“I’m sick of the braggers, the blaggers, the hashtaggers. Sick of the takers and the ‘no-filter’ fakers. I’m sick of the fads. I’m sick of the ads and the wouldn’t be famous if it wasn’t for your dads […] Sick of the feed. Sick of the greed. Sick of the game. Sick of the same.”
As introductions go, MyBeautyBrand, the mutinous new “post-influencer” beauty platform that’s ricocheted onto the scene, is not afraid to make a roaring entrance. Heard of it? Let me enlighten you. A Glossier-meets-Avon mash-up, MyBeautyBrand was set up in response to the fact that a growing number of millennials and Gen Zers don’t trust influencers to recommend beauty products to them anymore.
In the murky world of #spon, #ad, #gifted, it’s hard to know the motivation behind your favourite ‘grammers endorsement of the latest and greatest beauty hits. Gone, it seems, are the simple days when girls next door got on their web cams to wax lyrical about their number one highlighter, simply because they tried it, loved it and wanted like-minded folks to know.
It’s why Robin Derrick, British Vogue’s former creative director, and entrepreneur, Max Leykind (who co-founded Eyeko), set up an alternative beauty platform dependent on peer-to-peer recommendations and active collaboration from its community, where shoppers can also be sellers and decision makers. It’s a website where anyone can set up an e-store, share their thoughts and co-create with the brand. Think if your friend asked you your favourite mascara and you said Benefit. Your friend would then go and buy from Debenhams and Debenhams would benefit from your recommendation. Here, you’re the one that benefits from your recommendation.
Effectively, you build your own e-store on the platform where you create makeup looks, upload them and tag the products you used for others to recreate. For every click through to buy – which the brand fulfils and ships – you could earn between ten and twenty percent of the purchase price in commission. The more you sell, the higher you earn – sell up to £1,000 of products per month and you’ll get ten percent. Sell over £2,000, it goes up to twenty. Sell over £3,000 in a single quarter and you earn yourself shares in the company.
As for the products, for now the site is home to its own-brand makeup line, ByMe, a colour range comprising ultra pigmented (and ultra bold) eye paints, liquid lipsticks, highlighters, blushers and nail paints created at Intercos, in Italy where some of the world’s top tier luxury brands are also made. Eventually though, the plan is to host other brands, too.
The general vibe is experimental, individual and riotous with rallying cries like “everyone posts but no one delivers,” “be an inspiration not an influencer” and “when did beauty get so ugly? When they got paid to say they love you.”
Certainly, it’s a clever concept, but that last slogan smacks somewhat of hypocrisy. Fresh and community-focused as MyBeautyBrand is, it undoubtedly feeds into consumerism itself, since its community is effectively paid a commission for their recommendations. And, given there’s a material and financial incentive to endorse products, you could ask how it differs from the #ad and #spon climate that arguably undermined the faith placed in influencers? How can we be sure that this online community is any different to the ones that preceded it?
That’s up for you to decide. But, given many of us are still in the market for beauty products (albeit in a more conscious and considered way) why not benefit from the recommendations we’d give freely anyway? For some, it’s a chance to earn revenue off the back of experimenting with makeup and connecting with like-minded individuals. Used responsibly, perhaps this could be an opportunity to build the type of collaborative beauty brand we want to see?
