text: Beauty Pie, the luxury beauty buyers’ club created in December 2016 by Marcia Kilgore, has just launched a new membership option, Beauty Pie Plus, which costs £59 a year and gives you a whopping £3,600 to spend annually with no monthly limits, meaning you can bulk buy your favourite products and test out as many new launches to your heart's content.
  How is Beauty Pie able to offer 'factory prices'?
  Beauty Pie's tagline is ‘makeup without the markup’. It offers makeup, skincare, haircare, body care, fragrances, candles and supplements that matched the quality of Bobbi Brown, MAC or Charlotte Tilbury, at Lidl and Aldi prices.
  But how do they do it? Marcia explains. "We pull together the collective buying power of thousands of discerning makeup junkies to cut out the middlemen. We source our products directly from world-leading labs."
  Incidentally, these are the same labs that many of your pricey high-end products are from. It's an open secret as to which ones. Beauty Pie won’t confirm, but it’s guaranteed they are staples of your local beauty hall. "We don’t try to engineer products so that we can make more profit," adds Marcia, meaning they won't scrimp on active ingredients to keep costs down. "We test like-for-like from the world’s best, for whatever the ‘cost of goods’ is, and then bring it to the customer with total transparency, so they know that what we’re most focused on is bringing them the very best product (instead of making a profit)."
  You'll find a breakdown of manufacturing costs on each product’s page. Packaging, warehousing, and safety and testing are all accounted for, to provide some much-needed clarity on the true cost of its makeup.
  How does Beauty Pie membership work?
  Membership fees start at £5 a month for a £50 spending limit to £20 a month for a £200 limit. The new Plus membership gives you a £3,600 yearly allowance for £59, with no monthly cap.
  With the spending limit memberships, your cap is calculated on what you would have paid at typical non-factory prices; so their best-selling One Palette Wonder (a dupe of the Charlotte Tilbury Instant Look in a Palette, £49) has a 'typical price' of £35 and a member price of £7.96. Any unused spending limit just rolls over to the next month. If you're curious, join and enter GTGSENTME in the promo box to get an extra £10 spend on your first month.
  This month sees the launch of new kind of membership, named Beauty Pie Plus. It gives members the flexibility to shop when they want by eliminating monthly spending limits and offering an upfront spending allowance that renews every year.
  How does Beauty Pie Make its money?
  Marcia explains. "To pay our bills and run a business, members pay a small membership fee each month. Operating the Pie is a complex endeavour. We have team members, rent, technology and stock, and we need a certain level of contribution per product to ensure we can continue to deliver luxury for less. Plus, each member has an allocated spending limit, so we don’t run out of everything!"
  Sounds too good to be true right? It’s a common preconception, and one Marcia has worked hard over the last four years to put right. “As a born ‘rogue’ thinker, I have been amazed to see how many people have become so conditioned to accept the status quo, and immediately judge new things as suspect, no matter how much more beneficial they are to them as customers,” she says. “We’ve had to do a lot of work there, to prove to people that the Beauty Pie fairytale is actually true! I’ve learned so much about human psychology that I might now be able to write a book on it.”
  Now that there's the Beauty Pie Plus membership, we don't have to be conservative about what we add to our basket. For a little shopping inspiration, here are the top 10 bestsellers onsite since it launched in 2016. Happy shopping (don't forget to join with our code GTGSENTME, which gives you £10 extra to spend).
  Beauty Pie top 10 bestsellers of all time
  Everyday Great Skin Foundation, £30 (£6.77 for members)
  Offering natural-looking coverage and a luminous finish, it’s little wonder that Beauty Pie fans order this base over and over again. “This formula was the most beautiful one we found after testing about 79 submissions (and the search continues, always) from the best Italian foundation labs in the business,” Marcia says. There are 15 shades available as well as tester sets too, to ensure that you get your best possible colour match.
  Buy it now
  One Powder Wonder, £26 (£5.30 for members)
  It blots, blends and blurs - this weightless powder covers a range of needs and its universal shade suits any skin tone too. What’s more, its ultra-fine formula reduces the risk of caking - a great one to have on standby to take you from work to play.
  Buy it now
  Plantastic Micropeeling Super Drops, £50 (£7.62 for members)
  Containing fruit acids and black willow bark extract, these hard-working drops have been designed to leave skin smoother and brighter. Ideal if skin’s feeling a bit congested at the moment or tends to veer on the oilier side of things.
  Buy it now
  Wondercolour Longwear Cream Shadow Stick, £20 (£3.65 for members)
  These easy-to-blend crayons make it supremely simple to achieve a statement eye when time is short. Available in 16 shades ranging from nudes to violets and everything in between, there’s something for every taste.
  Buy it now
  Japanfusion Pure Transforming Cleanser, £25 (£6.49 for members)
  If you love shape-shifting textures, you’ll love this. Changing from gel to oil to milk when in contact with water, it deliciously glides onto skin to leave it squeaky clean, but not stripped. Plus, it’s fragrance-free too.
  Buy it now
  Bazilian Lime, Fig Leaves & Tea Eau de Parfum, £125 (£20.59 for members)
  This is where the membership for me really comes into its own offering vast discounts on luxury fragrances. Fans of Jo Malone, Joe Loves and Byredo will be in heaven with this clean fresh citrusy scent combining top nototes of lime, orange with black tea and fig leaves in the middle and earthy base notes of cedarwood and amber finish.
  Buy it now
  Super Healthy Skin Deluxe Moisture Body Crème, £50 (£15.17 for members)
  One of the self-care hits of 2020 lockdown, this heavenly smelling, incredibly light yet lipid rich body cream is infused with sustainable cold-pressed hibiscus flower, meadowfoam oils, liquid shea butter and essential oils of citrus, geranium and sexy tonka bean.
  Future Lipstick Luxe Shine, £25 members pay £6.52
  Sales of lipstick haven't dipped where this si concernted. We love colour payoff combined with the hydrating precious oils for healthy and luscious-looking lips. Available in nine shades.
  Buy it now
  Bitter Orange Luxury Scented Candle, £50 members pay £19.61
  Yey another reason to sign up - the best value luxury scented candles on the planet. Members typcially pay less than £20 for a £50 candle, they go in and put of stock quickly such is demand so this is one page to bookemark.
  Buy it now
  Super Retinol Ceramide Boost Anti-Ageing Face Serum, £80 members pay £13.53
  “Swiss- formulated, it’s retinol for people who are terrified of retinol,” says Marcia, so it’s easy to see why it gets snapped up so feverishly. Designed to slow-release the ingredient through special microencapsulation tech, it works on fine lines and sunspots, and general overall skin plumpness too. Ceramides and hyaluronic acid mean your skin never feels dry when you use this as can happen with many retinol serums.