, and a conformity trail that has nothing in common with the one we already run.

And a subset of them goes further still. The EU medical devices regulation has an annex covering products with no intended medical purpose that are nonetheless regulated as medical devices — equipment emitting high-intensity light and electromagnetic radiation for use on the body is on that list, which captures a good deal of what is sold as at-home IPL and laser. Those are not consumer electronics with a beauty angle. They are regulated as medical devices, with the clinical evidence and conformity assessment that implies.

We are a small shop that has taught itself one regulatory regime properly. Running a second one badly, on the products with the highest chance of hurting somebody, is not a trade we are willing to make.

The question nobody asks until it matters

Creams do not break. Electronics do, and the honest question about any device is not whether it works. It is what happens in month fourteen.

Who repairs it. Whether the proprietary charger is still made. What the warranty is worth when the manufacturer is on another continent. Where you send it. Who pays the postage. What happens if it burns somebody — because a heated or light-emitting appliance used on a face can, and the liability for that does not evaporate because the listing was cheerful.

A shop should be able to answer all of that before it takes your money. We can answer it for a bottle of cleanser. We cannot answer it for a handset, and we would rather say so than find out in public.

And the claims are usually the worst part

Device marketing is where the most extravagant language in this industry lives: lifts, sculpts, drains, contours, rebuilds, resurfaces, reverses. Much of it would not survive a serious look at the evidence, and a fair amount of it describes an effect on the structure of the face that a cosmetic is not permitted to claim at all.

We have a published rule against saying things we cannot evidence. Stocking a category whose entire sales argument is built on things we could not repeat would make that rule decorative, which is the same as not having it.

So what are the three tools for?

Here is everything we will claim for them, which is less than you have been told elsewhere.

The cleansing brush. Silicone rather than bristle, so it rinses clean and dries fast instead of sitting damp in a cabinet. It is not doing anything your fingers cannot do. It is doing it more evenly, and for most people that is the entire benefit. Use it on a cleanser you have already lathered, in small circles, for less time than you think.

The gua sha. A smooth, weighted edge drawn slowly across skin with something slippery underneath it. We are not going to tell you it lifts your jaw, sculpts your face or drains anything, because we cannot show you that it does. What it reliably does is make you spend four minutes on a step you would otherwise spend forty seconds on, and use less product doing it.

The cooling roller. It is cold. Cold feels good on a hot or irritated face, and that is a real, immediate, entirely honest benefit that needs no mechanism attached to it. Anything beyond "it is pleasant and it makes you slow down" is a claim we are not going to make.

If that sounds like a thin pitch for three products we would like to sell you, it is the accurate one. A tool is a small pleasure and a pacing device. It is not a step, and none of the three is load-bearing in any routine we would build for you.

If you want one anyway

Reasonable. People like devices and some are perfectly decent. Three things worth checking before you buy one from anybody:

• A named company at a real EU address on the packaging or the listing — not a marketplace seller name, an actual manufacturer or importer you could write to.
• What the warranty covers and who honours it, in writing, before you pay. "Contact the seller" is not a warranty.
• Whether anything about the claim sounds medical. If a consumer gadget promises to treat, cure or permanently alter something, either the claim is empty or the product is in a regulatory category the listing has not mentioned. Neither is good news.

None of that is a reason not to buy one. It is the checking we would do, and since we are not going to do it for you here, you should have it.

What we do sell is on the tools shelf, described in the terms above and no better ones. If you want to know how anything gets into this shop in the first place, the standard is published on How we choose.