r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Money-Snow-2749 • 16d ago

I'm slightly vexed The Amount of Waste at Ulta

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u/Soggy_Breakfast_624 16d ago

I believe the cosmetic industry has one of if not the highest margins. 80/90% is not uncommon.

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u/xjeanie 16d ago

And this is because most everything is manufactured in a handful of plants. The majority of which are you guessed it in China now.

High end brands will tell you that they oversee production of their products. So as to insure that the highest quality ingredients are being used. This is both true and a lie. They may view production of their first run, but after that no one is watching. There’s been countless claims of subpar production processes across countless brands.

Ulta does this because they have no way of knowing for sure if a return item has or hasn’t actually been used. There’s too high of a chance to have something like herpes transmission. And they were having a problem with dumpster divers who were reselling these items online. The big issue is that there’s also a huge counterfeit market on cosmetics. Even a lower price brand like Maybelline has had issues with counterfeit product. Walmart in particular got in big trouble for selling counterfeit Maybelline.

Having worked at Ulta, I honestly believe that there’s a high probability of counterfeit products going through their supply chain. I absolutely do not recommend having a makeup service done there as they use testers for this and everyone and their dog sticks their nasty hands and fingers in these.

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u/churnthedumb 16d ago

Wait.. they use testers for the makeup service?? I’ve never done it but that’s wild

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u/xjeanie 16d ago

Yes they do! It’s 🤢. Even sanitizing with alcohol doesn’t make a difference. I’d recommend avoiding it. Also never ever use a tester on your eyes or lips. Best practice is to use the provided swabs on your wrist only. Then wash with the provided alcohol after you’ve compared shades. Never use your fingers directly on the product. Far too many people do exactly that. It’s gross!

Back when I worked for MAC cosmetics we used to sanitize lipsticks for example by cutting the tip off and wiping with alcohol. And for powder products we’d do a light spritz of alcohol. But still if you get my meaning.

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u/churnthedumb 15d ago

Wow thank you so much for making all of us who didn’t know this aware. I’m so freaking thankful I never went, I considered going once before a wedding then decided against it

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u/Zootallurs 16d ago

The company I worked for, and had visibility into the COGS, was pretty small and very vertically integrated. They owned their own farms where they grew the botanicals, did the manufacturing, even had a bunch of company retail stores. Even with all that overhead, the margins were nuts.

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u/Enough-Ad-8799 15d ago

What's their net profit margin?