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Free Preview: Fast Start Your Beauty Business

My name is carrie chapin, and I'm really excited to be at creative life today to do this fast. Start your beauty business. I am really passionate about helping hand makers of all kinds figure out how to turn what they're really interested in teo a viable business, and this is one of the ways that I do it. I also write books and consult for creative businesses, and you can find out more about me and carrie chapman dot com but I'm very thankful to be at creative life today talking about this things, and I want to say that if you are interested and starting your own beauty business that we're going to start sort of with the beginnings beauty businesses face a lot of challenges that regular craft businesses don't, and so we're going to go over a lot of those today's we'll have a special guest with us who has a thriving beauty business, and we have some of her products here on our tables, so we're going to sort of go from beginning to end in this class about what you need emotionally as wel...

l, a structurally to build a profitable beauty business. And I am very glad that you're here so beauty businesses face a lot of challenges that other hand made businesses don't face and that's because of somebody who owns a beauty business or any business that has ingredients, whether they're edible or the kind that you're going to put on or near your body, you have a lot of different concerns nobody needs to write a disclaimer if they knit a scarf and most cases, but if you make something that has ingredients in it or that is consumable in any kind of way, you have a whole different set of challenges ahead of you. You have different things to consider when it comes to your labeling, health and safety regulations and the law describing sense it's really hard, tio even if you want to call something, you know, misty moonlight, you know, perfume, that doesn't really mean anything to the online shopper because they're not quite sure what misty moonlight smells like. So, you know, describing sense and how you choose to do your copyrighting is really something that you've to be a lot of attention to when you have a beauty business and you're using ingredients also expiration dates. It's one of the few things that we make by hand that's going to expire. So if you don't, if you're not on top of your sales or your marketing or you're just not getting the customers that you need to get for your business to be successful, you'll always did not only time but also a lot of money because your product actually expires that and that's a really concern that people in this particular industry you need to keep in mind all the time and then when you're out and about in public and you're trying to sell your products and people are handling at all of the time that's really different to people want toe and by people I mean me they want to pick all of this stuff up and like smell it or were use a tester or you know there's a lot of different ways that we want to interact with things that were going to put on our bodies or buy for our homes that you just don't face and other areas of handmade businesses and so we're going to spend a lot of time thinking about that there's ah whole lot of other concerns and while alana is here with her expertise really want us to take full advantage of that and ask her any of those questions is that that we might have because she is the perfect person to answer them I really love the trajectory that her business has had and how she's handled everything and she's also a certified green business which was a part of her overall vision for her brand was really important for her tio dio as little damage to the environment as possible but she's obviously in a business that uses a lot of natural resource is because it's made from natural products so when she made the decision to take her business green and it had a big impact overall on everything that she was doing and I am excited too here all of that from her so I just want to say welcome alana I asked I solve my guest experts for these bastards to send me some pictures that I can use throughout the presentation and she sent a really fun one of her wearing oliver safety gear which is a whole other concern there's not too much that we make out there that we need tio really protect large parts of of our bodies and our senses products that people are sharing with them artists and artist sandra is joining us she's saying oh she's only just getting started but she started making one hundred percent cotton crow shea spar clothes on dh she's been selling them at art gallery shops they did so well in the summer that she's added them to her line recently so it's interesting to think that they're different types of products that people are inventing as well as this one was created yeah I found recently on a personal note these my grandmother's house last summer these little tiny crow shade animals and they were flat they were a turtle, a cow, a pig and they had a little button on him and I couldn't figure out what they were four but they were soap savers so back you know, when my grandmother was running a household and had a lot of children in a very busy farm they had these sub savers because they couldn't waste anything so she had made these little tiny cruciate animals and when the soup would get really small she would back him into these little pouches these these cruciate pouches and that's what you would have said they were like toys and soap you know keepers at the same time so there's a lot of cross promotional opportunities for you out there if you have a beauty business that there's a lot of people that you can team up with this farce collaboration, marketing, promotion all of those opportunities it says huge crossover untested along is with us now okay still wanna is going to come then join us and even though she can't hear you I think if you're home you should clap because it's super exciting that she's here so I'll clap please come up come along thank you so much thank you so excited that you're here if you get thursday I have some water in your well so this is a juana and this is these are all of her products I asked her to actually put them on splay here so that we could talk about what that kind of challenge is when you go to a show and people want to pick up and smell your product a lot toe like tested out or see what it's really like I mean, I want to smell noticed, but I don't think I'm going to buy so that a bunch of strange noses have touched yeah that's what you do that so part of it is part of it is setting it up so that it's easy for somebody to pick up and smell no, the box that I have is really nice people's hands are going to get all over it because they can do this set a bag down that doesn't mean, of course, that peoples don't shove it like right into their faces and into their noses, but at least it helps a little bit and if I can be there and kind of helped them, sometimes I can teach them how to smell you don't need it, you know you're gonna try and try it just need to put it like an inch. I just