Our Story
My name is Brandon and I’m an Army veteran, father of two, and a chemical engineer. I’m the head of R&D for one of the top private label manufacturers in the automotive and marine detailing industry. The products I design end up wearing hundreds of different labels — cleaners, compounds, multi-year ceramic coatings — all formulated from scratch to meet the exact needs of each brand that trusts us.
I love what I do. I work directly with brands of every size, turning ideas into real chemistry that performs in the field. I’ve built entire product lines that rival the biggest names in the business, and I still do it every day. But every now and then, you make something that doesn’t just improve on what exists — it feels like it shouldn’t exist at all. A formula so against the norm of what this industry produces, it was almost like hitting an error code in the system. That’s where Chemical 404 was born.
Innovation
For years, the industry had been asking for a bridge between wax and ceramic coatings. The idea was sound. The execution was never right. I set out to fix that — and in doing so, created Hydro Silk, the flagship product of Chemical 404.
Hybrid “ceramic” waxes masqueraded as innovation to bridge the gap but were built on broken chemistry. Most were nothing more than a sealant blended with wax — a poor pairing because wax can’t crosslink with polymers or resins. Instead of strengthening the film, the wax disrupted the cure and weakened the entire system, leaving only short-lived gloss and residual hydrophobicity. Rather than fix the flaw, the industry bandaged it with PTFE — a slick, water-repellent “forever chemical” that bonds to the surface but does nothing to solve the underlying failure.
Pure wax still offers a warm, deep glow, but it has no backbone — quickly failing under UV, heat, and detergents. True ceramics solve the durability problem, but they’re rigid, permanent, and their solvents can pose risks for wraps and some older finishes. The market promised a bridge, but it never built one.
Hydro Silk became that bridge — wax-level gloss with modern chemistry that outperforms wax entirely. No wax. No legacy crutches. Easy to apply, hot-panel safe, non-permanent yet lasting up to a year, bonding to ceramics as a true topper and working flawlessly on wraps. Its water-beading performance is unlike anything the market has seen, making the case for dedicated waxes and hybrid ceramic waxes being officially obsolete.
Chemical 404 started for one reason: to get Hydro Silk into the hands of the public and showcase the future — and the end of an era for waxes, hybrid or not.