I’ve written on lipstick prices before, and why the heck £24+ is becoming a standard price for lipsticks. Lipsticks are seeping up in price annually while the costs of the ingredients are not rising at the same rate (they go up at about 5% a year, with the exception of beeswax which fluctuates more than other ingredients because of the decline in bee numbers). This time though, I’ve pulled out a real formula and added in costings. You will be shocked to see that the price of a lipstick, excluding packaging, is less than a tenth of a pence.
A standard lipstick comprises the following ingredients and next to those are the costs per individual lipstick.
Beeswax – 8% – 0.003p
Carnauba wax – 3.5% – 0.007p
Candelilla wax – 6.5% – 0.003p
Shea butter – 8% – 0.008p
Polyglyceryl-2 dipolyhydroxystearate – 10% – 0.006p
Almond oil – 23.7% – 0.008p
Jojoba oil – 10% – 0.01p
Coco-caprylate – 17% – 0.009p
Vitamin e – 0.5% – 0.001p
Bisabalol – 0.5% – 0.0025p
Pearlescent pigment – 12% – 0.05p
Flavour – 0.3% – 0.0009p
There will be some variations in ingredients; luxury brands may (or may not) choose to add in different, more expensive base ingredients, but the recipe above is the bare bones of any lipstick. If you then add in the fact that you’ll have to heat all this up, you can put on 0.1p on to that.
Are you surprised?
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