want to put it all on that happens. I also get a lot of coming with about wanting to eat it, which I warn people not to do because it never tastes as good as it looks unfortunately on dh, another challenges with certain products you know particularly let's say like the's skin bombs or I have some lip balms what happens is people want tio pick up even if you put a cue like I try and put these little visual cues like fingers, so I see this like a little sticker that means tester the actually I have, like a tester physical label that says, tester, I have a sticker on top that's sort of like, announces tester, but I've noticed that people, if something lying there, they will just pick it up and open it no matter what. So I started to use sort of like a beautiful way to display, but also separate the product so that people aren't taking these, opening them up, running all over them, and then realizing after the fact that it's that it's not the tester, right? So that's one of the other ways to do it, and then for the scrum bars that one of the things that I do and I'm just going to open one of these. You guys can see it actually looked like that. Oh, wow. So what I usually do when I did slay them is they put one out so that people can look at it, they can pick it up, they can smell yeah, doesn't get a little funky at the end of the totally but then I can always give it to one of my neighbors who's totally happy to get it as long as they just warn them that it's been manhandled for like two days they're usually ok anyway we'll still take it, but I put it like that so that way people aren't opening taking these boxes, opening them up trying to get into them and see, you know, what's in there so you kind of just sort of do as much as you can tio have people so they can have an interaction and experience with your product without actually damaging the fact because how important is it for people and when they're in person like they really want to interact with their products? Yeah, I'm different kind of way where I guess it is sort of like when you go teo buy clothes or a hat like you most likely want to turn that hat before you decide if if it's the hat that you should purchase totally and so I mean that's why you want things out so that people can have a little bit of an experience with them? You know, if I had access to water in some amazing thing, I would actually let people try the product that way or used to do soap slivers so that people could go and take them to the bathroom, but people started eating them because they thought I made cheese or chocolate and I picked him up, so he stopped doing so samples, I want you to know that you're not alone with that. I probably received at least three or four letters a year from so makers use molds and they might say, make, like, a bunch of strawberry soap, and they put it in a strawberry mold, and then they it's given is a gift at a baby shower or whatever, and then they end up getting letters for people, write to them and say, I ate this candy and just so you know, it was soap and the right makers like I'm I know, so so I mean, that happens a lot, which brings us to another really good point of your labels. Everything has to be really clear because you need to be able to protect yourself in that instance. But I hear from a lot of so makers that one of one of their big concerns is people actually eat their product. Yes, accidentally, yes, accidentally. So I really just say it's accidental? Well, I don't know if it is because I've had a friend who told me she tried a soap on purpose. To see the tape around e o you could try it's going to taste like soap and a little bit like the ingredients in it so one of the things is actually with cosmetics. One of the label requirements is that you have to say what the product is, mon the label so so I also try and describe on the back, you know, sort of what you do and like how to use the products so that people sort of understand exactly what it is and so they're not going to train but in there wants to know how to use soap maybe not so so much, but some of the other products aa lot of people get these two products for me confused because their experience with a scrub is like a loose scrub and select where's your scrub but this is a soap, isn't it? Yeah, and so that you d I do have to put instructions on that because I've gotten contacted by customers like this this soap rivers lathered what's wrong with it and I'm like, was it a threat? She wasn't grab s so it turned out it was the scrub and not the soap but you know that's part of it is you just you want to do as much as you can to educate people and hopefully like in your booth let's say your sign, ege says, so or if the person has done a little research ahead of time especially if the organizers of the show are good they'll have put you know who's there and they'll either categorize it or the person will have gone through and checked names but like your sign it should say something like you know so pan crafted body products something like that so what does yours yours say because your business is called eta and billy and it says he encrypted in san francisco so what would your sign say since you make soap scrub oils so my son my sign ege says sustainable bath and body products so it says it says hand crafted in san francisco at and billy sustainable bath and body products so that's really one of my big mantra as well two of them one that I made in san francisco that's a that's a huge deal for me and a huge deal for a lot of my customers and the number two that I'm really focused on natural products and it's not just to the products themselves it's the whole business right? So that's kind of part of it so I want to make sure that's really clear and apparent to everybody what are some other challenges you face in person when you have your display how and people are coming up to your booth like what are some things that we can avoid if we're going to do are first between our like first intense show and so we haven't had a lot of experience with and audience in person because I would like to say in general any handmade business the experience you get for making it and selling it online is way different than the experience you get people in person looking at your product you can learn so much from doing shows and having your customer like in live time be right in front of you and you get a lot of feedback that way and I'm that's not necessarily like always positive like it's the end of the day you might cry but you know it's still it's it's all stuff that you can use in the end totally totally so one of the one of the challenges I think one is learning how to talk about your product with someone like you almost have to assume that somebody doesn't know maybe don't know anything about the products you really have to develop a language to talk about it but get that information across really quickly and concisely so I have like a whole spiel ideo for what the scribe I will do it so when people ask me what's so yeah what's described this story saying I'm gonna smell like how why is this is this a soap is this describing is saying no