Costs went up. The promise doesn't.

Costs went up. The promise doesn't.

Building in public means the annoying weeks get posted too. This is one of them.

Somewhere between our first samples and the final quotes, raw material prices moved — and the numbers came back higher than the ones we'd been planning around. Not catastrophically. But enough that a spreadsheet we thought was closed had to be reopened.

When this happens, brands have two quiet levers: raise the price, or lower the quality — swap in cheaper filters, thin the tube, shave a few millilitres and hope nobody measures. Nobody posts about pulling those levers. You just find out later, on your skin. We started 78 Labs because we'd been on the receiving end of that trade too often.

So we're pulling the third lever, the slow one: negotiating. Going back through every line — materials, packaging, freight — pushing where there's room, paying where there isn't. It's unglamorous work and it moves at the speed of other people's replies. That's the honest cost this week: time, not quality.

Where that leaves you: your first bottle on the waitlist is still ₹499. That number was a promise, not an estimate, and it doesn't move. The everyday price gets set the way it was always going to be — as low as honest quality allows — and we'll publish it when we open.

The squeeze in between is ours to absorb, not yours to fund. That's the deal we signed up for.

Not on the waitlist yet? It's free, and it locks your first bottle at ₹499.

— Aashish & Rishitha, 78 Labs