So, then we are in the new fresh decade 2020 and it is time to stop looking back, now it is full focus forward! :)
Productive fresh start
I myself have started the year very productively! I have almost worked a little too much, but I have not wanted to waste "a flow" either :)
This is partly because I simply have been sugen at work, only when I have lunch does it itch in my fingers to continue! But also because I have a holiday in a week (South Africa 18-30 Jan !!), there are many projects I both want to start and complete before we leave.
Three days this week I have worked until after kl. 00 at night! And yesterday (Saturday) it was almost 22.
It's not healthy, but sometimes you have to be a little workaholic for a short period! :)
Makeover of the webshop!
The biggest reason for the late nights is that Miska and I have started redoing the website. When you start certain things, you have to complete them quickly if the site is not to be in renovation chaos for customers.
As I mentioned, 2019 was a "break year" when we did not develop that much but things have just had to roll on. And the years before that, it is the salon that has received all the focus. So now it's time to give the webshop more love again!
I wanted the website to be more "webshop". It is divided into a salon / web shop, which has made it difficult to decide on the design and layout, so then everything has become a fuzzy thing instead.
Here are some of the changes we made:
A warmer color theme, surely it feels quite harmonious and nice? :) A little tropical twilight-feeling I think!
2. The banner with info, we have had free shipping over SEK 795 for a long time, but it has not been clear. In addition, we have many payment methods (soon throughout the EU) and I have the policy to only sell cruelty free brands for many years and it is great to print so customers do not have to google themselves!
More focus on my makeup tips and step-by-step guides. Secondly, that the text "no ordinary web shop" together with the make-up tips links is the first thing you see when you enter the page.
In addition, I have written "makeup tips" instead of "beauty guides". I think beauty guides sound nicer but I think there is a risk that it does not attract as much.
I have also divided the make-up tips into clearer categories! Before, there were only three: get the look, makeup tips and products, but now there are so many posts to scroll through so I needed more order.
4. Better product overview, this is not quite finished yet but we are arranging a clearer way to browse all products. Before you could only choose from the menu but now there are categories + popular products already on the front.
In addition, you should be able to get a simple overview of whole the range instead of all products being holes about noise (as they are now if you just click on "web shop" in the menu).
Like this:
One row per category and you can scroll to the right if you want to see more products of the same category.
The mobile version is getting better also when you can swipe right to see more products. Previously, each product came as if on a vertical line, you had to scroll down a lot.
Only two pages are ready at the moment and that is the category "base make-up, tools and more"And"eyes, lips & eyebrows”Which you get to if you click on the pictures on the front. I linked them if you want to peek! :)
Other minor fixes - Miska who has built our entire website has other improvements as well! For example. we have many customers who always buy Bamboo Powder and Makeup Base Mattifying from Paese at the same time, so now he has added it as an extra option "supplement with products that are often bought together" so the customer can add it to the shopping cart directly. Smooth!
He also honed the e-mail that is sent automatically to customers, which resulted in a "review what you bought e-mail" being sent to a huge number of old customers. So now it has east in reviews from customers! It was a mistake but it turned out to be very positive haha! :)
A positive review is really GOLD for a company so I am grateful straight to the heart!
You are very welcome to check out the website creativemakeup.se and provide feedback! :)
Two new limited companies!
Company 1: My own make-up brand is not so far advanced that I thought I would need to start the company already now, but to start up projects with producers and be able to sign agreements, I have to have that company ready. And there are no problems really :)
How psychologically nice and attractive that the financial year starts on 1 January 2020? ♥ I'm shaking haha! When you start a company, you do not have a business year like the usual year Jan-Dec, but if you start July 1, the company's year is July-June. This is the salon's business year, you have the end of the year just before the holiday.
But now the company year will be like a normal year Jan-Dec and just January 1, 2020 feels really NICE right? :)
Company 2: Me and Miska do more and more of their own freelance jobs in the form of websites, consulting jobs, etc. so we decided to start our own limited company on the side of the salon, because we are more co-owners, it's easiest that way.
We have deliberately waited for that company to start until 1 January because the law on share capital was changed from 2020, so now we only need SEK 25,000 in share capital compared to SEK 50,000 if we had started before the turn of the year. Since it is mostly an "on the side of the company" without direct costs or sky-high profits, it feels unnecessary to invest a lot of start-up capital.
You do not know if the company name goes through until you have been approved by the Swedish Companies Registration Office, but my and Miska's company will probably be called "Hillside Media AB" because we dream of a Spain house in the mountains with a fantastic view, so it is a suitable name for our joint AB ♥
An early and dark morning with cozy lighting, coffee and signing various certificates and applications to soon be a partner in a total of three (!) Limited companies.
What a start to the year! :)
More salon jobs
I have worked at home a lot in 2019, which I will continue with 2020, but not quite as much!
In part, I will be more at the salon because Miska has started to take customers and if he goes in so I can do it too. He is still in the apprenticeship phase and wants feedback on the drawn brow shape before he starts tattooing, so then I will help with that as well.
Here I sit and work while Miska has an eyebrow customer :)
In our waiting room you will find me from time to time in the future! I do not have an office anymore and our store part is very small, so I sit where I can fit. Sometimes I'm in the way behind the checkout counter and sometimes I'm in the way in the waiting room, so I move around a bit :)
Speaking of Miska's eyebrow tattoos, I received this message last Friday, Miska already has such satisfied customers ♥
Another reason I will probably be more at the salon is because we thought we would update it a bit more. After the move to a smaller room, we paused with news and updates because we had had double rents for so long that we needed to curb expenses - and refuel some energy even after the stress year 2018.
