After receiving all my responses from my questionnaire of where people primarily purchase their makeup, 28% of people said they bought their makeup on the internet so I decided to further investigate the possibilities of where from. There are three main outlets online in which you can purchase makeup, The site itself (for example Benefit.com), a partnering site (for example BeautyBay.com), or thirdly from a website that sells a variety of branded products along side their own. By this I mean missguided.co.uk and similar sites.
Firstly I compiled a list of websites that sell branded goods along with their own, as this would allow me to research into sites that want to aim at the audience that are interested in makeup. I looked at clothing website popular in the Uk to compare and contrast what they sell and the variety of what they sell, giving me a wider knowledge of perhaps why they do / do not sell certain brands!
Asos
1The beauty section for this website was the largest out of all 6 I investigated, giving a total of 2398 items. They had such a large variety of both products and brands which was very interesting to me. ASOS seems to be one of those sites where you can buy anything fashion/beauty related without the need to visit any other sites. The item and brand they sold most of was MAC Cosmetics having 435 products available. Next on the list I saw NYX with 130 items, ranging from lipstick, to eye shadow and lashes. The interesting thing about this was that they sold 5 out of the 10 'Top 10 Beauty Brands in the UK', so in regards to my research prior to this post, ASOS stock 5 of the top 10 products this year. These include Benefit, L'Oreal, MAC, Maybelline and Rimmel London.
Price ranges...
As one of the things on my research list is to compare and contrast the prices of beauty products against each other, I decided to include it in this segment as it really allows me to look at the largest variety of beauty products and brands, and why their prices have such a large gap.
So the price range on the ASOS Beauty page is £0-£175. The cheapest products to buy start at £2.99 (excluding sale), this being things such as Barry M nail varnish, lip liners etc. The most expensive thing to purchase on ASOS Beauty (more specifically makeup and skincare) is currently the Elemis Pro Collagen cream retailing at £145. More specifically the products that have relevance to my project are Liquid Lipsticks, eye shadow palettes and foundation. So I narrowed my searches, the most expensive liquid lipstick they have to offer is Illamasqua Lip Lures retailing at £19.50, than the cheapest they have to offer is Barry M 'Matte Me Up' retailing at £4.99.
In regards to packaging I feel as though the illamasqua product (left) looks more sleek and has a more expensive feel to it, in comparison to the Barry M lip product. Saying this however I don't think the more expensive products always look the best.
TopShop
2The next brand I wanted to investigate was TopShop. This brand name to mind for me because when entering TopShop I always remember them having a large makeup section of their own branded makeup, encouraging me to investigate their online site to see if they do only sell TopShop branded goods. Much to my surprise they exclusively sold their own branded makeup, with branded things such as EOS lip balm, and Eyelure Eye lashes. When looking more specifically into their products I immediately gravitated towards their Lip Kit. As you can see in the image below it comes in a container, including the lip kit that comes with lip paint and then in addition to that the option to mattify the lip kit. It retails at £18, however coming with three separate products to use on your lips, so you are technically getting more fore you money when you compare it to the high end brand Illamasqua.
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| £15- TopShop Brand |
Lastly I wanted to look into Foundation as this would be the last product I will be producing myself, unfortunately TopShop don't offer foundation (on their site anyway) so this isn't something I am able to look into. So when it comes to their other products I notice the packaging is very simplistic and highly priced, from personal experience I have only ever bought one beauty related product from there many years ago. I bought a Matte Lipstick and I have decided to insert some images below of what the product looked like and how it was. I think personally it wasn't worth the money, so perhaps in their case people are so hooked on their clothing and accessories they will buy the makeup for the name as opposed to quality of product...
To my memory I bought this for about £8 around 3/4 years ago, showing that since then they have raised their prices and also completely changed their packaging and image, something to take into consideration, as not all of this brands started off how they are now and that it takes time, development and trends to alter packaging to match a demographic.
