Incoming, Upcoming, and Outgoing

Outgoing: my beloved Fig Clarins Hand Cream, sadly only available in a small size as a Limited Edition in a three pack with other flavours. Please, please, please, Clarins, make this in full size. I'm begging. And not above bribery. Help a girl out.

Advent madness:

'It's the most wonderful time of the year.......'

Well, almost. (Let's get through Halloween first eh?)

 First up - Liberty's mammoth Beauty Advent Calendar. This is £165.00, but the contents are properly hefty.

I don't always list the contents of these calendars but if you're shelling out that much, you want to know what you're getting for your money...

Hidden behind the doors is the following..

Aveda Hand Relief, 40ml

Laura Mercier Hydrating Primer, 30ml

Votary Facial Oil, 30ml (full size)

Davines Oi All in One Milk, 50ml (full size)

Kiehl’s Amino Acid Shampoo, 30ml

Byredo Bal d’Afrique Hand Cream, 30ml (full size)

Le Labo Santal 33 or The Noir 29, 15ml (full size)

NARS Mini Laguna Bronzer or Mini Babydoll Lip Gloss

Marvis Toothpaste, 2 x 10ml

Surratt Blush (full size)

Diptyque Mini Candle, 70g (full size)

ESPA Overnight Hydration Therapy, 30ml

JINsoon Coquette Nail Varnish (full size)

Dr Sebagh Serum Repair, 20ml (full size)

Bobbi Brown Pot Rouge in Powder Pink (full size)

Aurelia Refine & Polish Miracle Balm with Cloth, 20ml

Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant, 13g

Malin + Goetz Vitamin E Face Moisturiser, 30ml

C.O. Bigelow Rose Salve in a Tube (full size)

Trish McEvoy Lip Colour in Pink Nude (full size)

Skin Laundry Gentle Foaming Face Wash, 50ml

Blink Brow Night Balm (full size)

Eve Lom Cleanser and Cloth, 30ml

Kai Body Lotion, 60ml

ODeJo Fragrance, 50ml (full size) 

Next up is M&S. When you spend £35 or over in beauty, clothing or home, this is available for £35.00. Available on 10th November. Get it while you can, they go ridiculously quickly. Here's your link if you want to save it for the 10th. www.marksandspencer.com/beauty-advent-calendar

Back to Clarins: Ok I don't know what is in this, and I'm actually hiding this one from the teenager and keeping it for myself. The list is available online but I'm avoiding it. What I do know is that it is extremely limited and £95.00. Again, it sold out insanely quickly last year. Available now from Clarins.com.

Ciate Mini Mani Month is available now from ASOS at £50.00 and contains polishes, files and base and top coats. asos.com

And rounding up the new with a nod to the established. Bobbi Brown is 25 years old this year and there are numerous limited products released to celebrate, including this gorgeous 40-pan Dare to Shine Palette available now at £145.00. At the moment it's showing as sold out on Selfridges.com - but keep an eye. It's gone from Bobbibrown.com. Sorry.

Thank you so much to everyone that came to Stylist Live last week - it was so lovely to meet you all.

This week Amanda and I are off to Liverpool and Manchester with Pixi and Marks & Spencer.

I literally cannot wait to go home to the Red land and hope to meet loads of you there.

One of my lovely readers Ashleigh has an Etsy store and sells unique cutout cards - she gifted me this in Newcastle. How spectacular is that?? You can find Ashleigh's shop here: www.etsy.com/PerfectlyPapercuts

Thanks Ashleigh - it's going in a frame in my office next to my qualifications, where it belongs. ;)

Further info if you're coming along this week:

Liverpool
Marks & Spencer
35 Church Street
Liverpool, L1 1DF
Thursday, October 27th 2016
12PM – 4PM - with 2 Q&As at 12pm and 2pm.


Manchester
Marks & Spencer
7 Market Street
Manchester, M1 1WT
Friday, October 28th 2016
12PM – 4PM with 2 Q&As at 12pm and 2pm.


And finally a couple of personal ones if you don't mind indulging me...

