All The Differences Between A $200 Skin Cream & A $20 One

Not all anti-aging creams are created equal. But you sure as heck wouldn’t know that from looking at them. That means when you pony up anywhere from $10 to $400, you’re buying something invisible: a proprietary blend of ingredients and technology with claims that are relatively unregulated. Neat.In the service of figuring out what we’re actually paying for, we compared anti-aging night creams from a range of price points and brands — Dr. Brandt, Murad, Olay, Omorovicza, ROC, and Vichy among them. What we found was a vast array of factors — from packaging to production and ingredient sourcing — that all have an impact on a product's bottom line.A few things to know about our process…· Cosmetics labels, like food labels, are listed in descending order of predominance, meaning if there’s a lot of something, it’s listed first. A scant amount? You’ll see it at the end.· The debate about whether plant-derived ingredients are more efficacious than their synthetic counterparts is valuable enough for a separate and more targeted conversation. For the purpose of this piece, we’re only saying that in general, plant-derived ingredients tend to be more expensive. Nor are we making a value judgment on petrochemicals. We’re just pointing out that presently, in the global cosmetics economy, it’s more expensive to exclude them.· What’s also hard to quantify is the intellectual capital that undoubtedly goes into each product. Thousands of hours of research and testing are represented in each of these products; whether their scientific claims are validated isn’t regulated by any governing board. Because testing is often proprietary, we cannot tell you how that equation factors into the bottom-line price of the product.Alright, let's cut to the chase: What is the real difference between a mega-fancy cream and its drugstore cousin? Check out the infographic below to see the journey your average skin-care cream takes before it gets slapped with a sticker price.

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