ColourPop Vs. KYLIE Cosmetics: Are They The Same Thing?
It’s not surprising to see almost every magazine and online blog have at least one article about the Kardashian-Jenners weekly. In fact, it’s a little weird when we don’t see anything written about them on a weekly basis.
Of the Kardashian-Jenner family, Kylie Jenner is one one the most (if not the most) talked about. In case you weren’t aware, Kylie Jenner has recently become a billionaire and it is all (mostly) thanks to her cosmetics brand, KYLIE Cosmetics.
It’s hard to believe that with so many products on the market, there isn’t so overlap in brands. Throughout the brand’s history, KYLIE Cosmetics has most notably been compared to the online brand Colourpop. This might not be an issue except for the fact that Colourpop is one of the cheapest brands, and KYLIE Cosmetics has luxury pricing.
It has bee rumored that KYLIE Cosmetics uses the same manufacturer and factory as Colourpop Cosmetics, so are they essentially the same thing? To help figure out this conspiracy, we investigated to see if you are paying for Colourpop with the KYLIE name and logo.
1. Packaging
The packaging isn’t the biggest offense and doesn’t necessarily tell us if a brand is the same as another one, but it does help if we’re comparing the two.
For many brands, the packaging is one of the biggest parts of marketing. So many times we think we need something because of the packaging even though we already have a dozen things like the actual product. Because of this, companies tend to spend more money in their packaging to set themselves apart and they know that this is a huge selling point for consumers. Packaging, though, is oftentimes more expensive to produce than the actual product being sold.
Generic packaging is the least expensive because there is no customization involved; the brand basically will choose a component for their product and have their brand name placed on it. Both KYLIE Cosmetics and Colourpop have similar packaging for several products with only minor differences such as the drips on KYLIE’s liquid lipstick bottle. So if KYLIE Cosmetics has the same packaging as Colourpop and they sell liquid lipsticks for $7 and KYLIE Cosmetics sells theirs for $17, where are those extra $10 going? We can rule out packaging as we can assume the packaging costs the same because they are identical, so in this case, are you paying for the KYLIE Cosmetics formula or the brand?
2. Lab and Manufacturing
It isn’t unusual for multiple brands to share a lab or factory where a brand’s product is made. Many, if not most companies have a parent company that is responsible for other beauty and cosmetic brands. For example, L’Oreal is the parent company to Lancome which basically means that many of the same ingredients and formulation will be very similar because they are using the same lab to manufacture their products.
Often the biggest differences are fragrance and packaging because it is too expensive for labs to make custom formulas for one specific product so that formula is sold to subsidiary companies within a parent company.
So, do Colourpop and KYLIE Cosmetics have the same lab and manufacturer? Both products are distributed from Oxnard in California ironically (or not so ironically) enough. When looking into KYLIE Cosmetics, it was found that the brand is a subsidiary of Seed Beauty which also runs Colourpop, Fourth Ray Beauty — a sister skin-care brand to Colourpop, and KKW Beauty — a literal sister brand to KYLIE Cosmetics.
Due to this information, there is a very good chance that both companies use the same lab, Spatz Lab, and ship their products from the same manufacturers.
3. Formulation and Ingredients (in-depth)
For a lot of people, they might not need to hear anymore and have come to a conclusion on their own. But if you aren’t totally sold yet, here’s an in-depth break down of the formulas of both KYLIE Cosmetics and Colourpop.
As stated above, Colourpop and KYLIE Cosmetics are subsidiary companies of Seed Beauty, their parent company. Often times it is too costly for labs to create multiple formulas so they will sell slightly different versions to other cosmetic companies with the biggest difference being the fragrance used.
To figure out if this is true for KYLIE Cosmetics and Colourpop, ingredient lists were broken down and compared and contrasted. To keep things fair, a completely separate company’s product was used as a control to figure out if certain ingredients are common in specific products, or if they are just down-right copies of one another.
The biggest similarities found were between Colourpop and KYLIE’s bronzers, concealers, and liquid lipsticks. However, not every product of KYLIE Cosmetics could be checked because the brand doesn’t post ingredient lists on the website. So based off of the limited ingredient lists that were able to be accessed, here’s what was found:
Concealer
The number of ingredients in Colourpop No Filter Concealer: 31
The number of ingredients in KYLIE Cosmetics Concealer: 28
The number of ingredients in common between KYLIE and Colourpop: 21
The number of ingredients in Tarte’s Shape Tape: 41
The number of ingredients in common between Tarte and KYLIE: 10
The number of ingredients in common between Tarte and Colourpop: 11
Conclusion: Based on these numbers, it seems that KYLIE Cosmetics and Colourpop have more in common than not when it comes to the formulation of concealers. To put this more simply, there are only 3 ingredients in the difference between Colourpop and KYLIE Cosmetics. In Colourpop’s concealer, 21 of 31 ingredients were also found in the KYLIE Cosmetics formula, and only 7 of the ingredients found in both concealers were not the same.
In order to compare, both concealers were tested against Tarte Shape Tape. However, the concealers are marketed very differently and don’t claim to do the same things, so it would make sense that the formulas aren’t identical. With that being said, Tarte’s Shape Tape contains 41 ingredients making it likely that there would be several ingredients all the concealers have in common. However, only 10 of 41 ingredients were found in both Tarte and KYLIE’s formulas and 11 of 41 found in both Tarte and Colourpop’s formula.
Based on this information, it is safe to assume both formulas are incredibly similar and can be considered almost exact dupes of one another.
Bronzer
The number of ingredients in Colourpop bronzer: 17
The number of ingredients in KYLIE Cosmetics bronzer: 17
The number of ingredients in common between KYLIE and Colourpop: 16
The number of ingredients in Too Faced Chocolate Soleil Bronzer (matte): 20
The number of ingredients in common between Too Faced and KYLIE: 7
The number of ingredients in common between Too Faced and Colourpop: 7
Conclusion: These products had the biggest similarity when it came to formulation. In both Colourpop’s and KYLIE Cosmetics’ bronzers, a total of 17 ingredients were found with only 1 ingredient differentiating the two. The only ingredients that were different PTFE in Colourpop’s formula and Blue Lake 1 in KYLIE’s formula.
Comparing these two formulas to the Too Faced Chocolate Soleil Bronzer, both Colourpop and KYLIE Cosmetics had the exact same 7 of 20 ingredients in common. From this we can assume that those 7 ingredients are common in bronzers and cosmetics, but what about the other 13 ingredients not found in both KYLIE and Colourpop?
Based on this information, it is clear that these two bronzers are identical and are basically the same product.
Liquid Lipsticks, Matte
The number of ingredients in Colourpop Ultra Matte Liquid Lipstick: 13
The number of ingredients in KYLIE Matte Liquid Lipstick: 25
The number of ingredients in common between KYLIE and Colourpop: 13
The number of ingredients in Ofra Liquid Lipstick: 22
The number of ingredients in common between Ofra and KYLIE: 5
The number of ingredients in common between Ofra and Colourpop: 4
Conclusion: This one is interesting because Colourpop has a total of 13 ingredients, all of which were also found in the KYLIE Cosmetics liquid lipstick formula — there were no ingredients from Colourpop that were left out. You might assume, then, that it is just a basic formulation that most companies use. However, when compared to the Ofra liquid lipstick, only 4 of 22 ingredients were also found in the Colourpop ingredients list.
Diving deeper into KYLIE’s formula, the main differences in her formulation are colorants, pigments, and fragrance which was to be expected because the colors tested were not exactly the same shades. Based on this information we can assume that both the formulas are more similar than they are different.