Please follow the lovely Lauren via @girlstolelondon as she starts her treatment for breast cancer. She's already tackling it head on and I'm sure she would appreciate your good thoughts. www.instagram.com/girlstolelondon

My lovely nephew Joe married his gorgeous fiancee Rowena yesterday. Welcome to the family Row. Congratulations Guiseppe. ;)

And lastly, it's my gorgeous nephew's birthday today. Happy Birthday Ethan. Lots of Love from Auntie Caroline. x

See you next week!







*This post contains some affiliate links. If you are happy to click on them and support the blog, thank you very much. If you would rather not, just google the product. It's all good. See my full disclaimer here: http://bit.ly/1rpEmSq The views expressed on this site are the author's own and are provided for informational purposes only. The author makes no warranties about the suitability of any product or treatment referenced or reviewed here for any person other than herself and any reliance placed on these reviews or references by you is done so solely at your own risk. Nothing on this site shall be construed as providing dermatological, medical or other such advice and you are always advised to seek the advice of a suitable professional should you have any such concerns.

A love letter to Beauty Departments

After the atrocious 'service' (and I use the word loosely) I had the misfortune of experiencing at Boots recently, I've been even more aware of customer service - or lack thereof - across the board.
Surely in this online age and with the 'grab-n-go' mentality that seems to be here to stay, it doesn't mean that we're forgetting how to deal face-to-face with customers? Or are we now simply cutting out human interaction altogether?
It's one thing to offer self-select beauty and self-service tills. It's quite another to make that the only option available to your customers*.

'UNEXPECTED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA' I hate you.

I can see that there is a desire for some self-service tills in busy stores to relieve pressure on tills and offer an alternative for people who have no desire to chit-chat and need to get back to their desk. I mean, I won't use them, but I can see that they have their place. More so when it comes to a sandwich and crisps at lunch.

For me, they will never, ever replace human interaction and traditional 'customer service'. Because that's what it's about, your customer. Not your bottom line, not your shareholder, your customer.
You could look at it and say self-service tills save money. Personally I look at them and see the members of staff they've replaced. Don't tell me that you can't afford staff. You can. You just have to make less profit. And who knows? Maybe if you offered the service, you'd make more money, and keep your shareholders and your customers happy.

I'm in the middle of reading Estee Lauder's 'A Success Story'. I love a good biography/industry book. Yes, it's a book about how she built her business, but she mentions 'customers' on nearly every page. This is a brand built on service. (As an aside, she also throws some brilliant, funny, shade on her competitors and it is well worth a read. It's available here.)

The holding of a customer's hand is classic Lauder technique.

Mrs Lauder doing her thing.

Selfridges Beauty Hall of old.

Selfridges today

I have always loved a good beauty hall. I can wander for hours, literally whole days, looking at what's new, including the fixtures and new counters, new brands and the most fun for me, people watching. I love watching the interaction between sales people and customers. It's my thing. I get it. It seems weird if it's not your thing. But I love it. Admittedly, I may be biased. I was raised around beauty counters.

Mum doing her thing in her first beauty job in Liverpool in the 60s.

Nana doing her thing on a different counter in the 60s.

Whenever I travel, the first place I hit is the department stores. In New York I can spend an entire day doing Bergdorfs and Barneys beauty halls. Another day doing the Ulta/Target/Duane Reade Holy Trinity.
I love beauty, I love (most) people, I love beauty customers, I love beauty teams. That experience cannot be replaced with a till that shouts at you about unexpected items in a baggage area.

Beauty halls in huge department stores have massively upped their game and continue to do so. The competition from online is fierce, so you need to give people a reason to walk through your doors.
The main one for me will always be the experience. Dealing with knowledgeable staff, holding everything in my hand, trying it on my skin, swatching powders, trying lipsticks, reading ingredients labels, talking to the staff, it's all part of the fun.

Adding apothecary-style units to beauty halls in department stores has, for me, added to the entire experience, because you will still have to pay for it at a till with a live, human being manning it. All of the self-select areas of beauty have staff in them that are trained in the brands on offer. It's the modern way to do beauty.

On top of that, we now have services. All of them.

Harvey Nichols Beauty Lounge

Harvey Nichols London recently opened their Beauty Lounge, offering hair, nails, brows, lashes, henna, infusions, three beauty rooms and LED therapy. It's insane. A dedicated entrance means it's literally open dawn til dusk. It's a one-stop shop if you have an event.