But now we are back on track with a little more stable finances and have loaded the creative account inside as well;) So now I thought I would start looking at product exposure, news and things that can be improved and developed.
A novelty that landed in our warehouse on Tuesday is the tweezers from Brow Game! SO GOOD!
I actually got these tweezers as a press sample for the blog, but liked it so much that I emailed and asked if there is a possibility to become a reseller - and I got it!
So the makeup artists at the salon had to test mine before we decided, but they agreed with me and wanted to buy them. A pair of tweezers that brow stylists want to work with every single day IT's a good grade.
This nice place is now on our checkout counter!
What is unusually good about these is how well they work on small straws, you know the ones that are most difficult to pick. Picking "normal" brow hair is not an art as long as tweezers are not bad, but just all the little ones take so much time - until now.
Olga said "I tested the Browgame tweezers on a customer with very light little hairs and it kind of felt like I was threading !!"
I will write a more detailed post about them soon, I have taken pictures this week but have not had time to make the post.
click here to buy them in the webshop!
Another reason to be more at the salon is to help, we have invested quite a lot in marketing during the autumn and it seems that it is starting to give results now. Our hope is that the makeup artists will have so many customers that they may need a helping hand :)
It becomes a vicious circle when you have to stifle costs (due to double rents) then you market less and then you also get less revenue. So that I have worked a lot from home in 2019 is also because I have not been needed at the salon, the staff has had time to fix everything that needs fixing anyway.
On Tuesday e.g. so they were fully booked for the afternoon and the webshop packages (which had been collected during the weekend + the red Monday) had to be packed earlier to get away before the mail was emptied for the day. So then Miska and I packed all the packages! :)
There will be some A4 papers from the list of orders, so I packed one basket per A4 so it was easy for Miska to pack! :)
And it never goes wrong - always when I spend time making a post about a product, we always get info right afterwards that the / any shade of that product has expired. In this case, it is Paese Argan Oil Lipstick in shade 37 (luckily the best-selling 35 was not in any case), but I have of course taken photos and published swatch pictures of all the shades! Gah!
Then you long for your own make-up brand, when that kind of thing does not come as a surprise;)
But oh what that swatch image gave results, three of the colors sold out immediately and we had a whole list of customers queuing for the 35 shade that we contacted when it was in stock again. Now we have to order new ones right away haha.
We have designed new thank you cards for the webshop packages as well. We often write a handwritten greeting behind it as well, which many appreciate ♥
The skin bible
Last Sunday I read the book "Skin Bible" by dermatologist Johanna Gillbro, so good! Recommend it already even though I only read half.
In part, I read it because I am interested, but it is mostly for work purposes because when developing makeup products, it is important to know how the skin works. Even though make-up is not skin care, it is still on the skin, so it is very important! Which preservatives should be avoided and what do different formulations really have on the skin?
I already know a lot in the book because I am a makeup artist and nerd, but it is difficult to find credible sources because it is different everywhere so I have had a bit of a hard time knowing how much of my knowledge I can actually trust. But a dermatologist with the experience that Johann Gillbro has should be as close to "right" as you can get. Of the knowledge that exists today in any case, then come new reports and discoveries all the time;)
Sundays are good days for jobs that do not feel like jobs. Lying freshly showered in bed with a face mask and drinking tea and claiming that you work because "you do research" does not feel like something you can do on a Monday right away;)
Brow lift !!
Another news that is expected to come soon is the brow lift treatment! We are evaluating the treatment before it qualifies for the booking system, but it bodes well!
I have done it on myself and LOVE it! I have been so jealous of people with compliant straws that they can comb nicely, mine are where they are at the end of the point, incredibly obsessive.
But above all, I did it on a customer (free test person only) at the salon yesterday and look that this transformation I just say:
So cool! Where did all the straws come from, you wonder haha!
Preparing for vacation
We have many other projects that are to be started up before we leave, so that you can start with them immediately when we return.
For example:
New goal picture for 2020 that we will present for the staff meeting next week.
Requests for holidays and schedules as well as some other changes that will take place, so that we can open the booking system for the summer.
And not least all the work with my make-up brand! I have finished writing the last product descriptions to be sent to the producer and hopefully I will get that ball rolling before we leave so that nothing needs to be pushed forward. There is a lot of waiting time in the start-up phase (you wait for answers, samples, etc.) so I hope that the waiting time matches with my holiday!
I have photographed a lot in my make-up corner as well, so that my channels do not echo empty for two weeks. One day I made material for 4 posts and changed the sweater in between so that it is not as clear that it is photographed at the same time hahaha. You feel so ridiculous then but I know how much it would bother me later if I did not do it :)
Here is a make - up I did this week that will be published shortly. Got a craze for freckles !!
No, now I'm going to have breakfast (although it's soon half past one) - it's also one of the week's unhealthy habits, start working immediately when I wake up so that breakfast is postponed until it's lunchtime…
Then I will have a telephone meeting with my ev. future business partner for the makeup brand. Then there will be hair washing and maybe some ice cream in the hot tub while the hair wrap hurts;) You're worth it now!
Hugs are ♥
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