Tag: beauty industry

Fragrances were born as soon as man began walking upright and discovered fire. Logs of cedarwood and oak were thrown into the fire and fragrant smoke drifted upwards. Prehistoric man had released the beautiful scents of trees and plants. He would burn these materials and create scents that would honor his gods and protect him from evil spirits and illness.
Each geographic area has its own flora and fauna, and they produce different scents. Even in today’s world, different cultures and localities prefer different scents. And we are always challenged to produce globally-pleasing fragrances.
Fragrances are still used for spiritual and medicinal purposes, but in the beauty industry, we want to make things smell good. Fragrances mask the maladies of our world and please our sense of smell. We use fragrance to adorn our bodies and improve our surroundings. For most, their fragrance is their final accessory used to complete the way they look and feel.
The natural materials used for the creation of fragrances have remained the same for centuries. We still use all types of plants and all different parts of the plant, including flowers, roots, leaves, stems, grass, bark, wood, and seeds. We obtain their oils through a variety of methods.
Distillation: We distill the plant materials using steam and water to obtain the oils.
Extraction: We extract their precious essences using carbon dioxide or other volatile solvents.
Expression: We express the oils using abrasion and pressure. This method is especially used for citrus oils so that no heating is involved.
At one time, we used by-products from animals, such as ambergris from whales, but we no longer do that. Animal cruelty regulations and the continued decrease in animal populations stopped these practices. We have created animal-type odors using aromatic chemicals.
Organic chemistry has allowed us to create aromatic chemicals which smell similar to natural ingredients and which can be mixed and matched to take the place of natural ingredients. These chemicals are created from petroleum and turpentine. They allow us to produce much larger quantities and provide less expensive materials to work with. Perfumer has a much larger palette of individual odors to turn into beautiful fragrances.
For the perfumers, raw materials are their notes, their inspiration, their language, and the components of their olfactive memories. One thing remains the same. We identify the materials we work with to create fragrances by the way they smell. We classify them in the same way that visual artists classify colors and musicians classify sounds.

We’re in for a really big change. Things are changing before our eyes now; the retail experience is totally different from what it used to be. We’re also going to see a lot of movement.

The people that are going to be successful are the ones that are aware of how people are shopping. Hopefully, people will go back into the store, but a lot is happening online. But how do you sell makeup online? You’ve got to be creative.

One piece of advice to anyone that wants to be an entrepreneur — because who doesn’t want to work for themselves — is to make sure you have something or an idea that is better than anything out there. Bobbi Brown, a makeup artist/author/entrepreneur says “It’s got to be new. It’s got to be better. Make sure you know you’re going to be working 24 hours a day. You never stop thinking about it.”

I also recommend working for a company. Go work for a big company, because then you’ll know what you don’t want to do. You’ll learn how to act, how to arrive on time, and how to write spreadsheets. The more you know, the better you do. There’s no rush.

Brown says there are three traits he loves to see when people want to get into the beauty industry. Number one: energy. You need to have good and positive energy.

You also need to be really curious. I don’t care what you know. I care what you want to know.

The third thing, which everyone says, is passion. You have to love what you do. You have to love the industry you’re in.

Hannah Bronfman, founder of HBFIT sits down with us and provides advice on how to get a career in the beauty industry and push yourself out of your comfort zone

“I think the advice that I would give to my younger self would be don’t feel awkward about cold calling and reaching out blind,” says Hannah Bronfman, founder of HBFIT. “I think there’s something to be said about a go-getter and someone who knows what they want and how to get it, or at least how they think they know how to get it.”

When you cold call someone and you have a heart and soul behind what you’re trying to achieve, that comes through. Maybe the first time, the person doesn’t answer the email but emails them again. Persistence is key.

A specific area of the beauty industry that’s changed via technology is the booking platforms. Hannah says a lot of these companies have created their own SaaS products, which is a statistical analytics system that is like the brain of a lot of these apps. Whether it’s Glam Squad, the Glamm app, Style Seat, all of these programs and technologies have created a new way that people interact with beauty and the way that beauty is booked for the professional and the consumer.

It’s brought the beauty world to a full on-demand system just like everything else that we see. So I think technology has an impact on the product and the way it’s designed.

Every single brand is trying to recreate the lipstick or foundation, lotions, gels that finish matte or true match a color, or lipstick that looks blue, but it’s going to turn bright pink. I think everyone’s trying to do this kind of surprise and delight using technology to help create a different product that hasn’t been to the market yet, says Hannah.

To prepare for an interview, you can do a few things differently. One, do your research, know who you’re being interviewed by, and know the trajectory of their career.

For the company that you’re interviewing for, know their past big product launches and what has gone on in the news.

Consider: Have they raised money? Have they been acquired? Did they go through a recall?

“Those are things that you want to know before an interview. And I think some other things that you can do is, always, if you’re going into a beauty meeting, wear lipstick, wear eye shadow, nothing that’s flashy, but something that says you’re an enthusiast,” Hanna explains. “And always be polite, take your time when you’re speaking. It comes off a lot better when you don’t say the word like or um.”

