The Real Cost of Cheap Skincare
Dear Skin,
I understand the appeal of cheap skincare. A $10 moisturizer looks a lot more attractive than a $45 one when you're deciding what goes in your cart.
But cheap skincare is expensive. Not immediately, but over time. The real cost shows up in your skin, in the environment, and in the corners that get cut to hit that price point.
What You're Actually Paying For
When you buy a $10 face cream, you're getting maybe $2 worth of ingredients. The rest goes to packaging, marketing, retail markup, and profit.
Every business needs to make money. The problem is what happens when the primary goal is hitting a low price point rather than making an effective product.
Cheap products cut costs somewhere. Sometimes it's the active ingredients, using the minimum amount to list them rather than the amount needed to work. Sometimes it's cheap fillers and potentially irritating preservatives. Sometimes it's sourcing the cheapest version of an ingredient regardless of quality or sustainability.
Price alone doesn't guarantee quality. But quality almost always costs more than you want to pay.
The Ingredient Quality Gap
Consider olive oil. The $4 bottle at the grocery store is technically olive oil. So is the $40 bottle of single-estate, cold-pressed, organic oil from a specific region of Greece.
They're not the same product. The cheaper version has been heavily processed, possibly blended, stored in conditions that degrade its beneficial compounds. The expensive version retains the polyphenols, antioxidants, and fatty acids that make olive oil worth using.
Skincare ingredients work the same way. Processing methods, storage conditions, and source quality all affect whether an ingredient delivers benefits or just takes up space on a label.
This difference doesn't show up after one week. It shows up over months and years.
The False Economy
Cheap products often need to be replaced more frequently. They don't work, so you buy something else. Or they compromise your skin barrier over time, creating new problems you then need to solve.
I've watched people spend hundreds trying to fix issues caused by a $15 cleanser that stripped their skin.
When you buy quality skincare, you use less of it, need fewer products overall, and spend less time fixing problems that shouldn't have existed.
What Ethical Sourcing Costs
Quality ingredients cost more to source ethically. Rose extract from roses grown without pesticides and processed to preserve beneficial compounds. That costs more than rose extract from industrial farms that cut corners in their methods and processing.
If you want to know that the people growing your botanicals can feed their families, that the land isn't being destroyed for your face cream then you have to pay for it.
We are building Relterra around brands that source this way. Mediterranean and European brands with transparency about ingredients and commitment to quality at every step.
The Real Comparison
People usually compare price tags. The better comparison is cost per result.
Cheap skincare that doesn't work costs infinite dollars per result. Quality skincare that works costs exactly what you paid, divided by however long your skin stays healthier.
A $45 serum that lasts three months and noticeably improves your skin is cheaper than a $15 serum that does nothing.
A Final Thought
We're not in the business of selling you cheap skincare. We're in the business of finding Mediterranean and European brands worth bringing to you with products you can't get anywhere else in the US. Those are two different things, and we've picked our side. That means higher price points than drugstore brands. It also means better ingredients, transparent sourcing, and products that actually improve your skin rather than just sit on it. We think that's a fair trade.
Cheers,
The Relterra Team
