New Brand Skincare Generics Is Proudly Duping Augustinus Bader And La Mer

Skincare Generics wants to make scoring dupes of popular luxury skincare products easier.

The brand’s debut assortment contains three products priced at $39.99 each—Lavish Cream, Hydrating Cream and Hyaluronic Skin Serum—it compares to Augustinus Bader’s $300 The Rich Cream, La Mer’s $390 Creme De la Mer and Dr. Barbara Sturm’s $325 Hyaluronic Acid Serum, respectively. Available in direct-to-consumer distribution, the products have callouts to their expensive counterparts on their packaging. 

“This is going to allow people to have more options so they don’t have to put luxury brands on a pedestal,” says Will Henderson, founder of Skincare Generics. “I want to push the envelope and pull the curtain back on the seductive advertising of things like [La Mer’s ingredient complex] Miracle Broth and super seaweeds that luxury brands talk about. Why are people paying $300, $400, $500 for this stuff?”

Mirroring pharmaceutical benchmarks set for generic medications, Skincare Generics aims to match a luxury product’s ingredient list by at least 80% in the same order or a similar order of concentration. Benchmarking in the beauty industry is common, although cosmetic chemists often point out that trying to imitate a formula without specific knowledge of the original ingredient concentrations or the sorts of ingredients going into it—even if ingredients appear exact on ingredient lists, they vary widely—can result in different products. 

Skincare Generics tests the performance of its formulas to verify that they stack up against the products it’s emulating. The brand scours social media, the press and retailers like Sephora, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom to identify buzzy luxury beauty products to dupe. Once it settles on the product, it runs a patent analysis to check if any ingredients in it are protected by law. 

Henderson singled out Creme de la Mer as the most challenging product to dupe out in Skincare Generics’ initial trio of products. It took about five iterations to perfect, and its ingredient list matches 13 of the first 14 ingredients on Creme de la Mer’s ingredient list. 

Lavish Cream’s formula features 32 of the 36 ingredients in Augustinus Bader’s The Rich Cream, and Hyaluronic Skin Serum’s ingredient list fully matches the ingredient list of Dr. Barbara Sturm’s Hyaluronic Acid Serum, with the exception of an additional hyaluronic acid Skincare Generics incorporated in formula. The brand has about 20 products in its pipeline, primarily serums and moisturizers. 

The demand for dupes has soared, thanks to the omnipresence of TikTok, where content creators regularly recommend them. The hashtag #makeupdupes surpassed 1.1 billion views last year on the platform. According to the consumer insights firm Spate, dupe-related online searches for skincare and makeup spiked 123.5% and 31% for the year ended August 2023.

TikTok didn’t invent dupe culture. Mass brands like E.l.f. Cosmetics, Makeup Revolution, NYX and Essence have long been associated with duping trendy pricy products. In recent years, skincare brands like Clover by Clove + Hallow and MCoBeauty and fragrance brands like Dossier have made duping central to their business. 

Retailers have gotten in on the dupe action, too. Trader Joes and Walgreens have no problem offering their versions of hot items from brands such as Supergoop and Sol de Janeiro. Walgreens’ new in-house brand Premium Skin Care has a range of nine products that are just dupes. 

Although duped brands worry that knockoffs hurt revenues, market research firm NIQ has discovered that dupes have expanded beauty industry sales. In an interview with Beauty Independent earlier this year, Anna Mayo, VP of the beauty vertical at NIQ, said, “While the presence of beauty dupes may be controversial, they provide quality, affordable alternatives that meet consumer needs without detracting from the growth of higher-priced brands.”

Despite tough competition, Henderson is optimistic Skincare Generics will find a dedicated audience. He says,“I don’t want to be an arrogant brand, but we think that the skincare community is going to pull through for us.”

A Texas native, Henderson moved around the state for 15 years working in sales and marketing for pharma giants GSK, Merck when it was named Schering-Plough Corp., GM Pharmaceuticals and Par Pharmaceutical, a generics drug maker. Parallel to his day job, he served as a local director for the Miss Dallas Pageant for 14 years before taking over the Miss Texas USA and Miss Texas Teen USA pageants in 2022 as executive director. 

In 2017, he launched the beauty brand Prosper Beauty online. At its largest, the brand’s assortment had 15 stockkeeping units across skincare and beauty tools. The selection has since shrunk to five tool SKUs, including a makeup sponge and derma roller, sold on its website and on Amazon, where its six-piece Derma Roller Microneedle Set has earned an Amazon’s Choice badge. Running Prosper has provided valuable learnings for Skincare Generics. Henderson has no current plans to enlarge its product lineup. 

“I didn’t have a differentiator,” he says. “I didn’t have a brand story.”

The idea for Skincare Generics came to Henderson a year after he introduced Prosper. “I started thinking, well, why aren’t there any generic versions of very expensive luxury products or spa brands?” he says. “I started talking to some IP attorneys because I didn’t want to try to copy these brands. I wanted my own brand, but I wanted to create a generic version of it. This concept is so simple.”

Skincare Generics operates scrappily when it comes to packaging, marketing, web design and public relations to keep costs low and price its dupes 80% to 90% lower than the products it’s duping. Tapping vendor relationships Henderson secured at Prosper has been helpful to restrain costs. Skincare Generics has six employees. 

“We’re bootstrapping this, and we’re running it very, very lean at this point,” says Henderson. “We’re not trying to be flashy. We want to have substance and let our product speak for itself.”

To build awareness, Skincare Generics will seed products to beauty editors, cosmetic chemists, dermatologists and micro-influencers on TikTok and Instagram who are fans of the luxury brands it draws inspiration from. It will also experiment with paid media and leverage connections Henderson has in the pageant world.

Henderson expects Skincare Generics to be on Amazon within the next 12 to 18 months. He admits extending to retail may present challenges given its business model. Henderson says, “That’s where it may be very difficult in the future, so it might have to be a smaller retailer. That—or Target.”