£5 for Niacinamide 10%. £8.80 for Hyaluronic Acid. £29.90 for Multi-Peptide + Copper Peptides. Founded 2013 by the late Brandon Truaxe, now wholly owned by Estée Lauder since May 2024 in a $1.7 billion deal across three tranches. The disruption was real. Is the disruptor still disrupting?
Before The Ordinary, a 30ml bottle of niacinamide-and-zinc serum cost £30 to £60 from premium skincare brands. After The Ordinary, the same niacinamide-and-zinc combination cost £5. The chemistry was almost identical. The packaging was deliberately clinical and plain. The brand name was deliberately boring.
Walk past any branch of Sephora UK in 2026 and that £5 bottle is still on the shelf. Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%. Same name, same chemistry, same price point as 2013. Around it on the same shelf are the other cult products: Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 at £8.80, AHA 30% + BHA 2% Peeling Solution at £8.90, Caffeine Solution 5% + EGCG at £8.40. The Ordinary's sixty-nine-product range on Sephora UK looks much like it did three years ago, with prices that have crept up by single-digit pounds rather than doubled.
That stability is the most remarkable thing about The Ordinary in 2026. Most of the brands we have reviewed in this magazine have been acquired and re-priced, expanded into a hundred SKUs, and watched their founder narratives drift into marketing. The Ordinary has been acquired (Estée Lauder, in stages, completing full ownership on May 31, 2024 for a total investment around $1.7 billion). The Ordinary has expanded the range (newer products like the £29.90 Multi-Peptide + Copper Peptides Serum push the upper edge of "affordable"). The original founder, Brandon Truaxe, died in 2019. And yet the £5 niacinamide is still £5.
The honest question for 2026 is whether The Ordinary, post-Truaxe and now wholly inside Estée Lauder, is still the brand it was, or whether the disruption has been quietly absorbed into the empire it disrupted.
What The Ordinary Actually Is
The brand DNA was built around three radical choices, each of which has aged differently.
First, ingredient-led naming. Where every other skincare brand named products around marketing concepts ("Youth Shot", "Glow Boost", "Repair Complex"), The Ordinary named products after their hero ingredient and concentration. The product told you what was in it; that was the marketing. This was an industry-shifting choice in 2013, and ten years later most ingredient-led skincare brands have copied at least the spirit of it. The naming is no longer disruptive because the disruption succeeded.
Second, transparent pricing. The Ordinary published the price of every active ingredient and the price of the product. The implicit message was: you have been paying ten times what these formulations cost to make. That message resonated, the brand grew rapidly, and a generation of skincare consumers learned to read INCI lists. Most premium brands quietly improved the ingredient quality of their existing lines after The Ordinary's launch, because the comparison had become public.
Third, focused range discipline. The Ordinary launched with single-active products designed to be combined into custom routines. Niacinamide for oil control. Hyaluronic Acid for hydration. Glycolic Acid for exfoliation. Retinol for anti-aging. Each product had one job. Customers built their own multi-step routines from the brand's catalogue. This was the inverse of the typical premium skincare model (one £80 cream that does everything), and it suited the rise of skincare-on-TikTok perfectly.
What the brand doesn't lead with: The Ordinary is no longer founder-led, and has not been for some time. Brandon Truaxe died in January 2019 after a tragic decline involving public mental-health crises and an erratic period at the helm of Deciem in 2018. Estée Lauder, who had been a minority investor since 2017, took over Deciem's day-to-day leadership during that period and increased to majority ownership in 2021. As of May 31, 2024, Estée Lauder owns Deciem outright. Truaxe's vision built the brand. ELC runs it.
The Truaxe Story
Brandon Truaxe's story is genuinely sensitive and worth handling carefully.
He founded Deciem in 2013 as a Toronto-based "abnormal beauty company," a kind of brand-incubator that launched The Ordinary, NIOD, AVESTAN, and several other beauty lines under one corporate roof. The pitch was authenticity, transparency, and a refusal to participate in the inflated pricing of the prestige skincare industry. By 2017, Estée Lauder had taken a meaningful minority stake.
In 2018, Truaxe became publicly unwell. He took over Deciem's social media accounts personally and posted erratic, often distressing content. He fired senior leadership. He was removed from his role by court order after a co-founder filed for protection. He died in Toronto in January 2019. The cause of death has been reported as a fall from a high-rise balcony.
This is the truth about how the brand passed from Truaxe's leadership to ELC's. Estée Lauder's later press releases describe him as "the late Brandon Truaxe, a visionary who championed authenticity and transparency in the beauty industry," which is fair. The Ordinary is his legacy in the most literal sense: a brand he built and a corporate structure that survived him.
We mention this because most editorial coverage of The Ordinary either ignores the founding story entirely or addresses it in the past tense without context. The brand customers buy in 2026 was created by someone whose work changed an entire industry and whose personal trajectory was tragic. Both things are true. Both belong in a real review.
