Intro
I don’t know what it is about the colourpop drugstore that people like. What do I think of it? Is it because of its colour, or because of its price?
I don’t know. But I do know that people like it. And they spend money on them. It might just be something in the design or in the way they can access their products that appeals to people, but I think we can all agree this is a great idea and we want to share some thoughts about how we can take this further.
Our hope is as a team we continue to forge a strong relationship with our customers and make some really unique products for them—products which are clearly different from others on the market but which still make good use of our brand and sell well. The more unique products you develop, the more unique your branding becomes and the more distinctive your brand stands out from all the others on the market—and that’s when you start to get noticed and become a real player in an increasingly crowded market.
The Pros and Cons of Buying Drugstore Makeup
There is a certain stigma attached to buying make up in drugstores. The products are not particularly cheap, and some people don’t like the idea of trying new make up in a store.
I think the question is whether you think drugstore makeup sells better in the long run than online. Yes, yes, I know this isn’t a particularly scientific study. But I think it’s worth looking at the numbers anyway because they are important to look at.
First of all, let me start by saying that drugstore makeup is generally superior to high-end (online) makeup as far as color goes: when you buy high-end makeup online, it tends to come with a lot of shades that are either off-white or pink (which I find very annoying). But if you buy drugstore makeup online, you can usually get shades that are more natural looking and more flattering on your skin tone.
The other thing about drugstore makeup is that it tends to be more affordable: even more so than high-end makeup. If you do pay for your own product, it’s typically less expensive than what you can buy for $40+ on Amazon because of the higher margins drugstores charge for their product lines.
And finally, if you’re trying out new make up or trying to figure out what shade works best for your skin tone (or just because), I would say drugstore makes it easier because they have a ton of different brands and colors to choose from: while online brand names tend to have only a few colors (e.g., Kat Von D or Lips2) or ones that have been discontinued (e.g., Bourjois), there are so many off-brands available at drugstores (e.g., Colourpop). So even if you just want one shade or one brand of eyeshadow (which is often the bulk of what people buy), there’s no reason why your eyeshadow won’t match since most drugstores carry dozens and dozens of different shades from which to choose from!
This last point has two implications:
1) If you aren’t sure how natural looking something should be on your face, just pick out a big swatch of your favorite color from any color palette and try it on! You might find that something looks natural enough — if not exactly how “natural” is supposed to look — but still
Colourpop Makeup Review
Colourpop is a small, boutique makeup brand that has been growing at a steady pace. The brand has been around for eight years now, but it has experienced its share of ups and downs since its inception. From signing deals to pay them off early to getting sued by their former CEO, it’s a rollercoaster ride for the brand; but it keeps rolling along, eventually reaching its destination: hopefully becoming a household name!
The beauty of the larger growth plan is that you can benefit from some things you don’t have to do yourself. There are strategic advantages to hiring someone else to help you with marketing — not only will you get paid more (which can be a good thing), but your time is freed up for other things like product development and planning.
But there are also downsides: if you are self-employed or an indie developer who knows your own market well, you’re going to have to figure out how to get your product into stores in the first place. It may take months or even years of research and development (and hiring consultants) before you can bring your product into mass production. Not only will this cost money in terms of time and money invested, but there are additional costs involved too: shelf space and shelf life (not just increased production costs, but also wasted sales); inventory management; customer service; and customer loyalty (what happens when your brand becomes known as the cheap knockoff?).
Colourpop doesn’t want any part of this — they want their products in stores on launch day. This means they need to do some heavy lifting themselves — marketing their products locally on social media before launch day is already costly enough without having to spend more time doing it themselves! They also need to make sure they focus on their own community as much as possible during launch week so customers don’t associate Colourpop with other brands — which is why we recently covered how local bloggers can help with that too.
The Best Colourpop Products
We have been selling colourpop cosmetics in our drugstore for almost a decade. It was always a great business and we are excited to see the product expand into more channels thanks to the launch of our e-commerce site www.colourpop.com and the recent partnership with international beauty brand, Sephora.
You don’t have to be an entrepreneur to think about this stuff, but it is worth spending some time on your own company strategy, especially if you are also a founder of a company you don’t own or control yet (or at least one you do not own or control).
It is just one of many things that makes good business sense in the long run; but it is also important to stay focused on your core business: making awesome products and selling them in your drugstore.
Conclusion
A lot of people have been asking me to write something about my product launch. I’m happy to oblige them, but I can’t do it in the form of a list of things that went really well or didn’t go well. I want to write about what worked and what didn’t work. And on top of that, I want to look at the mistakes we made so we can learn from them and make sure they don’t happen again.
I’ll begin with an analogy: the colourpop drugstore (which is what you might call us), which was launched back in 2011 as a way for me (at the time) and my co-founder (now our Chief Architect) to integrate our ideas into a real world product.
The drugstore was stuffed full of products from Apple, Amazon, Target; it was a spectacular failure — and yet today it is one of our best known products. And guess what? It wasn’t just us that made this happen — we did it because we thought it would work!