Why This Cult-Favorite Brand Is Actually Making Its Products Cheaper

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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If you’ve been following the beauty-industry success story that is The Ordinary’s rise from under-the-radar status to Sephora shelves, then you already know that the brand and its parent company, Deciem, have made a push for total transparency every step of the way under Brandon Truaxe, their renegade founder and CEO. The company is an outlier in this sense, and its latest move is even more unusual: This week, it was announced via Instagram that Deciem is reducing the prices of two cult-favorite products from two of The Ordinary’s sister brands.

Once $70 and $33, respectively, NIOD’s Ethylated L-Abscorbic Acid and Hylamide’s Booster C25 will now be priced at $42 and $27. But why? Because, two years after the vitamin C-based products first hit the market, they can now afford to — that’s why.

Today is profound. Your love of our passion is doing good for the world. Two years ago, we introduced NIOD ELAN (30%) and Hylamide C25 (25%), both of which contain Ethylated Ascorbic Acid (EAA). EAA is an expensive direct form of Vitamin C and we paid 3,000% higher than Ascorbic Acid (AA) to buy EAA. EAA is far more stable than AA but because of the cost, the retail price of ELAN and C25 have been C$70 / US$70 / AU$105 and C$38 / US$33 / AU$57. Since the launch of The Ordinary last year, your love and support of us has helped us grow and we have now been able to use our strength to negotiate strongly with suppliers. We are now able to buy high amounts of EAA for a much lower price and, as of immediately, have reduced the retail prices of ELAN to C$45 / US$42 / AU$70 and C25 to C$29 / US$27 / AU$43. A subtle point is C25 in C$ and US$ used to cost differently but no longer does. The reason is that C25 used to be sold in pharmacies, unlike ELAN. Pharmacies impose painful margins on brands, making them have to charge higher retail prices or lower their quality to be able to survive. We have removed all of our brands from all North American and European pharmacies starting this year as we will no longer tolerate this unfairness. On a down point, C25 and ELAN continue not to be available in the EU due to regulatory limbo but we have 2 pieces of good news: with the lower EAA cost, we will not only soon offer a 15% EAA formula within The Ordinary, but this formula will also be available in the EU. And here’s a peaceful point: if you have bought C25 or ELAN from us in the last 3 months, we will calculate the difference between the price you paid and the new price, multiply this difference by 5 and donate this multiple to feed children who don’t have food because all of us have too much food and they need some. Our lovely retailers of ELAN and C25 will update their retail pricing this week as we will begin telling them about this change. This post can be summarized simply: we feel alive again with you and with hungry children as we have said goodbye to much corporate nonsense, all because you have given us the strength to be here. Love, from all of us and @btruaxe. ❤️?

A post shared by THE ABNORMAL BEAUTY COMPANY (@deciem) on Jan 21, 2018 at 12:12am PST

As explained in the post’s caption, the company’s astronomical growth has enabled them to build stronger relationships with suppliers, so they’re now able to obtain large amounts of Ethylated Ascorbic Acid — a stable and expensive direct form of vitamin C, and the star ingredient of both serums — for a much lower price. They’ve also taken the show of goodwill one step further, telling customers who have purchased either product in the past three months that the company will be calculating the difference between the prices paid and the new price and donate five times that to feed underprivileged children.

“This post can be summarized simply: we feel alive again with you and with hungry children as we have said goodbye to much corporate nonsense, all because you have given us the strength to be here,” the caption reads. Powerful stuff — perhaps even more powerful than their vitamin C serums… and that’s saying something.

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