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Demystifying Beauty
Long before Isla was a brand, it was two people from opposite ends of the globe talking about how the secrets to the industry have been held by a few gatekeepers for far too long. The people that hold the keys to pricing, formula secrets, influence, and marketing control what, how and where we spend our money. As two of those behind the scenes people ourselves, we started Isla because we wanted to do it differently.
Isla was founded on a long heritage of product development, giving us a unique capability to make truly innovative products at a great price. However, we don’t want to ask you to take our word for it, like every brand that's come before us, we want to show you. Everything from our pricing rationale, to our ingredient concentrations, and more. Welcome the world of truly transparent beauty.
Pricing
We price all our products at a consistent 2x mark-up above the cost to us. On average, industry mark ups run anywhere from 6-10x product costs, which means most of the price you pay is going towards something other than the product you're buying. Our product costs will always be the largest driver of our retail cost, and we make that clear by sharing a price breakdown for each product.
Product costs include:
○ Packaging, Fill, Labor & Warehousing: This includes the primary and secondary packaging, the costs of the formulation, the labor cost associated with it, and the cost to store the product.
○ Freight & Logistics: This is the cost to ship product from lab, to warehouse, to your door.
○ Collateral Costs: This includes everything that is shipped with the product, from box to leaflet.
Formula
Third party lab partners are a key part of Isla's (and many brands) product development story. Instead of trying to hide it behind vague manufacturing stories, we believe our lab partner’s experience, track record, and very existence speak to our product's integrity. We want to share this piece of the story to give you the full picture on what you're buying, where it comes from, and what local ingredients are the stars.
We believe that the most comprehensive way to promise quality is through total openness about what is in each of our products and where all claims come from. In addition to putting our lab partners front and center, our formula transparency has three main elements:
○ Complete visibility into all active ingredients and their exact concentrations. We only make claims around active level ingredients, and never try to pass off lower marketing levels as the real thing
○ A full breakdown of Natural Origin and Synthetic Origin ingredients for each product
○ Each product's country of origin, printed directly on the bottle
Materials
Our fundamental ideology around sustainability is to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
Each product comes with not only a breakdown of every packaging material and its source, we also disclose recyclability and recycling instructions.
Furthermore, $1 of our share of every purchase on our site is currently being donated to the Clean Air Task Force.
Most importantly, we recognize that sustainability is a moving target and we are always looking for ways to improve our practices as we grow and learn.
Price Transparency
A clear breakdown of product pricing from cost to retail for every product we sell.
Formula Transparency
Clearly presented and detailed information down to the percentage to back up our product claims.
Materials Transparency
Better understand our packaging choices and how to recycle our products.