Tried the quick-dry topcoat from Sally's and honestly the drugstore stuff won this round

I compared the $12 Sally's house brand topcoat against a $4 LA Colors one last week on two sets of swatches, and the cheap one dried faster and didn't peel after three days of hand washing. The Sally's one got tacky halfway through the day and chipped by day two. Has anyone else found that pricier stuff sometimes just doesn't hold up like the basic brands do?

3 comments

3 Comments

sandragrant9d ago

The drugstore ones really surprise me sometimes with how good they are.

caleb_bell59d ago

The real secret with drugstore brands is that they have to compete so hard on price they end up cutting R&D costs on packaging instead of formula. That's why you'll get a $8 foundation that performs better than a $50 one but the bottle feels like it'll crack if you look at it wrong. @sandragrant totally right, you just have to get past the ugly box sometimes to find the gold.

henry1509d ago

Another angle is that drugstore brands are often made in the same factories as the expensive ones but with different marketing. I read somewhere that LA Colors and some higher end brands share production lines, so the cheap stuff might actually be the same chemical mix without the fancy label. The big companies also spend tons on the bottle design and influencer sponsorships, so the actual liquid in the Sally's one got less money dumped into it. Plus drugstore stuff has to work fast because customers aren't giving it a second chance if it fails. The expensive brands can coast on their reputation for a while before people catch on. So you're basically paying for the name and the packaging not the performance.