it's actually a scrub all it does is it exploits and moisturizes the way that it works is you get it in the bathroom, the shower and it melts with the heat of your body and heat of the water and you scrub it around, it exposes the sea salt in there, which is the exfoliant you rabbit, you sick said it back into your soap dish to dry out in between uses and you're done. It lasts anywhere from forty eight showers. It depends on how scrub you are or aggressively scrubbed take cold showers. It was e work. Just take a little longer. Might last longer. Economize. You're totally you kind of developed like a language to discuss your product on dh. Same with like this the skin bone products I have to tell people, you know, so we've developed. I actually had a customer. I was talking about the product and a customer was like, oh, it's like a chapstick. But for your body I was like, yes, actually that's exactly what it's like. So I actually use that term almost all the time now because people have an automatic association and they understand what that means. Some other things that I've learned like I used to not display these with one open and nobody would ever understand what they were. And after having to describe what it looked like and sometimes opening a box, I finally realized let's just that one out so someone can smell and also because some of the sense that air represented in my script products are not represented in another things that people couldn't necessarily there isn't an oatmeal cinnamon scrub, so I couldn't just they like oh, go smell the soap it smells exactly the same that's one of the things pricing having your pricing displayed really clearly almost always people still ask me even if I have it there but just in case you never know who's walking by who may not stop to talk to you you want to make sure that you have something business cards out so somebody can grab your information newsletter out so somebody consent up even if they don't talk to you because you never know what's gonna happen so those are those are a few things and then as faras creating products, I get a lot of feedback from people about sense that they like or how to use a product I had a body oil product that was in a pump container and people I was watching people trained tess stitt and it was just a mess it was like handfuls of oil is going all over the place and so I finally realized that's a problem and that's a problem for people who carry my product retailers who have testers out on the shelf and I need to solve that problem. And so I went from having the pump tops to having dropper tops because it's a lot easier to pick up the dropper and just drop one or two jobs on and then put it back that's interesting? Yeah, I love how those like problems present themselves and then, you know, you find these ways to improve your business and so that one experience from in person show then affected how you could wholesale your product there, get it into stores because somebody might say no that's too messy and you can say, I've got that covered yeah, we've gotto got a way to solve that problem, right? Yeah, it was great, thanks. Thank customer, right can idea. So what else? You know, I think some of the other things about being shows especially if you've never done one before you have to be on the whole time. So that means you need to really be his present as you khun b you need to be smiling and, like, be ready to engage people and then that's the other thing is not be afraid to engage people you have to say hi, how are you? Are you looking for gift? Can I help you find a sense you think most of your buyers their gifts I use a lot of handmade sofas gifts I mean, I would say almost everybody I know who buys me a president yes, like they really it's super easy gift thing I have like the the, uh slightly less expensive products are generally more of the gift items. The higher priced products like my oils and lotions are definitely usually a personal personal choice. Also, those things are being applied to the body and see standing on the bodies a lot of people don't necessarily feel comfortable with making that choice for somebody. So yeah, they are a lot of guests over that a good thing to start like you know are you looking for a gift? Can I help you? Is it a man? Is it a woman? Is that your mom? Is it what kind of sense did they like? What kind of things do they do? And I have, you know, my sense are specifically geared towards foodie people. I love about that because your sense a really interesting and it's really hard to decide or it's really hard to do writing about, you know, to describe something in a sense. So for example I have a stick perfume that's called fresh fresh mowed lawn or fresh cut grass I think we all know exactly what that's going to smell like it's going to smell like the day of my dream yes, and I wear that all the time or aa lot of times like when I'm sad or for different reasons, because I really love that smell and it's so clear cut and had they called it like sunny day in august, you know, just really would have meant nothing to me as a buyer because I wouldn't have been able to do it. So one thing that I really liked about it and billy, is that you have not gotten overly fancy with the names of your products. I would feel very comfortable ordering this online because I understand what cinnamon and oatmeal is and what what kind of soap that might be when it arrived so I wouldn't be surprised or shocked by how that smelled when it got to me. So it was that a conscious decision that you made because there's a lot of stuff out there now, that's, like I think, that if it's, if it's a mood, I have a friend that has a tea company called plum deluxe t and his teas are named after situations where you might drink your teas is one called the reading nook, so, you know, like I get a feeling of what that he might be like because he tells me I'm going to want to be cozying reading when I'm drinking it. But it's harder to do that? I think when it comes to stuff that you put on your body, yeah, I think so, too, and I also, you know, everybody has especially with sent everybody has a different association with things they like your idea of, I'm going to call this like, dreamy afternoon, but your idea of a dream the afternoon and like, more idea of a dream, the afternoon might be totally different and do it there? Yeah, they probably are. So so because of that, and also because I was having such a hard time part of it was I wanted things to be really clear for people. The other part of it was I just couldn't fathom having to come up with names for things that could easily relay information, but we're clever, clever, exactly or witty, or whatever it was, and ultimately that didn't really fit my brand anyway and being really clear cut with what? Like what center getting does fit my brand, and so it ended up working out really well, naturally, but anyway, so that that's important to me, too? Because I like to know, like, if I go buy a product, I like to know like that's, what I'm getting, you know, I'm getting the cinema no, you're getting cinnamon, yeah, that's what I'm getting