MAJOR Farmacy Mystery Box disappointment 😒😳

I think i recall that! I believe someone guessed using extensive logical deduction since they only sell like 10 things lol, but it wasn't actually confirmed. The gwp was active on tues and wed, and i ordered on tues. Oh well, sometimes you win sometimes you lose. This one is an L for sure haha, but maybe one person who was going to buy it at $115 will see this and save their money 😂

I think this went a little off the rails. Yes, you are correct that this one was not worth it. Im going to leave that at that for right now.

Your thoughts on cost are true to a point, but i think a couple other points got tangled up a bit.

Meaning in this context that the closest production cost to consumer cost would lie within the median product cost.

What? I think you're talking about average cost or maybe cost per unit, not median. The median is just the middle value in a range of data. But even so, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters to us is the consumer price point. And typically the highest costs getting to market are advertising and R&D, meaning beyond profit, consumers are paying for those production costs the most when buying a product.

Im aware beauty markups are commonly understood. I brought it up because your original point was that farmacy is a for profit company that needs to make money and won't offer gwps that impact their profit margin. My response was, margins are so wide they would still make a large profit even if the doubled the value of the gwp.

Products that have astronomical upfront costs are almost never an equivalent degree better then similar products at a more reasonable price.

I think you mean products with astronomical upfront prices (as upfront costs are the burden of the company). And if you did mean price, you're absolutely right. Scientists and dermatologists have reviewed ingredients and found once you reach a certain price point they're largely the same. Some expensive brands can even have lower quality ingredients than their lower priced peers but charge a lot based on their label. They've also admitted there's a ceiling on how far a beauty product can take you. Theres only so much a serum or cream can do, and charging hundreds of dollars for your best formula isn't going to raise that ceiling. Yet there's a huge market because people (like me) will blindly get spendy in our pursuits of beauty and perceived value. For the money a lot of us throw away we'd likely be better off looking into medical or surgical options. But I don't want to do that, so I keep slathering my face in insane marked up goos just hoping they'll be a miracle.

I disagree that high value gwps diminish upscale brands. If anything, from a marketing perspective, the high buy in gwps solidifies the status of the brand and its clientelle. Not many brands can get people to part with $250 or more. La Prarie, la mer, heck even stores like Nordstrom/Bloomingdale's will offer gwps "worth" hundreds of dollars. Of course you need to spend about 400-1000 to receive it. No one would argue that diminishes their brand. My opinion is that being included in a discount beauty box is a much larger hit to public image. Its the PR equivalent to haute designers partnering with target or designer labels showing up at TJ maxx (both rad phenomenons that I still scoop up though). But companies gain a lot of exposure (and sometimes cash) from doing so, so its worth it to them.

High end gwps and boxy aren't the same concept. The founder of boxy started his career as a liquidator/wholesale reseller so boxy has always been about selling overstock. As they gained brand recognition they now have more legitimate partnerships beyond just repackaging overstock, but I still don't trust a lot of their skincare. I did at first, but after looking into it...nope. The formulations aren't the same, thats why. Often times its the high quality, more expensively sourced ingredients that are left out completely. And when thats the case its not a generic version, it's simply not the same product. I prefer beauty boxes more for makeup or if it is skin care, from a smaller or indie brands. You're more likely to get the real stuff. Completely agree about fake product lines (everything under the DLS umbrella like kab, luna, faccia, bang beauty, etc...) Ipsy thankfully agreed to end partnerships with those brands. But boxy and glossybox and a few others still sell them. So I cancelled glossybox and am keeping an eye on my boxy subscriptions. 👀

Yessssss...the country of origin makes a huge difference, unfortunately. If people saw where some of this stuff was being made and the conditions of the site/workers there's no way they'd slather this stuff all over their face. Health and sanitation standards are important!!!

I haven't looked into it. If I could, that would be ideal for me. However, I really don't like returning beauty products unless there's a quality issue or they're damaged. Its wasteful, so I do my best to find a use for it. And at the end of the day, I willingly gambled on this so I'm not sure its entirely fair to return everything just because the risk didn't pan out. I do think farmacy sucks for using 2 sheet masks as 2 full sized items though. I'll stand by that all day lol ✊🙍‍♀️