Big beauty brands are exploiting the changing consumer habits triggered by the pandemic.
These new habits have also given way to smaller beauty companies, which are now capturing consumers’ full attention through online advertising. Kim roxie, founder of Lamik Beauty, focused its activity on online sales before the pandemic. But she still hoped to reach new customers through festivals and trade shows before the coronavirus shut everything down.
To accommodate, the Lamik Beauty team created quizzes to recommend products to customers online. Now Roxie is hosting a weekly virtual makeup event on Facebook called “Friday night live“where subscribers can participate in beauty and wellness conversations and get advice from home.
“I knew at this point that the best thing I could do was be friends with a woman and show her how to do makeup on her own,” Roxie says. “That’s how I saw myself running to his rescue.
Lamik Beauty is a vegan and organic beauty line that offers a wide choice of shades for women of color. Roxie started the line before many beauty brands started entering this space.
Roxie says clients tell her Lamik Beauty has helped them get through the mental health pandemic. The brand aims to help customers “see beauty as a joy rather than a chore,” she says. “Friday Night Live” and live shopping with an expert allow the brand to continue to support customers safely instead of going online.
The beauty industry is now focused on personal care, wellness and agency. Revlon’s recent slogan is “You don’t need to wear makeup, # ButThatHelp. “And Olay announced that he would stop skin retouch by the end of the year. Many brands also offer a wider range of shades and showcase different types of women, a true reflection of our society.
Women who reflect on their authenticity are driving this change in the industry, says Roxie.
“Beauty is revealed, not applied. And I always felt that way. I’ve always seen it that way, ”she says. “I think the place we’re going to now is healthier and a place where we can really grow and women can really be themselves.”
Claudia Thompson, a Here Now auditor from Malden, Massachusetts, says she has abandoned her full coverage foundation routine during the pandemic since she works from home. Now she is trying new toners, astringents, and thicker moisturizers to help her dry skin. And a listener named Liz DeAndrade, 28 from Boston, says she tried black-owned brands like Black Radiance during the pandemic.
“As a woman of color, I feel like I have to go out of my way to find makeup that is right for me while being advertised for me,” says DeAndrade.
Black-owned beauty brands don’t have the same marketing and appeal as others, Roxie says, but the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement have helped consumers discover lines like hers.
“The highlight for us to go through this pandemic still as a living brand was this movement,” she says. “We saw so much traction around consumers looking for us – non-black and black – that it felt like we had to start leveling the playing field for your black-owned brand.”
Marcelle Hutchins produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Tinku radius. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web.
