I Had No Idea a Face Mask Could Teach Me Economics
I was just shopping on Nykaa. Somehow I ended up understanding how the world actually works.
I was not trying to learn anything that day. I was just on Nykaa, scrolling through skincare, when I noticed something that stopped me completely.
The Foxtale face mask, a product I had been looking at for a while- had gone from being a decent option to one of the top rated, most talked about skincare products in India. Everyone was reviewing it. Influencers were calling it a must-have. And its price had climbed right along with its reputation.
I stared at the screen and thought- how does that work? A product doesn't change. The ingredients are the same. The jar is the same size. So why does it cost more simply because more people want it?
That one question sent me down a rabbit hole I wasn't expecting.
Demand doesn'tjust move products. It moves prices.
When a product goes from being unknown to being everywhere - on reels, in reviews, in everyone's routine - demand explodes overnight. And when thousands of people want the same thing at the same time, the seller no longer needs to compete on price. The product sells itself. So the price rises - not because it costs more to make, but because the market has decided it is worth more.
This is one of the most fundamental principles of economics - demand and supply. And I found it sitting quietly inside a skincare app, hiding in plain sight.
"The price of something is never just about what it costs to make. It is about how badly people want it. That gap between cost and desire - that is where the entire economy lives."
And then there is inflation
Demand was only part of the story. The other force quietly at work was inflation - the steady, ongoing rise in the cost of everything. Packaging. Raw materials. Logistics. Labour. Every link in the supply chain gets more expensive over time, and that cost moves in one direction only - towards the customer.
Nobody announces inflation. It doesn't send a notification. It just shows up one day in the price of your groceries, your clothes, your skincare - and makes everything feel like slightly less than it used to be.
What struck me most was not the price. It was the realisation that these forces - demand, supply, inflation - are not abstract concepts locked inside economics textbooks. They are alive in every purchase, every market, every decision about what something is worth.
Most people interact with the economy every single day without ever understanding it. They just feel its effects - things getting pricier, money feeling like less - without knowing why.
I learned all of this from a face mask. And honestly, it was the most useful thing I learned all week.
- Economics is everywhere. Most of us just aren't looking.
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