01.02.23
Did you always want to be a beauty entrepreneur?
No. I was an anesthesiologist for eight years before I transitioned to beauty. I’ve got three children, but when my first son was born, and he had some health problems, so I ended up taking a considerable amount of time off work to look after him. During that time, I tried out different business ideas, just because, although he needed me to attend appointments with him, I did have more free time on my hands. I ended up getting involved with a project my husband was working on in beauty. He was consulting for a big corporation and that is where it started.
Your brand is called Unhidden Beauty. What’s in a name? Unhidden Beauty speaks to the fact that this idea of beauty being a feeling rather than an aesthetic ideal, and the fact that beauty means different things to different people. To me, it means a feeling, that inner confidence, self-assuredness, which then, is magnetic, it translates through in the way that we come across. Part of that is how we look. Giving people the tools and products to allow them to unhide what beauty means to them.
Was that your motive behind the customizable palettes?
To give shoppers the opportunity to select their own shades? Absolutely.... I think there’s a lot of waste that is associated with that. You’ll see people who have their palette and there are one or two colors where they’re hitting the pan and you can see the silver through and the rest of them, they’ll never use. Because really, they just wanted those one or two colors, and they keeping buying the palette for those two colors, which is quite wasteful. From a different perspective, the beauty industry historically had this messaging of be yourself, express yourself, but if you’re buying the same products as everyone else, that’s more difficult. Having the ability to tailor a product to meet your specific style, your skin tone, even your budget in a way, you might not want to buy a 20-shade palette, you might just want four shades. I think that’s the way forward in terms of giving people the products that really serve them.
How did you go about choosing the colors that you have in the color range?
It’s been refined over time. Looking at consumer demand, we did a lot of focus groups and speaking to consumers at the beginning, in terms of looking at what colors people like. We are constantly adding to the range, picking up on the trends as all companies do. You look at the catwalks to see what colors are new and exciting. It may seem like a broad range, but people are always telling us where we can do better. For example, we have a lot of pinks, we have a lot of blues, we’ve actually just introduced at least two or three more blues this week because it’s been requested by our consumers. Fundamentally, people love the basics to be covered as well. The neutrals, the nudes that allow you to have an everyday look. So that’s definitely an area we are trying to develop our range to make sure we are as inclusive as possible in terms of making sure we have tones to suit everybody.
I think that’s great because a lot of women need day looks for work, and of course, if they want to match their outfits with their makeup.
That’s an interesting point behind being able to customize as well. You may have a go-to color in your wardrobe, having a neutral palette that allows you to have your everyday with a pop of color in the direction that you want it to be, I think people, from watching them play on our website, they tend to make palettes like that. The ones that we’ve created mirrors that behavior as well.
No. I was an anesthesiologist for eight years before I transitioned to beauty. I’ve got three children, but when my first son was born, and he had some health problems, so I ended up taking a considerable amount of time off work to look after him. During that time, I tried out different business ideas, just because, although he needed me to attend appointments with him, I did have more free time on my hands. I ended up getting involved with a project my husband was working on in beauty. He was consulting for a big corporation and that is where it started.
Your brand is called Unhidden Beauty. What’s in a name? Unhidden Beauty speaks to the fact that this idea of beauty being a feeling rather than an aesthetic ideal, and the fact that beauty means different things to different people. To me, it means a feeling, that inner confidence, self-assuredness, which then, is magnetic, it translates through in the way that we come across. Part of that is how we look. Giving people the tools and products to allow them to unhide what beauty means to them.
Was that your motive behind the customizable palettes?
To give shoppers the opportunity to select their own shades? Absolutely.... I think there’s a lot of waste that is associated with that. You’ll see people who have their palette and there are one or two colors where they’re hitting the pan and you can see the silver through and the rest of them, they’ll never use. Because really, they just wanted those one or two colors, and they keeping buying the palette for those two colors, which is quite wasteful. From a different perspective, the beauty industry historically had this messaging of be yourself, express yourself, but if you’re buying the same products as everyone else, that’s more difficult. Having the ability to tailor a product to meet your specific style, your skin tone, even your budget in a way, you might not want to buy a 20-shade palette, you might just want four shades. I think that’s the way forward in terms of giving people the products that really serve them.
How did you go about choosing the colors that you have in the color range?
It’s been refined over time. Looking at consumer demand, we did a lot of focus groups and speaking to consumers at the beginning, in terms of looking at what colors people like. We are constantly adding to the range, picking up on the trends as all companies do. You look at the catwalks to see what colors are new and exciting. It may seem like a broad range, but people are always telling us where we can do better. For example, we have a lot of pinks, we have a lot of blues, we’ve actually just introduced at least two or three more blues this week because it’s been requested by our consumers. Fundamentally, people love the basics to be covered as well. The neutrals, the nudes that allow you to have an everyday look. So that’s definitely an area we are trying to develop our range to make sure we are as inclusive as possible in terms of making sure we have tones to suit everybody.
I think that’s great because a lot of women need day looks for work, and of course, if they want to match their outfits with their makeup.
That’s an interesting point behind being able to customize as well. You may have a go-to color in your wardrobe, having a neutral palette that allows you to have your everyday with a pop of color in the direction that you want it to be, I think people, from watching them play on our website, they tend to make palettes like that. The ones that we’ve created mirrors that behavior as well.