Published policy

The Independence Policy

The promise

No retailer, brand, or client can buy a better position on this site. Not with money, not with an affiliate rate, not with a partnership, not with a favor.

Everything below exists to make that statement checkable rather than merely asserted.

1. The firewall a one-person company can actually enforce

Most publishers separate commerce from editorial with people: a sales team that doesn't talk to a newsroom. We are one person. That separation is unavailable to us, so we do not claim it.

What replaces it is stricter, not looser: the ranking is computed, not decided. It runs from published inputs, on published weights, with no human discretion at any step — no override, no tiebreaker judgment, no “editor's pick” that quietly outranks the data. The order you see is the order the method produces.

This matters because it is the only firewall design that survives its author having commercial relationships. A ranking that depends on our restraint is worth exactly as much as your trust in us. A ranking that depends on arithmetic can be recomputed by anyone who disagrees.

If we ever cannot compute a ranking without discretion, we will not publish a ranking for that comparison.

2. What enters the ranking

Included: landed cost (the total a US customer actually pays — item price, shipping, and duty treatment); authenticity status (whether the seller is an authorized source for that brand); and US reachability (whether a US customer can complete the purchase and receive the product).

Excluded, absolutely: the affiliate commission rate we receive; whether the retailer is an affiliate partner at all; whether the retailer or any brand is a client of ours in any capacity; and any payment, of any kind, from anyone.

Full detail is on the methodology page.

3. Affiliate integrity

We earn affiliate commission on some outbound links. The rates differ by retailer, which creates a financial incentive to favor the ones that pay more. We manage that in three ways.

Commission never enters the algorithm. We rank on landed cost and authenticity. Nothing else.

Non-affiliate retailers are in the catalog and can win. A comparison that only covers retailers who pay us is compromised by omission — the quietest way a site like this loses its integrity, and the one that happens without anyone deciding to do it. We include retailers we earn nothing from, and they are eligible to rank first.

We publish where the money comes from. The current position for every retailer in the catalog is listed on the methodology page. Almost no comparison site does this. It costs us nothing and it is the only way to prove that commission and rank are decoupled rather than ask you to assume it.

4. Retailer relationships

Any proposed relationship with a retailer must pass all four of these. One failure ends it.

1. Does the money touch the ranking inputs or weights? Must be no.
2. Would the ranking be identical if they hadn't paid — and can a third party verify that? Must be yes. If verifying requires trusting us, it fails.
3. Is the identical offer open to every retailer on equal, published terms? Must be yes. No exclusivity, no first-mover placement, no negotiated variations.
4. Would this survive being described on our homepage by a hostile journalist? Must be yes.

Relationships we will accept: direct price and product feeds (no money either direction); authorized-source verification; uniform affiliate participation under section 3; earned badges from our public index, where the grade is computed before any commercial conversation and cannot be appealed with money; paid access to a packaged view of a retailer's own competitive position, provided every fact in it is derivable from our free public data — they buy convenience and analysis, never information others can't get; and clearly-labeled advertising that is structurally outside the ranking and never reorders results.

Relationships we will refuse: paid placement or sponsored positions of any kind; higher commission producing a higher rank; exclusivity in any form; payment to suppress, soften, or delay a finding; payment to omit or de-emphasize a competitor; and affiliate-only catalog coverage.

5. Client revenue: The Plug Studio and advisory work

We sell services. The Plug Studio produces creative work for K-beauty brands and retailers, and we sell market-entry advisory and pricing intelligence. Those clients are often the same companies that appear in our rankings. Here is exactly how that is contained.

Structural separation. The Plug Studio operates as a distinct business under its own name. Client work is never sold, pitched, or delivered with any reference to editorial coverage, ranking position, or tier status — not as a benefit, not as an aside, not as an implication.

A twelve-month cooling-off. A Plug Studio or advisory client is ineligible for Featured status for twelve months from the end of the engagement. They remain eligible to be Listed and Verified, because those are factual determinations — a company either exists in the catalog and either is or isn't an authenticated source — while Featured involves selection, and selection is where money could exert pressure.

Findings are not for sale. If our data shows something unflattering about a client — a bad price spread, an unauthorized-seller problem, a delisting — we publish it on the same schedule and in the same words we would use for anyone else. A client who asks us to change a published finding ends the engagement. That is not a threat; it is the term of business, and it is stated up front in every engagement.

Data clients get data, never position. Subscribers to our monitoring and intelligence products are buying measurement of a market they compete in. Purchasing it confers nothing else.

Everything is disclosed. A current list of every commercial relationship — feed partners, data clients, Studio clients, advertisers — is published and kept current.

6. What we publish about ourselves

• The ranking methodology, versioned, with every change dated and explained.
• Where our commission comes from, retailer by retailer.
• The catalog inclusion rule and every retailer currently excluded, with the reason.
• The complete commercial relationship list.
• Corrections, in place, with the original error visible rather than quietly edited away.

7. When we get it wrong

We will. The response is the same every time: correct it fast, say what happened in plain language, leave the correction visible, and if the cause was structural, change the structure and publish that change here.

If you think a ranking on this site was influenced by money, tell us and we will show you the computation. That offer is the whole point of building it this way.

Related: How we rank