To me, BaB should be around the same price point as City Color or BH Cosmetics. Using City Color as a comparison, I have the BaB Bora Bora quad, which states on the package that there is 0.17 oz of product for $16. I also have the City Color Collection 4 quad, which has a total of 0.12 oz of product for $5. Both companies have a similar look to their packaging and both were launched in 2011. City Color is the same, or a sister company, of Beauty Plus Global, a private label company. However, that doesn't bother me, because they seem to be upfront about it, as it's on their contact page.
I've looked around to see if I could find a shadow quad on Sephora or Ulta for $16 or less, that wasn't a store branded product. The only quad I could find was the Maybelline Eye Studio quads, which are going for $9.99 on Ulta and have 0.09 oz of product (doesn't say online, but I own several of them and looked). Math isn't my strength, but the Eye Studio quads have a bit more than half the product of the BaB quad, so the price point would be fairly close to even. Ulta also has several more palettes under $16, (Maybelline The Nudes for $9.99, Physician's Formula Shimmer Stripes Nudes for $11.99, and NYX Dream Catcher palette for $14.99), just to throw out some brands and numbers.
I do realize that I personally am getting over a bias against companies that I've never heard of or haven't seen in retail stores. Doing subscription services and being active on MUT have helped me to explore brands that I never would have tried in the past, such as Bab and City Color, both of which I was initially introduced to by Ipsy.
The first BaB product I received was the Lip Crayon in Hot Damn. The color was brighter than what I was used to, but worked well with my skintone, so I figured it would be a nice introduction to bright lip colors. It applied fine, but had absolutely no lasting power. It was priced at $14 and I wouldn't buy another at that price point, just based on the quality. The next month, I received The One Stick in Girl Crush and that was an all around disaster for me. The dusty Barbie pink/purple color looked terrible with my skintone and the product was gritty. Part of the grittiness could have been because of the shimmer/glitter, but I suspect that it had more to do with the actual product not being mixed properly. A million years ago, I used to make my own body products and the biggest problem I had initially was heating the ingredients to the proper temperature to get them to blend smoothly. Too high and things would separate; too low and things would be gritty. I realize that I'm comparing apples to oranges, but I think the same quality control issues would apply.
A couple of months later, I received a City Color blush in Fresh Melon. It looked insanely bright in the pan, but blended fantastically, easily held up to my oily skin, and it ended up being one of my go-to blushes this summer. I liked it so much that I placed a decent sized order and have been very happy with every product I've used.
I haven't ordered anything from BaB, because 2 of the 4 products I've tried were lackluster quality and that, along with their price point, turned me off to placing an order. With City Color, I only received one product, but it was great quality and I figured that even if their shadows or lip products were half the quality of the blush, their prices were low enough that I was ok with getting some duds.
Before I started with sub boxes, I was strictly a drugstore makeup user; Cover Girl, Maybelline, Loreal, Revlon, Rimmel. I've now expanded my horizons and enjoy brands like Urban Decay, Too Faced, Benefit, theBalm, Tarte, NYX, ELF, BH Cosmetics, and City Color. If it wasn't for subs, I wouldn't have tried the other drugstore priced brands or realized that higher priced cosmetics could be worth their prices.
I realize this is a lengthy post, but this is the thought process I go through when I'm evaluating products I'm not familiar with that come in subscription boxes.
