Beauty Is Starting To Feel Like A Sales Job + Other Random Industry Rants
" And I am not a sales lady." - Kayla Greaves
Hey friends and happy summer!
*relax your shoulders Stixx*
So sorry that I haven’t updated in a while. Between the Amazon live streams, influx of freelance editorial work, events, content creation + consulting, to say I’ve been busy is an understatement. Plus it’s summer and in my down time, I just want to be with my thoughts. The girls that get it, get it.
In true Stixx fashion, I’m going keep it brief, but I’m gonna keep it real: I’m sick of everything right now.
One could say that the beauty market has always been oversaturated, but the last couple of years have felt different — these last two years especially have been underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time.
The launches so far for 2024 have been a hit or miss. Many of us beauty vets are either really loving something or hating it all. There’s no grey area.
I will go out on a limb and say that I called these two things before EOY last year and top of 2024: A mass influx of blush and lip tints/oils.
In April, I had the pleasure of working with KraveBeauty PD’s team to help tweak lip oils/tints that they have coming out sometime in 2025 — it’s safe to surmise that the phenomena will most likely continue.
But to keep it a bean, I don’t want to see another blush launch at ALL! Personally, I feel like, Danessa Myricks, Juvia’s Place, Ami Colé, Patrick Ta and Rhode pretty much have the blush game on lock.
Yeah, the other girls are cute — but these brands mentioned, IMO met their audience on the right street. These blushes checked off all of the marks — but I dare not go into a sales pitch, because that’s the point of this entire rant. I’m am NOT a sales lady!
We know that the editorial space has gone over to the e-comm side, but I feel like many pubs are losing the plot: Beauty editors and writers are meant to cultivate the fantasy of beauty — not the trust fund of it. (That’s another story for another day.)
I miss my days at Glossier when we released products based off the desire + need of the community; not having to adhere to a retail calendar. Sephora + Ulta have certain metrics brand’s have to meet in order to keep shelf space, but the entire messaging of the brand gets lost when they’re pushing launches out with no real story behind them. This is partially why the beauty community is fatigued; in addition to a slew of other things tipping the scale.
Will I write about it here? Maybe, maybe not? The girls get upset when we start pressing them on their business practices and tbh it’s summah – I don’t have many think pieces in me.
All in all — I guess you can count this as, SHE”S BYKE!
Until next time.
xxStixx
Soo agree! I was JUST having this conversation. Beauty has gotten so boring and homogeneous if we really wanna wake it up