If You Bought A Kylie Jenner Lip Kit, There's Something You Should Know

The latest batch of Kylie Lip Kits apparently featured some reformulation, and, sadly, they may not only be poorer in quality but also an ingredient-for-ingredient copy of a far cheaper brand.

The $29 sticker price (up to $40 after tax and shipping) on Kylie's standard kits — which include a lip shade and a matching liner pencil — already seemed a bit steep for so little makeup.

Still, name brands have always sold for a higher price under the assumption they provide a higher quality product.

Beauty blogger and industry professional Stephanie Nicole recently decided to research the ingredient lists of both Kylie's product and its oft-compared competitor, ColourPop's Ultra Matte liquid lipstick.

Stephanie discovered, excluding a few extra ingredients in the $6 ColourPop option, the ingredient lists of both products are almost identical.

The real issue lies not in the similarity of the products' formulas, but their gap in pricing.

Stephanie calculated ColourPop's matching product, plus one of its lip pencils, PLUS tax and shipping amounts to just $16.82, unlike Kylie's kits, which run customers $40.13 each after tax and shipping.

The beauty expert's concern over the $23 price difference has much to do with the reduced quality of Kylie's new formula and the lab that created it.

In a review of the product on YouTube, she explains,

Spatz Labs was rumored to make both Kylie Jenner's lip kits and ColourPop's formula… If you guys look up SeedBeauty.com, right on that main page it shows ColourPop and… Kylie Cosmetics.

Stephanie then reads an excerpt from Seed Beauty's site that explains how the company is using Spatz's new “integrated innovation system” to prioritize speed over research and development when creating new products for consumers.

She continues,

Basically what you just told me there is you throw sh*t against the wall and see what sticks, and then when it's broken, you'll worry about fixing it later. At 5 and 6 dollar ColourPop prices, I don't really have a problem with that. When I'm spending, you know… 40 dollars for your lip kit, I've got a problem with that.

Just how different is Kylie's new formula from the first generation lip kits? It has apparently been altered enough that both the texture and the color are noticeably different.

Stephanie tells followers,

I do feel like the formula is much thinner. The first formula is mousse-y and creamy, and the second one is significantly more watery.

Considering the fact Kylie's kit and its ColourPop sister product are almost indistinguishable, Stephanie insists the extra $23 customers pay for Kylie's Lip Kits are going straight to the 18-year-old in charge.

She says,

That's a 23-dollar-and-31-cent price difference for the same exact formula, the same exact product… Clearly ColourPop can manufacture those same exact ingredients for less… They have to pay Kylie Jenner because her name is on here. So that's where all that extra money is going… It's not going for product development. It's not going for better ingredients. It's sure as sh*t not going for faster customer service. All she's doing is basically lending her name out, which is a brand, to a company that knows… no matter what it is that people will wait in line for this.

Holy crap, you guys. Stephanie Nicole is the Woodward and Bernstein of Kylie Lip Kits.

Citations: A beauty blogger found out exactly what's in Kylie's Lip Kits —and you're not going to be happy (HelloGiggles)