Liberty recently refurbed their beauty halls, making even more room for the beautiful niche brands they are famous for. Byredo, Frederic Malle, Surratt, Le Labo, just a few of the standouts, and now Skin Laundry has arrived fresh from L.A. offering 15 minute laser & light facial for busy people on the go. Facials and a Blink Bar mean you can fix your face from top to bottom in a couple of hours.

Liberty in all it's glory.

Selfridges also has everything. Face, hair, body, brands, nails. The whole caboodle.

I love it. I love all of it. Every time I walk through a beauty hall is like the first time.

The new Liberty hall.

No, it's not always perfect, yes, staff have bad days and can be obnoxious and not very well-trained. But I'd rather a person having a bad day that can be trained than a wall of machines any day.

Further info:

Harvey Nichols Beauty Lounge
Liberty
Selfridges






Not a sponsored post, no affiliate links.
Photographs other than mine were sourced from Pinterest, if you are the source please let me know and I will happily update.



*Twitter friends will be aware that I recently tried to spend money (the pre-holiday shop) in Boots to be faced with only self-service tills, no human beings were available. Literally. A manager pointed to the self-service machines as if I was an alien while he did paperwork on his clipboard and said 'the tills aren't open'. I attempted the self-serve tills and when it started giving me grief about unexpected items in the bagging area on the third item, I lost all patience. I left it all there. Walked out. They watched me leave the shop (kids in tow) rather than open a till to serve me. I wasn't being a diva. That's not me. I was being a busy, stressed-out customer, keeping kids amused while we shopped everything from skincare to suncream to hairspray to deodorant and tampax. We went to Superdrug for the essentials and I bought the rest from dept stores.

If your store is open, your tills should be open.

12 DAYS OF GIVEAWAYS - STOCKING FILLER - LIBERTY ADVENT CALENDAR

Our first Stocking Filler is the sellout Liberty Advent Calendar. This gorgeous gift was sold for £149.00 but was worth over £400.00 and is going to one lucky home in the UK.

As always, to win, you just need to enter via rafflecopter below. You can enter up to once a day. UK only.

Thank you Liberty and good luck everyone!

The full list of products in the calendar is available here: www.liberty.co.uk/beauty-advent-calendar


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Pestle & Mortar Liberty Event

Hello loveliest of readers! I have two meet'n'greet/appearances left for this year. Details on the December one are to follow in due course, but the first one is next Tuesday at Liberty where I will be hanging out on the shop floor causing mayhem with Sonia from Pestle & Mortar. 

You may have seen the P&M review here on the blog last week. I liked it so much I'm helping Sonia spread the word.

Come to Liberty between 4pm and 7pm on Tuesday 10th November and talk about all things beauty with Sonia and I.

No ticket is required, but obviously tea is always welcome. ;)

Hope to see you there!

More info: www.liberty.co.uk

Pestle & Mortar are sponsoring this event. (Obvs.)

Pixi Glow Tonic available in Liberty and GWP

Good news Londiniums! The now infamous Glow Tonic from Pixi is available instore at Liberty from today.

And even better, it coincides with the as-per-usual brilliant GWP from Liberty shown below:

I understand that GWP has already sold out online but you should have more luck instore.

The gift is yours when you spend over £150 and is worth over £300.

WWW.LIBERTY.CO.UK

WWW.PIXIBEAUTY.CO.UK

Liberty 'What's your Issue?' week - I'm back.

I can't believe it's been a year since the first 'What's your Issue?' week at Liberty! I'm back this year for more.

On Wednesday 12th March I am doing a full day of one-to-one appointments like last year. The appointments last for 30 minutes and are a modified version of the actual skin consultations that I hold for private clients. They are priced £75.00 but that is fully redeemable against purchases made on the day. My private skin consultations are currently sold out and wait list only.

On Monday 17th March I'm holding an evening workshop entitled 'The Perfect Cleanse'. Essentially me ranting on about how to wash your face, why, when, what with and some hands-on demo'ing. *cracks knuckles*
All workshops are £10 - again redeemable against purchase. It's a no-brainer frankly. Let's have some fun.

