How to Start a Beauty Brand
If you’re an entrepreneur with a great idea for a beauty brand, now is the time to act. The market isn’t as saturated as you might think. Young people can’t get enough of trying new products that hit the market, especially if the products revolutionize your area of expertise or push the boundaries of what’s been done before. Young people aren’t married to a single product yet, and they understand that they may find versatility with your products that rival even their favorite brand.
You don’t need years of experience if you’ve got a strong vision and you know how to put together an insightful team to make that vision a reality. Whether you’re looking at how to start your own lash brand or break into skincare, you’ve got a perspective to offer and Millenials and members of Gen Z will hear you out as long as it aligns with their core values. For example, before you even get started on your journey, making a commitment to bring your clients beauty products that are cruelty-free will mean greater overall success with your young consumers. These generations are very conscious about the products and companies that they choose to support. If you understand the wants and needs of your target audience, you can’t go wrong. Here are a few more tips to help you get started.
Hire someone to deal with the legal side.
You’re an innovator and understand the creativity of the industry and consumer needs. Beauty is your expertise. However, it’s hard to be fully informed about every aspect of running a business and brand. One of the most important people you can have on your team is a great corporate lawyer.
A corporate lawyer will be able to help you protect your finances and your intellectual property. A lawyer can represent you if other entrepreneurs attempt to steal your good ideas. You may not initially see your company’s vulnerability, but a great attorney can be the difference between your brand’s success and failure.
The first step in finding a lawyer to represent your brand is looking for someone you have a personal connection with. You’ll be working closely with this person, so you need to trust them. If you’re living in Canada, Malliha Wilson may be the lawyer you need to represent your company in all legal matters. She specializes in complex litigation and served as the Assistant Deputy Attorney General of the Ontario Government. As a senior partner at Nava Wilson LLP, she has the experience you need to feel protected and properly advised. If your brand focuses on inclusive beauty, it may impress you to know that Malliha Wilson was the first minority to hold the office of Assistant Deputy Attorney General, making her a champion of diversity and inclusion. She’s certainly someone who will work to keep your brand safe.
Curate a design team.
Now that your intellectual property will be protected, you need to take the next steps to build your brand. You’ve got big plans and a design team will help you execute them. As a vendor, you’ll need a name and logo that stands out from the rest. You want your image to be memorable. A design team not only works on the brand as a whole but also on the specific products that’ll be released.
There are many careers for people who work with their hands, but one of the most rewarding career paths is building prototypes of new products. Your design team should be able to digitally and physically create products for the brand in order to cover the full range of your customer’s experience. This also means that you can keep as much of your work in-house as possible, which should cut costs. It’s better to be able to design your product from start to finish, so you’re only working with an outside factory to actually manufacture the product.
Market on social media with brand ambassadors.
The best way to market beauty right now isn’t on television commercials. So many young people are exclusively using streaming services and will never see those advertisements. In order to speak to a younger generation, find people on Instagram or Tik-Tok with a lot of followers and ask them if they’d like to be a brand ambassador. You can set the terms of this agreement. For example, how you’d like to be tagged in their posts and how often they should be posting about your product. You should also pay to have your social media ads boosted so that more consumers see them during a targeted amount of time.
Open a brick-and-mortar location.
Once people start to recognize your brand, it’s not a bad idea to open up a brick-and-mortar location. You’ll be the beauty destination everyone is dying to go to. If you become a sensation, security’s going to be very important. There aren’t very many drawbacks of cloud security cameras, so it’s a great safety solution for your business. Any kind of security system, whether video security cameras or alarms with easy installation, will ensure that your product and employees are safe.
Starting your own brand will be a lot of work, but creating a timeline and curating a competent team will get you where you want to go. Make decisions that make your brand stand out for all of the rights reasons. Be bold and fabulous.