Because Ipsy absolutely blew it with their first 3 “collabs” with Tetris, Betty Boop, & Gigi Gorgeous. Those were so universally hated that Ipsy got wise & stopped putting their name on things by starting an “incubator” with a couple seed companies (Complex Culture & Item Beauty are both Ipsy companies). Fool me once, shame on you, etc. (Man, I remember back to the times when I was SO EXCITED about the Tetris collab 😢).
It’s not about “brand names” vs generic. If that were the case, I certainly wouldn’t be subscribing to Ipsy, I’d be shopping exclusively at Sephora or something. Most “brand name” cosmetics companies do not manufacture their products themselves. They create a formula based on what they think they can sell, then contract a lab to produce the product. Often, cosmetics are even produced overseas. Still, the original company is ultimately in control of the process from start to finish, & each ingredient has been carefully thought out and has had a cost/benefit analysis. But there are brands that perform a practice called “white labeling.” These brands go to companies that have already fabricated products — they have their own lipstick formulas, their own blush formulas, their own eyeliner markers, their own shadow palettes, etc. All the white-label brands do to make these products “theirs” is to print their label on the component. Literally, that’s it. You can often find exact duplicates of products from companies like Grace & Stella, Hikari, Dirty Little Secrets, Appeal Cosmetics, etc on sites like Ali Express for literal pennies, when the companies claim the value of the product is 20x that. These companies are often involved in scandals (such as lying about personally developing a product — look up the Dirty Little Secrets & Faccia nonsense) or are sending out bad product (either straight up inferior or contaminated in some way — look up the Be a Bombshell mascara Ipsy incident). They have no say at all in what ingredients go into the products, and frankly don’t seem to even care. They’re interested in quickly acquiring cheap product that can be pushed out quickly to subscription boxes so that they can turn a profit.
I don’t know if Complex Culture & Item Beauty are white labeled, or are created based on Ipsy specs, but at this point, I’m not inclined to trust Ipsy blindly, & their lack of transparency regarding the two brands is, as the kids are saying, highly “sus.”
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