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50 Phone Calls for One Certificate: What It Took to Get BC-Made Skincare Into Korea

April 01, 2026

2026-04

Surrey manufacturer says Korea required a Certificate of Free Sale that no Canadian body issues for cosmetics

Korean import review required three documents: a detailed certificate of manufacture, a certificate of origin, and a Certificate of Free Sale - a government attestation that the product is freely sold in its country of manufacture. The first two were manageable. The third was not.

Founder Clara Song says she contacted more than 50 organizations looking for an issuer - federal departments, provincial bodies and trade organizations - and found no government authority in Canada that issues that document for cosmetics. The gap was closed by the industry: Cosmetics Alliance Canada, the national cosmetics industry association, issued and notarized the certificate, and Korean authorities accepted it.

Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety also required full disclosure of the concentration of every ingredient, with additional detail on specific raw materials. Because Complete Elixir formulates and manufactures in-house, the underlying data already existed; the difficulty was matching the required format and submission process.

Korea also sets qualification requirements for the person who takes regulatory responsibility for an imported cosmetic, requiring engineering or medical credentials. Song holds a doctorate from the School of Computer Science and Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and qualified, so she took the role directly rather than appointing an agent - but had to have her university issue a fresh degree certificate, get it apostilled, and rebuild the supporting paperwork from scratch. U.S. MoCRA sets no equivalent educational requirement for a Responsible Person.

The process took five notarizations, five international courier shipments and more than 30 calls with the Korean regulator.

Work began in January 2026 and cleared in April - four months. The company established a Korean entity, Complete Elixir Korea, to hold the importer registration and handle domestic supply. 25 products passed review.

Complete Elixir manufactures at its own facility on Croydon Drive in Surrey and supplies the United States through a California distributor.

Proving the formula and the manufacturing quality was not hard at all - we make it ourselves, so we have the data. What was hard was the format of the documents and how they had to be filed. Compared with this, MoCRA was easy.

Clara Song, Founder and Formulator, Complete Elixir

About Complete Elixir

Complete Elixir is an independent professional skincare company based in Surrey, British Columbia. Founder and formulator Clara Song began research and development in 2020 and incorporated Complete Elixir Skincare Inc. in June 2024. The company develops and manufactures its full line at its own 941-square-foot formulation facility, which became fully operational in April 2026, using small-batch multi-cycle production rather than contract manufacturing. Complete Elixir specializes in complicated skin - acne-prone, sensitive and barrier-compromised skin - and pairs its products with professional education for estheticians. The company supplies the United States through a California distributor and is expanding into Korea, China and Israel. Learn more at completeelixir.com.