Inside the Allure store where anyone can be a beauty influencer
Glossy | 13 July 2021
While, traditionally, beauty stores are merchandised by brand or, in some more recent cases, category (i.e., cleanser, moisturizer, etc.), the Allure store is organized by headlines, displayed above the products, and meant to mock those in magazines. Some have actually served as headlines for stories on Allure’s website. Examples include “The Perfect Makeup Routine To Glow (Not Glisten) All Summer Long.” That shelf includes products like Ilia’s popular Super Serum Skin Tint and Emilie Heathe nail polish. The “Here’s How to Get Soft, Dewy Skin All Year Long” section features Lord Jones’ CBD-infused Royal Oil, Murad’s Retinol Youth Renewal Serum and products from lesser-known brands, like Celepiderme’s Multivitamin Ampoule and high-end indie brand Monastery’s Flora Botanical Cream Serum.
Digital Destination Beautytap Gathers Reviews By Beauty Professionals And Will Disperse Them To Retailers
Beauty Independent | 13 July 2021
The digital platform has morphed from a K-Beauty content website into a hub for nearly 50,000 beauty professionals, including hairstylists, makeup artists and aestheticians, providing their thoughts on offerings from brands such as Christophe Robin, Laneige, Sacheu, Restorsea, Goodal, Missha, Moon Mother Hemp and Kaplan MD. Now, it’s partnered with Bazaarvoice, the technology company facilitating user-generated content on e-commerce sites, to populate major retailers with the product reviews it collects from beauty professionals. “Our audience is very pro-sumer and, in polling our community, they said they would love to be able to learn digital skills to market themselves and be able to change with the beauty industry moving so rapidly to digital,” says Sun. “We started putting together a community network, doing community training and also connecting them with brands. That led into us really focusing on the review portion of getting independent reviews by professionals with a lens of diversity.” Beauty professionals are verified by Beautytap through a vetting process. They have to apply to the digital platform, and present their credentials and portfolios. It takes three to five days for the application process to be completed. Sun estimates Beautytap accepts only 10% of the people who apply to become verified beauty professionals. Once beauty professionals are verified, they have profile pages on the site featuring their biographies, and beauty characteristics like hair or skin types and concerns.
Hormone Testing Is Skincare’s Next Big Thing
Bazaar | 13 July 2021
Veracity, the first skincare line based on unique biofactors, launched just last month and aims to make skincare science more personal with the first-ever skin and health saliva test that measures indicators like hormones and pH level. “We are used to thinking of skin changes as cosmetic—problems to fix with spot treatments and serums,” founder Allie Egan tells BAZAAR.com. “They’re actually a reflection of what’s going on inside and are sending important signals about our health.” Vera David, a board-certified dermatologist at Good Dermatology, thinks that the future of medicine (and skincare) is in personalization. “I think personalized is the ideal; it’s just a matter of ensuring the uniformity of the products that are being created because the level of scrutiny that cosmeceuticals go through is not as strict as prescription medications,” she tells BAZAAR.com. “One day medicine will be super tailored—but we’re not there just yet.”
Stocking the shelves: Why direct-to-consumer brands want to go wholesale
Thing Testing | 12 July 2021
Direct-to-consumer brands can build fiercely loyal audiences before launching anything for sale. Take beauty brand Glossier for example. Glossier had 15,000 Instagram followers before it launched a single product. Because every interaction a direct-to-consumer brand has with consumers takes place online, they can track where the pain points are and what it is that keeps customers coming back for more. Even with that arsenal of data, it can take a long time for brands to build nationwide name recognition if they are only selling their products online. At some point in the journey, it becomes time to go wholesale. It’s a route that’s been explored by mattress-in-a-box brand Casper, which has deals with Target, Walmart and Macy’s, and utilized by the likes of grooming and razor brand Harry’s, which has struck retail partnerships with Target and Boots in the U.K. Other brands that have started selling their products in big retailers include customizable hair care company Function of Beauty, detox drink brand Dirty Lemon and vinegar maker Acid League.
How Bala became the ‘it’ fitness accessory of the pandemic
Glossy | 20 July 2021
Early in the pandemic, a select assortment of designated items became must-haves — symbols of our collective efforts to survive quarantine. For some, it was a sourdough starter. For others, it was Bala’s bangles — velcro wrist/ankle weights reinvented for the Instagram age. Bala first launched in March 2018. Holloway and Kislevitz were on vacation and went to a yoga class, which triggered a conversation about how dated fitness equipment, like ankle weights, had become. “Nobody uses them because they’re ugly,” Holloway said. Holloway DMe’d Melissa Wood-Tepperberg, influencer and founder of Melissa Wood Health, and offered to send her the product. At the time, Holloway said, “I think we had 1,000 followers.” Nonetheless, Tepperberg accepted the gift and wore the bangles, and the product “spoke for itself,” Holloway said. Bala bangles are now seen in many Melissa Wood Health videos. Tepperberg has since launched her own fitness equipment. In a March 2019 post, Bala tagged an Instagram post with Free People Movement, which resulted in the brand getting picked up by the retailer, which also proved an early boost for brand recognition and sales, Holloway said.