So, what is Beauty Pie these days?

If you're in the UK you'll know of it, if you're in the US you might not. Regardless, it's changed a lot so here's an updated take on the concept and products.

You’d be forgiven for not totally understanding Beauty Pie, irrespective of how long it’s been available in your country. For us Brits it’s been here since 2016. For Americans it’s considerably less. Whether this is the hundredth or first time you’re hearing about them, the brand (and concept) has gone through numerous membership iterations since its launch and is (in my opinion) finally easy to succinctly understand.

Whether you’re a current or lapsed member, I hope this post shows you exactly what the brand is brilliant for. I’ll take you through the overarching concept of the brand, how the membership works and my list of not-to-be-missed products.

To give some insight into my own Beauty Pie journey I’ve been a paying customer since it’s 2016 launch. I’ve also worked for the company wearing two hats; as a content creator and also as an agency-provider (my company launched their influencer marketing program in 2018 in the UK and later in the US). So I’d say I’ve got a pretty well rounded take on whats-what. I don’t think there is a day where I don’t use something from them be it supplements, skincare, make up or haircare.

It was a tricky business to work for at the beginning because so much of the strength of them couldn’t be said out loud - it started off as a very different thing to where it has got to today. To try and wrap a very long story into a short one; founder, Marcia noticed not only the ridiculous price-hikes between formulation and store-shelf, but also the amount of product that was going to “waste” due to various EU-related (European Union) manufacturing rules.

Don’t quote me on the numbers here, but as I remember it there were essentially 8 factories across Europe that could make luxury-grade skincare (excluding the privately owned ones by some of the uber-prestige brands). So that they all got an equal share of business, the EU brought in rules to cap the amount of one-product that each of them could make for a client (eg: a beauty company).

However, where that fell down was in order to make the product there was need to make a batch of a certain size. Essentially the factories weren’t allowed to sell the whole batch to one client. Meaning there was a surplus of pretty much everything. Beauty Pie used to buy the surplus product and sell onto their members for a lower price (making their profits through customers paying for access via membership rather than by mark ups on the products themselves). Capeesh?

This - whilst wonderful for customers - was a nightmare to promote as their agency. UK advertising law does not allow for influencers to say “this is a Diptyque candle” or “this is Charlotte Tilbury cream” or “this is Armani foundation.” So, we had to compromise the company’s biggest selling point when we paid influencers to talk about the brand (said influencers could say whatever they wanted organically/outside of a contract - but encouraging them to do this without taking the mick was also a big challenge).

Nowadays things are different - in more ways than one. Firstly, Beauty Pie is so wildly successful that its dupe/excess-stock days are near enough over. They have exclusive labs that have pulled apart the world’s top products and made better versions. They are able to get new formulations to their members far faster than others as they aren’t part of a multi-brand holding group, and they are able to sell them at a fair price because they still make their money from memberships rather than products (phrases like “the Netflix of beauty” have often been used by press to explain the concept). Secondly, the way membership works has changed a lot - thank goodness as it did get wildly complicated at various points and even I got a little lost in the detail.

I should note before I continue - you can shop the brand without a membership, but for “typical shelf price” instead of the dramatically reduced prices you get with a membership. I’ll be honest, these prices are still very reasonable. But the real value comes from having a membership. Lets go through the bare bones and the best products…