To book the one-to-one appointments the link is here: One-to-One appointments.

To book the evening workshop the link is: The Perfect Cleanse.

And for more info on the other people/brands appearing look here: www.liberty.co.uk/skincare-week.

I have no control over the booking system - it's all in Liberty's hands. 

My kind of GWP's. Liberty and Space NK show the others how it's done.

Exhibit A

When you work on counters you rejoice at the term 'GWP' - for it means you are about to hit target and make some serious cash.

When you are a department/speciality store with all of those brands at your disposal - you can work wonders.

Exhibit A: Liberty's current GWP for all spends over £150 is worth over £300 and contains all of the above.

Exhibit B: Space NK's 'National Event' (GWP) is below and is also free with spends over £150.00.

Exhibit B

Liberty's GWP is while stocks last - and Space NK's is just for tomorrow and Thursday and you may need a ticket - check with your usual store for details.

Happy shopping peeps.

Yours, 

The Great Enabler

P50. Going going gone.

Remember all the excitement when Liberty said they would be stocking P50? I know. Me too.

Liberty have just informed me that once their current stock has gone they will be getting no more in. The UK distributor will no longer sell the product into non-spa retail. Whether this is the brilliant idea of the distributor (so more people will have to buy directly from them thus earning them more money) or a direct order from Biologique Recherche themselves is unclear. 

As much as I would back any brand's right to sell wherever they want - it seems odd* to me that you would agree to retail, then renege on that once you realise how many thousands of pounds of sales you will gain if you keep it in-house. 

Not to worry, Pixi have tons of Glow Tonic in stock. 

*I say odd, I mean unethical.

What a week!

I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone that came to Liberty this week for either the workshops or the one-to-one appointments. We had sunshine, sleet, rain and snow and everyone turned up!

Thank you to everyone who tweeted, RT'd and emailed me - for your support and kind words.

It was hugely successful and I'm sure we'll be doing something again in the near future. 

Meeting so many of you in the flesh was brilliant and it's made me think a lot about the future of the blog, my work, everything.

And finally a HUGE thank you to Liberty - who had the balls and open mind to give an opinionated-no-nonsense woman the opportunity to talk to a lot of their customers about absolutely everything to do with the industry - with no restraints. Not many retailers would take that risk - and I think it paid off hugely for all concerned.

So, I'm taking the weekend off completely to regroup - and say hello to my children!

See you next week.

'What's your issue?' Beauty & Skincare week at Liberty

As part of Liberty's Beauty and Skincare week 'What's your issue?' I will be hosting two workshops and giving (finally) one to one skin consultations on 12th and 13th March respectively.

Rest assured this is not a 'normal' beauty/skincare event - I have been promised there are to be no arm & hand massages in sight! Sidebar: I've never understood the arm & hand massage phenomenon. Fix my face please - leave my hands alone. I digress.

For an entire week there will be yoga classes, nutrition workshops, massages from Ren, opportunities to meet Dr Sebagh and Susan Harmsworth from Espa and yours truly. 

I will be holding two workshops on the Tuesday - one to talk about anti-ageing and one to get a grip on problem skin aka: acne.

Wednesday sees me taking over the Queen Mary room for individual skin consultations - I'm staying all day (10am - 8pm) to try and see as many people as possible.

More information on the event can be found here.

For bookings please email beautyevents@liberty.co.uk stating whether you are interested in one of the workshops or an appointment for a skin consult. 

Bookings are being taken on a first-come first-serve basis and I have no control over the system. 

Workshops are £35.00 redeemable against purchase and there are 30 places available.

Skin Consultations are £75.00 for 45 minutes, are fully redeemable against purchases made on the day and there are 10 appointments available.

Hope to see you there! 

P50 Newsflash - Liberty to the rescue.

I've just been informed by Liberty that they will be stocking P50 as of Friday - all because of this blog!

Even more unusual they are only taking the P50 at this stage - if it's successful they will look at expanding into the full range. They have confirmed they are taking all three variations of P50.

There now. As if you needed another reason to go to Liberty.

*all other beauty brands in Liberty Beauty Hall quake in their boots*

*Just to reiterate - I have no business connections to Biologique Recherche or Liberty. No affiliates.