In the skincare market, growth factors are major growth factors.

These high-tech ingredients are said to bolster and aid cellular regeneration — and inspire glowing complexions. Due to their impenetrable science, they’re typically found in the priciest of formulations, like Augustinus Bader’s The Cream (with its proprietary TCF8 complex, $190) or Skinmedica’s TNS Recovery Complex (made with growth factors culled from neonatal foreskin, $230).

In January, mass skincare brand The Ordinary released their GF 15 percent solution, a serum that promises “short, mid and long-term skin renewal” and costs $15.50, less than a tenth of Bader’s cream. It remains to be seen whether the new solution will be a hit like its hyaluronic acid or niacinamide serums, which each retail for less than $9.

But it’s a reasonably safe bet. Since its 2016 launch, The Ordinary has specialised in repackaging premium skincare concepts for the masses. Its proposition to consumers is simple: strip away the marketing and fancy packaging, and the ingredients in a $9 bottle of hyaluronic acid and one costing 10 or 20 times as much are basically the same.

“We priced GF 15 percent based on how much it cost us to make,” she said.

While The Ordinary’s products aren’t one-to-one dupes of more expensive products, the brand has used its mission of making skincare accessible to build “trust and integrity” with its customer, “something we deem as added value,” said Amy Bi, vice president of brand.

The Ordinary and other brands that promise extra bang for your skincare buck are having a moment. Consumers stretched by inflation and tempted by TikToks incessantly promoting dupes are paying closer attention to whether they get what they’re paying for in the beauty aisle.

Makeup was first to fall, as dupes have continued to gnaw at prestige brands’ market share. Now, the value-first, branding-second approach to shopping has come for the notoriously high-margin business of skincare.

But what, exactly, does that look like?

Analysts predict that consumers will seek discounts wherever they can find them — through loyalty programs, on TikTok Shop or with dupes that approximate the look for less. Like the luxury houses facing the same problem, those skincare brands hoping to avoid slashing prices will have to prove to them that their products are truly extraordinary.

Lower Prices Strategically

As the number of products making specific skin claims rose between 2020 and 2024, prices fell or remained mostly flat, according to Euromonitor. That’s resulted in tighter margins and falling revenue at many brands.

Deinde, a biotech skincare brand, is turning the downward pricing trend to its advantage. In January it reduced the prices of its Skin-Strengthening serum (by $20) and its Barrier-Building moisturiser (by $9) to better compete with other prestige offerings.

Founded by biochemist Joshua Britton, Deinde is the private label to come out of Debut, Britton’s biotech lab supported by L’Oréal that closed a $40 million Series B funding round in 2023. The lab develops ingredients for a number of brands, and brings other ingredients to market quickly through Deinde.

One such ingredient, naringenin, is supposedly a more potent version of the more popular niacinamide. A brand hoping to harness its raw power would need to source thousands of grapefruits to do so; Deinde’s bioengineered version needs only “trace molecules” to brew its secret sauce.

Once an ingredient is isolated, Debut’s scientists can bioferment the ingredients “at a higher and higher volume,” Britton explained. “As you go to larger volumes, and as we start to get the microbes producing more and more and more ingredients, the costs come down in an exponential fashion.” About a year after launching its naringenin-dosed SKUs, the brand realised it could pass its manufacturing savings on to the consumer.

The brands that can own their manufacturing processes, like Deinde through Debut or The Ordinary with its Toronto-based labs, are poised to offer their customers the best possible prices — while others, who manufacture abroad, are subject to the fragile global supply chain.

“If you’ve got a brand on the market now that’s worth a billion dollars because of a certain smell, and you can no longer get that certain smell anymore, what do you do?” Britton wondered.

Spend On Product, Not On Marketing

A low price doesn’t always connote value, said Jen Shane, a co-founder of a skincare label called the Innbeauty Project. “There’s a lot of brands out there that are hitting sub-$20, sub-$14.99,” she said. “They’re giving a better price, but I don’t know that they’re necessarily giving the best value.”

Shane developed products for a number of beauty brands before co-founding The Innbeauty Project with Alisa Metzger, and has extensive experience crafting skincare margins for luxury brands where the cost of goods was a certain percentage of the manufacturer’s suggested retail price.

“A pain point for me in the past is knowing the margin they’re taking, and what they’re offering the consumer,” Shane said, not unremorsefully. Various reports put the skincare industry’s margins at an average of 50 to 60 percent. “I’m not saying it’s a bad product, but I don’t think you should have to choose between, you know, results in your skincare and paying your rent.”

Shane and Metzger leveraged their industry contacts to directly source ingredients, formulations and packaging, reducing their cost of goods sold by some 40 percent. Most everything in the line is under $50, though the brand recently pushed its upper limit with its latest launch, Calm The Red Down ($54), which is distilled in a dual-chamber package topped with a split pump — offering a redness-soothing serum as well as a redness-canceling tint, which is mint green until it’s applied to skin.

It is also almost obscenely expensive to formulate; a typical redness product might have one or two active ingredients; Calm has 11. The brand also poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into clinical tests to prove its prowess.

“That’s a risk, but, you know, something we’re willing to take on,” Shane said, hoping customers will take note.

Many beauty products are expensive because they’re expensively marketed, with glossy campaigns or influential ambassadors.

“We do not have, nor approach celebrities to be the face of our products and campaigns, which eliminates a significant cost that would otherwise be passed onto the consumer,” said The Ordinary’s Bi. (The brand did, however, roll out advertisements for its new GF 15 solution on the New York City subway and London Underground.)

Performance Equals Luxury

Shane defines value not just in terms of margins and MSRP, but of user experience, which also informed the brand’s latest product launch. Skincare that targets facial redness can be frustrating to users with rosacea because they take weeks to show results. But by offering an active serum (that calms inflammation) alongside a coverage product (that can conceal redness), she hopes they’ve created something people will want to use, deplete and repurchase.

“When I look at value, it’s how do we give our customer the absolute best experience?” Shane asked. “From a texture perspective, reusability perspective, from an ingredient and efficacy perspective, and how do we do that?”

Her words echo those of Larissa Jensen, a senior vice-president at insights firm Circana who presides over beauty analytics, and who spent most of the last year tracking how consumers valued their personal care purchases. Prestige categories, from skincare to fragrance, saw lifts in 2024 as consumers leveled-up their expectations. “The experience is luxe and the price point is affordable,” Jensen wrote, citing the example of fine fragranced-body mists as ways that beauty brands are levelling up their wares to create “experiences” worth treasuring.

But things like fragrance — which are demonised in skincare formulations — won’t be enough. Brands like The Ordinary, Innbeauty and Deinde believe that the only true way to demonstrate value is by making a product perform, be it with a two-in-one formula or a moisturiser superpowered by bioengineered grapefruit molecules, shoring up consumer trust along the way.

“Brands will have to question, really, where they’re going to put their money,” said Britton. “In their marketing, or in their product?”

Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter, your must-read source for the day’s most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.