Intro
Laneige has a unique beauty factor. It’s a lipstick that doesn’t look at all like lipstick. Laneige is so different from lipstick. Laneige has no colour. It is just a beautiful liquid lipstick that dries instantly and looks the same on your lips even when you are eating oily food or drinking water. For example, I can eat oily food and still look as well-maintained as I would normally. No matter how much oil might be in your food, it will not stain your lips at all!
The problem is that people don’t understand what that means because they haven’t seen it work before, because they have never seen the real thing, because their expectations for what a “lipstick should look like” have not been met, etc., etc…
So, let’s do this together! Here are three red lipsticks swatches from each company. We will be using the actual products and not Photoshop to illustrate the difference between Laneige and its competitors:
(1) Clio – Clio isn’t just a simple liquid lipstick; but it also looks just like any other liquid lipstick. You would expect it to be easy to wash off if you were so inclined – after all, you can wash your hands with it! But actually washing off this liquid lipstick takes more effort than washing off any other liquid lipstick (and more effort than brushing off powder foundation).
But there are two things you should know about this matte liquid lipstick: one: it doesn’t feel oily (in fact it feels quite dry!), two: you want to apply as little pressure as possible on your lips since you don’t want to blot out your lip colours or make them streaky (which will happen when you press too hard). The result is that this type of matte liquid lipstick does not only keep your lip colour on for longer times – but also lasts anywhere from 3 hours to 4 hours without reapplying lip colours [1]. This gives you an idea of how much time people spend without reapplying lip colours with Laneige and how long Laneige wears before reapplying lip colours!
(2) Avon – Avon was introduced by Mary Kay in 1985. Mary Kay was known for her large cosmetics empire in the US back then and she also came up with many of the “Mary Kay Products,” which were expensive affordable popular products then. 🙂 She sold
The History of Laneige
The swatches below are from my first ever Laneige product launch. I’d like to think that I was a bit of a perfectionist, and that the idea of reviewing products with multiple shades spread over several pages was something that really excited me.
I had no idea how big it would be, so I took advantage of some early preparation and had one of my colleagues help me pick out swatches for the front page. In retrospect, I probably should have saved the project for later in the year, but even so it was a huge undertaking for me (I got caught up in the excitement!).
The reason I am sharing this is because it illustrates nicely the importance of having an internal team to support you during launch. There is no way to get any real value out of this particular product launch without working closely with your internal team — and this was one of my first attempts at launching a product on my own.
I hope you enjoy these!
Laneige’s Product Line
When it comes to lipsticks, there are a lot of options out there. There are some good options and some bad ones.
The good ones usually have a higher price tag (the high price tag is usually justified by the quality of the product), they are also typically well-reviewed, they last longer than most other lipsticks, and they don’t dry out on you. The bad ones are typically not as good, may not perform as well in the heat, or may not last as long.
So how do you know which is which? It’s pretty simple: if the product is black and oval-shaped with an open center and a bit of shine in its base — you’re looking at a bad one. If it has a swirly pattern on its lid — that’s a good one. And if it smells like fruit or flowers — that’s also a good one.
Now, this is all just advice to help you figure out what lipstick to buy next time — but I’ve found that lots of our customers really enjoy asking me for help when they’re trying to decide what lipstick to get next time around (which has led me to develop this post…). So please read on!
Laneige Lipstick Swatches
A few weeks ago I posted a photo on Flickr of Laneige’s new lipstick, the “Lipstick Swatches”. Due to the nature of our business and even more so because I am in a part-time capacity, I don’t get out and do much product photography. Of course, sometimes I catch an interesting moment when somebody is eager enough to pose for me that I can make some decent work out of it. But now we have a new product launch in the works and we are going to be doing some product photography soon.
The photo above was taken at a restaurant in Singapore where they have a huge wall of Laneige lipsticks that you can just reach up and check out the swatches. In this case we had a nice woman who was especially interested in Laneige Jeju Blackberry Scented Lipstick (she knew about it from being at the launch event), so we got her to pose for us.
We thought it might be fun to do some swatch photography for this post as well since there were several people who were really interested in seeing them:
Here are your online swatch photos from last night:
I think you can see how two different shades contrast nicely on their own, but also how these two shades contrast together (the red shade is supposed to be the same shade as Laneige Jeju Blackberry Scented Lipstick).
I think you can also see how my hands look in these pictures; they do not match exactly what was done by Laneige himself (or his team) but they are very close! You know that old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”? Well, here are two pictures worth hundreds of words:
Click on any picture below to go directly to that picture!
Further Reading
I’m not the most prolific reader of reddit, but I have read a few great pieces on this topic. In particular, I’d like to recommend three for you:
In case you don’t know who Jason is, he is a former tennis prodigy turned entrepreneur and founder of the startup laneige. Here is a link to his interview with Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/jason-mccurdy-laneige-talks-about-his-motivating-and-creative