What was fun about not blogging about my work week last Sunday was to see that people missed the post - it means that it is appreciated! :) Already on Sunday night I got questions about where the post was somewhere haha.
Now two weeks will come in the same post instead - and it has been two intense weeks I can tell!
The first samples for our make-up brand!
It will take a while before we know if the concept around our makeup brand is possible to launch at all, but right now we are running with the 100% setting that it will work! We have a special niche and since it should not be such expensive products, everything is a price issue. Is it possible to manufacture non-standard products without raising prices? There is so much to do and I have already learned a lot about the process!
In my Sunday post 2 weeks ago, I told you that we have just started contacting different manufacturers, I was so Excited! I got a faster response than I thought and for one of the products I got our first samples from a factory in Milan last Friday, waaah so much fun !! Not finished proposals for the final product, but samples of different textures and then different color samples. Because you have to start by approving different qualities etc., there is no point in proceeding with the entire packaging etc. if we do not think that the contents are sufficient.
Testing makeup is something I am used to, so when we have found the right one, I know a good product when I see it;) So this is the funniest and easiest piece!
I also have contact with two other factories: one in the Netherlands that manufactures packaging in environmentally friendly bioplastics that we are investigating the possibilities of using. Such plastic has not really entered the cosmetics industry yet, so it is not certain that we can row it ashore. The 3rd factory is located in France and can manufacture another product that the factory in Milan cannot make.
What takes the longest time is that you have to decide all the thousands of details with ingredients, packaging, assembly, printing, etc. before you get to know the price. So it can happen that we do all the work and then when we count on it, it becomes too expensive to fit our concept.
So there are many aspects that you have to think about :) But it's just a matter of reviewing all the possibilities and doing your best along the way!
Happy girl who just got the package home at half past nine in the evening after a late work day! Now it's testing, testing!
Take the opportunity to use Annika's pregnant belly
Annika's delivery is scheduled for January 10 and she has opened her schedule until Christmas and is fully booked! She works a little longer than Christmas but then she needs to take all return visits, that includes return visits so she can not do a new tattoo on her last day of work :)
The stomach grows so it cracks and we take the opportunity to take advantage of this with body paintings and pictures - e.g. Helene wanted an advertising image to show that she also performs pregnancy massage. Look how nice it turned out:
Ida took the picture and I edited away the background and some small edits with light etc. then it turned out this good! Imagine that there is a little baby in there :)
The new room is nailed!
Great things happen at the salon too! 2 weeks ago I wrote that we had looked at another room and that everything was still a big question mark - but now it's starting to work out!
Since we did not find any other room that felt completely optimal (and you almost always have to sign a contract for 3 years so you do not want to move to something that does not feel quite right), we have decided to move back to our previous room as Annika had before we merged. She still owns it :)
That room is very nice and absolutely perfect on all levels except the small detail that it is too small. BUT after being a little tricky, we have achieved great things anyway! We will increase the opening hours so that the makeup artists can work shifts instead, we have 4 makeup artists so if 2 work in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, it does not matter that it is small. Because we can still fix 2 treatment rooms and a make-up studio / shop and that goes a long way.
I think customers will like the smaller salon more actually. Everyone thinks our current store is so luxurious and nice and it looks good when there are a lot of people at once. But when it comes down to it, customers prefer when it is calm and quiet and think it is super cozy to be able to enter our smaller treatment rooms instead of being out in the makeup studio. So a less cozy salon with fewer people working at the same time is actually not a stupid idea.
There are of course some things that are negative about moving to smaller, the biggest thing is that our talented barber Niclas will unfortunately not fit for long :( But on the whole we have got everything so good that it actually feels just right !
Found an old picture from when Annika had her salon in this room 4 years ago! Now, however, it has been rented out and they have put up thousands of things on the walls and a wall has been completely moved, so we have to start by filling, painting and building a wall before we can move in.
Checklists to curse
This week has mostly been a planning week in fact! There is so much to be fixed with the new premises that the first part of the to-do list only consisted of "this-we-have-to-decide-points".
First you have to do a good planning and then you can roll up your sleeves and start bending off all points :) When you have a lot to do and must be efficient, it is easy to just start, but to do a proper planning first is worth every second!
The biggest project is all our things. We have been spoiled with a huge room and we have filled it up, believe me;) We are obsessed with storage and have an unreasonable number of shelves, chests of drawers, wardrobes and cabinets that are filled with various good-to-have things. Then we have millions of small tables, regular tables, bar tables and signage such as artificial grass, fake plants, signs. You have no idea how much we have to get rid of haha.
So it was the largest list and it is divided into categories:
1. Sell on Blocket (have photographed everything this week!)
2. Flea market (type when we have emptied the premises and we announce that everything that is left is for sale)
3. Take home, much of what we have is private stuff that we have had here such as lamps, mirrors, etc.
4. The last category is save / store, things we can not use but which we do not want to throw away.
Here I am with the checklist in full swing already on the bus to work! At each point you can have a chat conversation (these are the yellow bubbles on the left side) and I went in a little later than Miska and Annika just this day so the whole bus trip I sat and chatted with them about lots of different points. 10 different conversations at the same time, efficiently and well!
Many late work nights
I have stayed at the salon after closing several evenings, it is so quiet and cozy there then! Sometimes you have periods where you would rather go home earlier and work on the couch and sometimes I could stay at the salon until midnight if no one stopped me.
Here you can definitely sit with a cup of tea and cuddle in the evenings;)
When it is dark outside and extinguished inside, our salon is the nicest I think, with pink lights and light loops!
One of the evenings I had a customer after closing also because she went so far that she would not have time to come to us earlier :)
Bridal makeup in Huddinge
Last Saturday was a great day! Up at 5 in the morning to go to Uppsala and pick up my colleague Lisa before we went to Huddinge for a bridal makeup and 5 make-up make-up!
I never take bookings like this outside the salon anymore, but partly this was a little extra fun because I put on make-up at her sister's wedding 4 years ago and then she became a regular customer in the webshop. And then I got the question when I was in a good mood and so she approved the price despite a fairly high amount for the trip there, so the details played a lot too;)
Lisa and I did 3 make-ups each and did it at a hair salon in Huddinge so everything went so smoothly!
Looking for a new makeup artist
With our new schedules, we need our regular makeup artists more on weekdays and thus we are looking for another person who can work on Saturdays. I have announced this in our channels this week!
If you are (or know someone who is) a makeup artist and are interested in weekend jobs and the opportunity to work extra when needed, email me at jobb@creativemakeup.se as quickly as possible :)
Next week you will get more updates about salon moves and changes! I can not write more here until everything is 100% nailed and the staff has been informed :)
Hugs are! ♥
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