Boohoo
3The next brand I was going to briefly look at was Boohoo, this being that it is a cheap clothing site so I wondered whether they had their own makeup range and if they sold any branded things. What I did discover was that the pricing was intact very cheap and they primarily sold their own branded things, however did intact stock Barry M and Technic. I wanted to mainly look at eye shadow palettes for this brand because I noticed they had more eye shadow compared to TopShop, however at more than half the price and had 35 shades in as opposed to 4! From what I can see the product quality looks poor to me, in the images themselves it looks cheaply made to be cheaply sold, which there is nothing wrong with.
It seemed to me there was a sale on all of their own branded products, as I feel like there always is (on clothing and accessories) to lure customers in to buying things cheap 'before it ends'.
Once I had looked into the available eye shadows I decided to move on to liquid lipsticks, where I found a pack of three liquid matte lipsticks all nude shades, for £4.90 (with their 30% off). The packaging for all of their makeup looks very plain and simple, most likely so that it is easy and cheap to produce, however they are also technically sticking to what is popular and the national / international trends in the makeup world.
It seems as though so far Boohoo have the cheapest own branded makeup, however with no reviews available on their site I do not know if the simplicity and cheapness of their products are worth it! For me keeping a product's packaging simplistic is something I need to do, after all my demographic find that and the colour palette the most important, but for my personal style I don't think this packaging is gravitating me to buy and investigate more into the product, it looks a little too simplistic to me and looks as cheap as it is.Urban Outfitters
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Next I looked into the clothing/home/accessories brand Urban Outfitters. Online they had 204 beauty products to offer, but this time the brands they had to offer differed from all of the above I had researched. I came across BH Cosmetics and Pixi. What i didn't know prior to this research was that Urban Outfitters do not have their own beauty range, which surprised me because of it's popularity you would have thought they would bring out their own brand of makeup by now. So I looked at what they had available just in the makeup section and it was narrowed down to 28 results, all of which were brushes, makeup bags or lip balms. Meaning that I will not be using Urban Outfitters for inspiration for pricing or packaging as this isn't what I am aiming to produce!
Pretty Little Thing
The second to last site I wanted to research is Pretty Little Thing which was founded fairly recently (2012) and this waste site that was important for me to research as they are a UK based retailer, with an audience of females aged 16-24, and is intact owned by boohoo.com. Once I had found out it was owned by boohoo my first thought was that it will be a similar site to boohoo, however it is completely different! Their prices are slightly higher than boohoo.com and their layout is more professional, the colours are more enticing and it - to me- looks like a nicer, urban, polished version of boohoo.
Makeup wise they had 744 items to offer having a lot of different brands I had never heard of before, but seeing as I have done enough research and filled this blog with the other brands I decided to focus on the makeup and price/packaging of Pretty Little Thing branded products. Once I had refined my search I was left with 21 products branded by PLT, ranging from contour palettes to eye shadow and highlight. Much to my surprise they don't stock any liquid / any form of lipstick or foundation, they seem to be sticker to powdered goods for the eyes and cheeks! So I could only investigate the packaging and eyeshadow.
When browsing the website I came across another 35 shadow palette, as you can see from the visual above their images and way of advertising are different to boohoo, however this is the exact same price for quantity as boohoo, similar shades and layout. It seems as though everything on this website makeup wise is similar to boohoo, but the packaging is most definitely more enticing along with the supporting images of the products. When you order off of PLT the packaging you receive your goods in is a pink bag with unicorns on, they also seem to go for a holographic vibe, using a lot of highlight in their image son the models, perhaps to aim at the younger females and the 'girly girls' after all that is their demographic. I would say however I would be more inclined to purchase this as opposed to the boohoo palette, the difference in the demographic between the two is boohoo aim "at 16-30 year olds" both genders, but PLT states "16-24 year old females" this is something to take into consideration with my project because my demographic is females ages 18-25, so I need to find a good balance between simplistic and 'boring' (in my opinion) so over the top and too young and girly looking.
