By Liliana Gonzalez
Motlow Buzz Contributing Writer
Motlow Buzz Contributing Writer
SMYRNA -- I was about 15 years old when I first started wearing makeup. At 16 years old, I remember trying to glue on a pair of eyelashes for the first time, and it was a nightmare! It took a whole 45 minutes to glue them on correctly. Halfway through the process, I glued one of my eyes together.
Now I think back and laugh at that memory. I can get both eyelashes perfectly on in a total of five minutes. At the age of 20 today, I have worked in the beauty industry for two years. I was a prestige makeup artist for Ulta Beauty for two years.
I have learned many things while working in the beauty industry, including networking, upselling, and most importantly making the customer feel beautiful. There are a lot of perks that come with working in this field. However, there are also many negatives.
In this article, I will share what it is like to work at a retail beauty store, some beauty tips and tricks, how to not break the bank when buying makeup, and the experiences I have gone through.
When you are working for a retail beauty store, the goal is obviously to upsell the most you can. When a customer asked us for help, we were trained to listen to the customer and always start with the most expensive high-end product to recommend to the customer.
I believe this way is flawed because I knew that there were products that worked just fine that were lower priced. For example, a customer would ask for a glitter primer. My job was to recommend the “Too Faced Glitter Glue Glitter Shadow Primer,” which retailed for $20. This was even though I knew that the “NYX Professional Makeup Glitter Primer” retailed for $6.49 and worked exactly the same as the higher-end one.
I could not tell the customer my personal knowledge and experience while comparing the higher-end products to the lower-end products. I did not like that, so I always broke the rules. In my opinion, that is the right thing to do. Women of all ages would come to me and ask me in confidence what best suited them. Morally, I felt like I had to be honest with them. I knew my morals were not lining up with the company’s ethics. Although this was one negative, I believe the positives outweighed that.
My favorite part of working in the beauty industry was practicing the craft that I adore, all day, every day. My job was to make women and men feel beautiful and help them when they came to me for advice or for a makeover. It felt amazing when I knew I was teaching someone something new and their eyes would light up with excitement as they gained knowledge. I always gave it my all when it came to giving people makeovers. My clients would always return to me, and that felt amazing!
People are always curious to know if we ever got free makeup. The answer is yes, all the time. Apart from having your major discount of 25 percent off various products (which is a lot when it comes to buying expensive makeup), sometimes the brands will double this amount to 50 percent. For example, our normal discount was offered all the time, but some weeks a brand would double it. Brands do this because they are fighting for the employees to try their brands, so that we can sell their products to customers and increase sales. I also networked a lot with the different makeup companies’ vendors. The vendors are the people who represent a brand at the store.
Every week, there were vendors who came in for every brand. Your goal was to be their friend and act like their brand was the best one in the store. It was all about getting close to the vendor. That way, they could give you free products in return. I know it sounds bad, but that was the way it worked. You had to be likeable and sell yourself to these brands.
For example, the "TooFaced" brand vendor would come into the store, and I would have to fight with the other girls for attention. Not literally, but we would all try and get alone time with the vendor and try to talk to them as much as we could. I have to admit I did get free makeup this way. I got the “Too Faced Sweet Peach Eyeshadow Palette” for free, which retails for $49. Another perk was the training for new product launches.
In the beauty industry, new products are being launched all the time, and customers are always looking for the newest, hottest products out there. We would have parties in the store for employees only when a product would launch. We would get to try new products that had not hit the shelf yet and take it home for free to try it out. That is where our knowledge for products would come from. With so many products in the store, we could not give customers advice if we had never personally tried the product.
One of the major things I have learned from working in the beauty industry that I am sharing with you today is to not always trust the sales reps at beauty stores. They are always going to try to upsell to meet their personal goal. They are most likely lying half of the time when talking about a beauty product with you.
I made the mistake of trusting a different beauty store representative when I was 15 years old. I walked in not knowing what I was doing, and I asked an employee for help. She convinced me into buying expensive items that were awful. When I got home, I cried. I learned my lesson and turned to watching makeup tutorials online instead for advice.
The online beauty world is so massive today that you can get all of the latest info every week from hundreds of girls on YouTube. They are sent makeup for free encourage them to give their honest opinions on it. They share to the audience what is actually worth your money, and they will even teach you techniques on how to apply the makeup. That is truly the best way to go into the makeup world.
There are many online beauty bloggers with the latest tips and tricks. A very popular one can be found at https://intothegloss.com/
Overall, working in the beauty industry is fun and exciting. I encourage every beauty fanatic to try it.
The most important thing I can leave you with is a quote by Coco Chanel: “A smile is the best makeup anyone can wear.”
Makeup empowers people of all ages and genders, and it is a beautiful artistry in which you can express yourself any way.
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