Can you really get luxury cosmetics for less

So, Beauty Pie, then.  Launched with no little amount of hyperbole towards the end of last year by Marcia Kilgore, the founder of (amongst others): Soap & Glory and FitFlop.  Hyped as “makeup without the markup”, the website boasts of “luxury” lipsticks from £2.84, eyeshadow palettes from £6.94, and foundations from £4.75.

Sounds amazing, right?  By cutting out the middleman, using generic packaging, and charging a £10 per month subscription fee, Beauty Pie acts like a “buyers club” for loyal beauty fans wanting bargains on high-end cosmetics.  I was sent a box of the hero products just before Christmas (alas, mostly unusable, because of the random – too brown and nude – colour selections), alongside a free 3 month membership, and I recently activated that membership and made some more suitable purchases to test out the service before I finished finalising my thoughts.  

Before I get into opinions though, here are some facts:

Each product description on Beauty Pie gives you the member price, and the non-member price.

Your £10 subscription fee allows you to buy £100-worth (at the “non-member” prices) of products, which is realistically around three or four products, depending on what you buy.

Your minimum membership period is three months.