Jeanne Grey, founder of GreyLayers says that cosmetics and beauty as a whole can change one’s personality. “When I was little, I used to observe my mom and how she got ready in the morning and completely transform from a completely simple person into somebody different. I saw how her personality changed along with that and I thought that was amazing. I wanted to grow up and see how I can do that for other people as well,” explains Grey.

Grey says about beginning her career as a social media beauty expert, “My advice to the younger me would be to just be you and just let things flow. And eventually, with experience, all the trial and errors counted in too, everything will just work out.”

The most common mistake that Grey has seen in the beauty industry is people not being prepared prior to getting into the career. She says, “You have to treat this career as you would any other career, being a lawyer, a doctor, any important one.” She also emphasizes being business savvy and professional. “This industry, especially because it is an easy play, you know playing with cosmetics, products and different kinds of experiences, you easily forget to be professional.”

One of the ways Grey has found success in her career is by putting together case studies. These case studies are reports of a certain niche project that she’s done in the past. “For instance, as an influencer, I have done projects for a lot of hospitality brands,” says Grey. In order to land a gig with a beauty brand, Grey creates a slideshow that ties in her hospitality background of traveling and creating content. She then combines beauty into that by showing them that she was able to use beauty products throughout her trip. “I highlight how I was able to create that and capture my audience at the same time.”

The beauty industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it takes three key traits to become a success story in this competitive field. Juliet Falchi, the director of global product innovation for MAC Cosmetics, shares a few tips with readers on how to make your mark.

Whether you’re focusing on the beauty business side, makeup artistry, beauty education, online beauty education, or cosmetics research and development, this growing industry requires hard work and dedication.

“There’s a rhyme, a reason, and a science to why we do everything that we do,” said Falchi. “There’s a lot of work, thought, and testing involved.”

Falchi believes there are three traits an aspiring beauty professional should possess in order to be successful: the first is to be flexible, adaptive, and willing to learn. The beauty industry is an extremely fast-paced environment where things are constantly changing.

“You have to know you may be working on a project for months about matte lips,” said Falchi. “Someone may come to you and say, stop what you’re doing. You need to focus on metallics. This is the new trend.”

A successful beauty professional must be able to adapt and go with the flow. There is no syllabus when it comes to working in the beauty industry as new research and trends emerge. Flexibility is key.

Number two: being collaborative is super important. You can’t work in a silo. The beauty industry means working with other people who have different opinions, backgrounds, and interests than you. When you all come together to share ideas and concepts, you can create something incredible. You may have one piece of the puzzle, but you need all these diverse people to create the rest.

Lastly, Falchi says the third trait you need is to be passionate about beauty and truly love what you’re doing. That passion will shine through you and everything you do.

The beauty business is quite competitive and fast-paced, but there are three important traits that will help you succeed. Jihan Thompson, the co-founder and CEO of Swivel Beauty, believes persistence is number one.

Persistence means not giving up, whether you’ve heard no a million times or you’ve tried and failed. Keep figuring out solutions, advance your online beauty education, hone your craft, and keep improving. This level of persistence and not taking no for an answer is incredibly important.

Number two, be a risk taker. Be willing to say yes when others say no. Be willing to put yourself out there, even if it feels a little bit scary. Your willingness to take risks helps get you to that next level in your beauty career. It will put you in a position for massive opportunities for growth. Put yourself out there.

Take those calculated risks. No matter how scary they are, those are the ones that are going to really help grow your career.

Lastly, Thompson says to focus on being business-minded. While the beauty industry can be such a creative field, it’s also super important to have business acumen. Think about how you’re going to strategically grow your business and invest in your ongoing beauty education. Contemplate how you’re going to get from where you are to where you want to go, your dreams and goals, and the steps you’ll need to take to get there.

Don’t be afraid to think about the business side of things too at the start of your beauty career. When you put all of those traits together – you’re persistent, a risk taker, and understand the business side of what you’re doing – it creates a triple threat and helps you grow in your business.

When it comes time to formulate products, you can certainly hire someone to come up with your product concepts and a general ingredient brief to pass off to a chemist to formulate, but you don’t have to go that route.

To find a lab, you can Google contract manufacturers and cold call them to set up intro calls.

“We found the lab we launched our first four products with through an ingredient supplier who supplies some of the best natural and organic oils and extracts to labs around the world,” says one beauty product producer. “We said, ‘Listen, you work with all these labs. If you were creating your own product line, which lab would you partner with?’”

“I wasn’t looking to go to a big box lab that everybody uses, because then I was going to get formulas that everyone else has,” adds the producer.

Each lab has its own product brief form that includes the ingredients you want to use, the ingredients you don’t want to use, specifics about the percentages you want in your formula, marketing ingredient callouts, and the viscosity—whether you want it thin, like a serum, or whether you want it thick. The lab asks about the packaging components you’re going to be using for that formula because they can’t create a dense cream if it’s going to need to come out of a pump.

