1. Intro
Urban Decay is a brand that has been around for a long time, and has established themselves as a household name in the beauty industry. However, they now seem to be producing products which are quite similar to other brands.
This is a problem, because Urban Decay’s sale figures have dropped recently, and if this trend continues it will probably be hard for them to maintain their position in the market.
What can we do? Well, we could try and rebrand them, but this would be an expensive affair and would require a massive re-design of their entire website, at great cost. Our research suggests that Urban Decay may not have an answer to this problem: they may be stuck with the problem forever.
2. What is a Brow Box?
Urban Decay Brow Box dupe Urban Decay Brow Box dupe Urban Decay Brow Box dupe Urban Decay Brow Box dupe Urban Decay Brow Box dupe Urban Decay Brow Box dupe Urban Decay Brow Box dup
3. Double Duty Beauty
Urban Decay is one of the larger, more established brands on the beauty landscape. The brand has become popular with young people, but is that all? It’s early, but I do think it will have a lot of staying power and sustain long term, especially among women who are looking for an alternative to chemical-laden beauty products.
It doesn’t hurt that they have a couple of products that are really, really good. Urban Decay’s double-duty beauty product is called Urban Decay Brow Box. This tiny little box contains two eyebrow pencils and a brow gel. One pencil is for sparse brows and the other for thicker brows. They retail for $24 each and the formula is quite good (and inexpensive). I think this will be a great branding tool for Urban Decay.
The anti-product dupe comes from Caudalie’s TruBouche Facial Treatment Mask (which also retails under different names). The TruBouche Mask ($39) has been around since at least 2004 (as far as I can tell), so it might be a bit old hat (but many people still use it). On the other hand, if you see someone using it on Instagram or Twitter constantly…well, I guess you know where this goes…
4. The New Urban Decay Brow Box and My Thoughts on it
I have to admit that I’m a little bit of a newbie when it comes to brow products — I started with Laura Mercier, then Jouer and finally NYX cosmetics. I’ve always liked the idea of filling in brows, but I’ve never been able to achieve the look that I wanted. It wasn’t until recently that I decided to try Urban Decay’s new brow box and was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked.
The box itself is very aesthetic in design. It seems like any other pretty taupe/coral/brown/gray palette you could think of. It also reminds me a bit of the packaging for Laura Mercier Brow Powder ($48).
The first thing that struck me about the box is how large it is. Every product inside feels substantial and worth opening up. Even if you don’t like what you see — which for me was some gray palletized powder — it probably contains something good and useful, like three or four eyeshadow shades instead of one (which would not have been ideal if you wanted to use all three colors on your lids). The second thing I noticed was how well everything was packed around the powder. You don’t see this much with some indie brands; they tend to pack everything in one large bag and hope no one will notice anything out of place (it usually works for them). Urban Decay does an amazing job at packing the powders individually so each piece can be used more effectively by its intended user — which encourages experimentation and discovery over customization (similarly, Laura Mercier packs everything in one big bag). The third thing that struck me was how lightweight everything felt when I used their products; almost as light as my Laura Mercier Light Staging Powder ($49) which is much heavier than this Urban Decay product (which is actually lighter than my Laura Mercier Light Staging Powder.) For example, when I use Urban Decay Primer Potion ($35), even though it feels heavier than the Urban Decay brow box dupe Urban Decay Eyebrow Gel ($15) , it doesn’t feel nearly as stiff or bulky as my Laura Mercier eyebrow gel does (despite being about 1/4-1/5th as heavy).
And there are a few reasons why this product works so well:
• It’s designed to be used with only two fingers; otherwise your fingers get coated with powder from brushing against
5. What’s in the new UD Brow Box?
If you’ve been following the UD Blog and my Twitter feed for the last couple of months, you may have noticed that I was pretty excited about a new UD Brow Box. It’s a little different from what we are used to (read: we can’t quite believe it!). I think the new box is going to be awesome and I hope you do too.
So what changed? A lot!
What’s in the new box? The design of the product has been totally overhauled. It is an entirely new product with a completely new look, feel and function.
The first thing to know: there are no longer any “oversized, oversized hairspray-like drops” inside this box (and in fact, there aren’t any hairsprays at all). It is now a palette of 10 beautiful lipsticks in shades ranging from wearable to bold and everything in between. Each lipstick has its own unique character while still sharing some of UD’s iconic color palettes like Nude Stay Matte or Nude Glow, which are always available in our stores as well as online and at your local drugstore.
Each lipstick comes housed inside its own plastic case so they don’t end up looking messy when they run out of space inside the box.
The whole idea behind this packaging is to make sure that the product stays fresh, even if it sits on your counter for months (which is one reason why those colored boxes all look so different). There’s also a bonus liner pen included with each lipstick so that you can write your name or something on it (which will also help protect your lipstick from stains).
The new product feels much more modern and sleek than before. For example, there are no more bulky brushes included with each lipstick because they are gone now — instead, there’s a smaller wooden brush that’s perfect for applying cream blush or bronzer (in addition to extending UD brushes’ life). And since these lippies can be applied with either fingers or brushes, they won’t end up looking clumpy when they run out of space in the plastic case — just like how their matte lipstick counterparts won’t get clumpy if you over apply them either!
Also brand spanking new: UD has created 10 gorgeous shade names which will help you match your lips perfectly every time! You’ll soon find yourself using these names every day as though they were your own! In fact, I use them
6. Dupe List (with swatches)
Urban Decay Brow Box
It’s great to be back. I know we were off for a few months, but I am happy to be back with this quickie. It’s good to see you again, and I hope you will join us for the full review soon! Stay tuned.
7. My Fave Eyebrow Products of All
This is a short post about my favourite urban decay brow products. I think they are the best and most useful for their price range:
1) The Urban Decay Brow Base. It gives you a good base for filling in your brows with and it’s very inexpensive.
2) The Urban Decay Eyebrow Tools (pencils & tweezers). These waxed tweezers actually work better than anything else I have used, even more so than the $30 NYX ones (which just let you drag things along the brow hairs, not pick them up).
3) The Urban Decay Brighter Brow Gel. This is actually really good; it gives your brows more of a “highlighter” effect, which is what it’s supposed to do.
4) The Urban Decay Subculture Highlighting Powder. This stuff works great! I use it as an eyeshadow base after a couple of layers of the powder to get more fullness without having to add too much product or make them too dark. I find that it stays pretty well on my eyelids with little fallout onto other makeup, but also gives me excellent control over where exactly on my face I want that effect to happen, so that if I need to blend any shadow or highlight into an area, I can do so easily and with no fallout at all! And it’s only $5!
5) The Urban Decay Moisture Brow Pencil (not pictured). It’s super cheap ($6), but its double-ended pencil works incredibly well as well; if you get the right color for your hair type, you can create a more natural look by using this when applying eyebrow makeup.