THE ORDINARY’S MARKUP MARCHÉ IS THE BEAUTY INDUSTRY CRITIQUE WE NEEDED

words by ANOUK WOUDT

Would you buy a banana for €85.70? Launching across six major cities worldwide, The Ordinary’s Markup Marché is not your average supermarket. Replicating the recent trend of ‘luxury’ supermarkets, the store has that classic new-age heightened minimalism that immediately screams gentrification. But as you enter the store, its motives suddenly become clear. Fancy marketing buzzwords and ridiculously high price-points are plastered on common grocery items, imitating absurdly deceiving beauty industry lingo. Known for their fair prices and simplistic approach to products, The Ordinary’s voice positions them as the ideal critic— serving as a reminder to not always trust an ad’s justification of a high price tag (especially in the beauty world!).

The store is filled with Energy-Boosting Bars, and Vitality Orbs—known more commonly as bananas and avocados— priced respectively at €85.70 and €266.13 each. They’ve also got premium High-Retention Cleansing Cylinders, for a whopping €83.69, which look strikingly similar to your average toilet roll.

Putting astronomical price markups through the lens of more commonly bought commodities, the Markup Marché allows people to notice the type of marketing rhetoric that many brands use to upsell their products. The luxury market can even upsell by 700%, making crazy profits off manipulative wording alone. The product remains exactly the same, only the inflationary descriptions and prices are different. This practice has been completely normalized in the beauty industry— but would you accept this in the context of your groceries? Most people obviously wouldn’t, but outside of these common products, plenty of consumers are easily duped. According to a study, 20% of British consumers are willing to pay €22.95 more for a product that is described as “magical,” showing the power of wording.

Popping up across multiple continents, this is the first time The Ordinary has brought a global campaign to physical locations, with stores dropping in Paris, Toronto, London, São Paulo, Mexico City and Melbourne. But, don’t expect to actually pay those ridiculous prices. When you go to checkout, you’ll instead receive products from The Ordinary, as a reminder of their continuous mission to changing the beauty industry standard. Keeping their prices fair and ingredients list transparent