You’ll send the completed product brief to your chemist. Then, you’ll have a call with your chemist and you’ll pay a fee for the product development.

The fee is usually quite small. Labs aren’t charging $50,000 to formulate a product. They’re charging more like $1,500.

Where labs make their money is when you place your order for 10,000 units or 100,000 units or a million units, explains the producer.

“The one thing I found to be extremely helpful was having a contract right out of the gate with the lab that specifies formula ownership,” says the producer. “You want to own your formulas. Most brands don’t know this, so they launch their brand without owning their formulas. And if you don’t own your formula, the labs don’t ever give you the recipe.”

Like all other consumer-based industries in recent decades, the beauty industry has undergone an enormous change. There are a lot of reasons for this.

The internet has impacted every possible business on the globe. This is partly to blame for the changes within the beauty industry. But I think the beauty industry is also very cyclical.

It goes through periods when larger brands and corporations are very powerful. Then it switches to periods where small businesses dominate the industry.

Until around a decade ago, the beauty industry was all about the big companies. We’re all familiar with Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, Avon, and Revlon. They’re the most well-known beauty brand across the world.

But we’re now at a point in the cycle where the beauty industry is much more consumer-driven and customers are much more excited about smaller businesses. And it’s not just the beauty industry. It’s also the fashion and food industries too. The small players aren’t faced with the same challenges that they use to be.

The Internet has enabled any business, no matter how big or small, to become global. They can create a stunning website and build their social media accounts to grow an audience quickly. The internet has given businesses the chance to grow but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will have the resources to keep up with this growth.

But this is much less challenging than it used to be. It’s less expensive and requires fewer resources. The barriers to entry are much smaller but you usually need a large volume of resources to keep your business going.

The biggest shift in the industry is the move towards smaller businesses. The second biggest shift is the shift in consumerism.

The beauty industry is now more personal and consumer involvement is tenfold what it was just 15-20 years ago.

Writing a headline for digital is very different from writing a headline for print. [INSERT SPEAKER HERE] believes that was actually probably one of the hardest things about switching over to digital after about four or five years in print. “When you’re writing for the magazine, a headline needs to get your point across in two to three words. You’re looking at idioms, and song lyrics, and movie titles to find a witty, kind of fun way to express the story in such a succinct manner,” explains [INSERT SPEAKER HERE].

When it comes to digital, the headline needs to do a number of things. It needs to draw the reader in, and it needs to make it clear what they’re about to read. The story online is only as strong as the headline. No one’s going to read it if it doesn’t have a great headline. “Think about all of the things that you see on your Facebook feed or your Twitter feed daily, and what you click on. It’s the headlines that draw you in, it really is,” says INSERT SPEAKER HERE].

[SPEAKER] explains the process of choosing a headline for digital copy, “At Allure, our process for a story is we submit three headlines for each story. One that’s super straight across, saying this is what you’re about to read. Then one that’s a little more vague. It kind of leaves the reader wondering, ‘what am I about to read? This is really interesting.’ Then the third can be a little bit more fun, funny, or witty. We actually have four or five editors from the social team and the editorial team weigh in on which headline we should use.”

Choosing a headline for digital is a real process. “There was definitely a transition of before, when we used to just-the writer used to just submit a headline that’s what went up, to when we put this process in.” [SPEAKER] believes this process has really strengthened the content and traffic numbers. “I think brainstorming a couple headlines is always super helpful for me when writing one for digital. And again, think about what would make you click, and that’s what you want to write.”

 “The most important point I’m going to talk on is mastering what I like to call the new language of beauty. I say ‘new language of beauty’ because the way we used to speak about it when I started seven or eight years ago was very different than it is today- especially online. When I was an editorial assistant first starting, we wrote about beauty in a way that hit at women’s fears- especially with aging. We talked about how to fix things and what you’re doing wrong,” Says Sophia Panych

Today you can’t speak like that. It’s a very different world. You need to talk about beauty in a way that’s less scary and more celebratory and fun because beauty is fun. Makeup is fun. Perfume is fun. It’s lighthearted.

We’re also much more inclusive than we’ve ever been. Inclusivity is a huge buzzword in the beauty industry right now, and for a very important reason. Magazines left out a big group of people, cultures, and races, and that’s something that we’ve been trying to be very aware of these days.

“For example, when you’re writing about hair and curls, we used to speak about curly hair as white girls with ringlets when there’s-that’s not the case at all,” Explains Panych. “Thinking about making sure you include all cultures and all different types of hair is important.”

We want to be more aware of age positivity and talk about skin care as you would fitness or health.

Not talking about skin care like have a wrinkle, it’s awful, and your life is over. Instead, talk about it in a way that’s not so dire and scary.

When writing about beauty online, it’s really important to speak about beauty in a modern way that focuses on positivity, that doesn’t focus on fear and negativity, one that focuses on health and wellness, and one that’s inclusive of all different types of beauty.