Missguided
Lastly I investigated missguided as when discussing with peers popular online sites for clothing in our area this was a popular contender! For the makeup section there were 46 items found, however all of these were branded makeup and not their own. This was odd for me because when I knew I was going to research into missguided I immediately remembered their makeup collection launch and how I liked their packaging and creativity with products, however it is no longer available on their site for me. Below is a screenshot of the products that first come up when you look into the makeup they have to offer:
As you can see, brands such as Barry M and Models Own are popular on their site, and as mentioned previously I wanted to try and stick to own brands for the second half of this blog post to really investigate packaging, however I didn't realise how little these brands sell. I decided to hunt for some type of image of the product launch I vividly remember and I came across an internet article by Cosmopolitan7 back in October 2016.
I came across this eye palette that retailed at £10, which almost seems in the middle of pricing such as TopShop, and Pretty Little Thing, giving my a 'higher end, middle and lower'. The packaging for this palette was really aesthetically pleasing to me, the blue and white smoke / water effect looked really effective, giving some nice colours yet keeping it simplistic. Interestingly enough you can see the shadows through the cardboard exterior and the packaging doesn't match and reflect the inside product (as discussed and analysed in the post here)
Lastly I found a Lip Kit (right) which intrigued me, when I clicked the link on the cosmopolitan article it led me to the site where I can purchase the product, but searching for it independently it didn't exist. despite this fact it sells a gloss inspired lip kit, with two glosses and one lip liner all nude shades. I think the packaging for this product was strange, it looks like it comes in a 'space themed/ like' bag, something I hadn't seen and didn't consider before either. I think the reason this isn't my favourite type of packaging is that there isn't really much too it, having a transparent material showing the products off doest appeal to me personally. This lip kit is only £8 for the three products, a similar kit to what TopShop had to offer, but again a lot cheaper...
Conclusion
This post wasn't intended to be the length it was however I also didn't anticipate to discover this much about individual sites and brands that are sold on them. I have discovered the huge price range gaps depending on the name of the brand and also that the packaging, in this piece of research, doesn't effect the price. We found the PLT and Boohoo palette that was the exact same retailed for the same price however one had metallic foil and images printed on. I have found this out now meaning that the cheaper the look of the product, doesn't mean the cheaper is to produce and sell, and visa versa.
In regards to my FMP this has encouraged and inspired me to begin my creations, it was nice to see the price rangers and what you got for your money in a way, it gives me an idea of the price range I will set my products at and also gives me some nice inspiration for potential packaging. As discussed in one of my first FMP blogs I wanted to look into making a website to sell my products on ( a mock up of one...) and if time allows I would still be really interested to produce a little site, I think the website and layout of a website also reflect the products as I have learnt today.
As I continue to wrap up the last pieces of research I am excited to begin designing, however I know I am going to be face with hurdles when it comes to delivering my end products physically. I know I need to either find a site that I can send my flat designs to and they will print them for me, or I need to start producing nets using illustrate as advised by Steve as opposed to indesign to attempt to print and construct myself. One thing for certain is i want to produce some mock up products and ensure my digital version of my products is outstanding, after all this is a Digital Publishing course and as explained before I don't think a printing issue will mark me down!
Things I will apply from this to my final product...
- When creating my website I want to really take into consideration the layout and use of images to show off the product as visuals is everything when selling products online as of course the 'touch' sense isn't there!
1: http://www.asos.com/women/face-body/make-up/cat/?cid=5020&cr=4&nlid=ww%7Cface%20+%20body%7Cshop%20by%20product
2:http://www.topshop.com/en/tsuk/category/beauty-3326659/face-1906567?cat1=208495&cat2=208568%3Fintcmpid%3DW_HEADER_VIEWALLMAKEUP_UK_FACE
3:http://www.boohoo.com/womens/accessories/beauty
4:https://www.urbanoutfitters.com/en-gb/make-up
5:https://www.prettylittlething.com/plt-caught-your-eye-35-shade-eyeshadow-palette.html
6:https://www.missguided.co.uk/accessories/beauty/make-up#p=2
7: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/beauty-hair/makeup/news/a46434/missguided-online-beauty-range/
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