The Range And The Price Ladder
The Ordinary on Sephora UK in 2026 has roughly 69 active SKUs across:
- Serums (single-active): Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% (from £5), Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 (£8.80), Caffeine Solution 5% + EGCG (£8.40), Salicylic Acid 2% (£6.10), Lactic Acid 5% + HA (£7.70), Retinol 0.2% Emulsion (£15.20), and many more - Exfoliants and acids: AHA 30% + BHA 2% Peeling Solution (£8.90), Glycolic Acid 7% Toner (from £8), Azelaic Acid Suspension 10% (£18.60) - Newer multi-peptide products (the upper edge of the price tier): Multi-Peptide + Copper Peptides 1% Serum (£29.90), Multi-Antioxidant Radiance Serum (£14.20), Volufiline 10% Plumping Serum (£19.50) - Hydration and barrier: Natural Moisturizing Factors + HA (£8.80), Rice Lipids + Ectoin Microemulsion (from £12.40), Hyaluronic Acid + HA (from £15.90) - Cleansers: Squalane Cleanser (from £8.30), Glucoside Foaming Cleanser (£10.95), Glucosid Cream Cleanser (£11.30) - Sunscreen and UV: UV Filters SPF 45 Serum (£15.50) - Sets: The Daily Set (£18.60), The Bright Set (£21.50), The Clear Set (£15.10), The Skin Support Set (£11) - Hair and body extension: Multi-Peptide Serum for Hair Density (from £13.50), Sulphate 4% Cleanser for Body & Hair (£8.40), Niacinamide 5% Face and Body Emulsion (£11.70)
A complete entry-level Ordinary routine (cleanser, niacinamide serum, hyaluronic acid, moisturiser, sunscreen) lands around £40 to £55. That is genuinely transformative pricing in skincare. The Ordinary remains, ten years later, the cheapest credible "build a real skincare routine" entry point on the UK market.
What The Ordinary Got Right
Three things worth crediting properly.
The price disruption is permanent and real. Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1% at £5 has been the same price for years. The Ordinary forced premium skincare to either justify their pricing or quietly drop it. The category is more transparent than it was, and that transparency benefits every customer regardless of where they shop now.
The single-active range discipline taught a generation to think about skincare in terms of ingredients and concentrations rather than brand mythology. The "skincare TikTok" of 2018 onwards, with its INCI list reads, ingredient pairing tutorials and build-your-own routines, was largely powered by The Ordinary's pricing making experimentation affordable.
The price stability post-acquisition is unusual. Most brands that get acquired by major beauty conglomerates see prices drift upward over 3 to 5 years as the corporate parent extracts margin. The Ordinary's hero products are roughly the same price as they were in 2018. Either Estée Lauder is taking a deliberately long view on margin extraction, or there is a contractual or strategic reason for keeping the disruption intact. Either way, customers benefit.
So credit where it is due. The Ordinary is the rare brand we have reviewed where the disruption is durable, the pricing is honest, and the founder's vision survives in the product range even after his death and the corporate acquisition.
What The Ordinary Missed (Or Has Drifted On)
Two things, honestly.
The range expansion has nudged the brand upmarket. The £29.90 Multi-Peptide + Copper Peptides Serum, the £19.50 Volufiline Plumping Serum, and the more expensive Multi-Peptide products are real moves into mid-premium pricing. They are not unreasonable for what they contain: peptide formulations are genuinely more expensive to produce than niacinamide. But the brand built its identity on the £5 niacinamide bottle. As the average product price drifts upward, the disruption thesis weakens.
The founder narrative is inevitably second-hand now. The Ordinary's website and marketing still references Truaxe's vision and Deciem's "abnormal beauty company" ethos. The customers buying in 2026 are buying from Estée Lauder's wholly-owned subsidiary, where Truaxe has been gone for six years. This is not a scandal. It is the lifecycle of a brand whose founder was singular and whose corporate parent is now permanent.
Neither is a scandal. They are just true.
So, Worth It?
Where we land in 2026.
The hero £5 to £15 single-active serums are still genuinely the best-value skincare in the UK. Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%, Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5, Salicylic Acid 2%, Caffeine Solution 5% + EGCG, Glycolic Acid 7% Toner, AHA 30% + BHA 2% Peeling Solution. These products built the brand and they still earn their place in any skincare routine. Buy with confidence.
The mid-tier £15 to £30 newer launches (Multi-Peptide + Copper Peptides, Volufiline, the multi-active serums) are credibly priced for what they contain but face real competition from premium brands at similar prices. They are not the obvious-buy the £5 niacinamide was. Worth comparing against alternatives before committing.
The range as a whole is still one of the most credible "build a routine cheaply" entry points in skincare. If you are starting fresh, you can build a complete daily routine from The Ordinary for under £50. No other mainstream brand can credibly offer that.
What To Buy Instead
If your reason for buying The Ordinary is the price, the alternatives piece in this series covers the UK indie scene that competes on similar ingredient-led pricing. The INKEY List is the closest direct UK indie equivalent.
If your reason is the ingredient transparency, several UK indie brands have followed The Ordinary's lead with even cleaner ingredient stories at slightly higher prices.
If your reason is the disruption ethos, that ethos has been absorbed into the wider industry. Many UK indie skincare brands now carry the same ingredient-led philosophy.
The Honest Take
The Ordinary is one of the most genuinely transformative skincare brands of the last decade. The £5 niacinamide changed how an entire generation thinks about skincare pricing. The clinical naming changed how brands describe products. The single-active range discipline taught customers to build their own routines. All of this is permanent. None of it can be unwound by the Estée Lauder acquisition or by Brandon Truaxe's death.
It is also a brand whose founder died tragically, whose corporate parent now owns it outright, and whose newer products drift slightly above the original disruptive price point. The brand is still The Ordinary. It is no longer entirely the disruptor it was.
If you have never bought The Ordinary, start with the £5 niacinamide and the £8.80 hyaluronic acid. If you already use it, keep using it. And if you want UK indie alternatives, particularly ones that match The Ordinary's ingredient-led pricing ethos, the alternatives piece in this series is for you.
