Welcome to MAKING THE BRAND, I’m your host Diddy Diyah. We will be chronicling the launch of the official FAIRY GLOW MOTHER® skin care line. There may or may not be walks for cheesecake.
Yes, it’s true. A skin care line is coming and I can’t wait to share it with everyone! But it’s a little bittersweet because I’m launching during a pandemic when my business hasn’t been allowed to function as normal for 6 months and I’m basically a broke boi. I ain’t never knew stress like I now know stress. But I’ll find a way or make one and I’m taking y’all on this journey with me.
The reason I even got into the beauty industry was to create a physical product (or products). At the time that I had made the decision to enter the beauty industry, I was already pretty good at launching products… just in the tech space. Back in 2011, I was working for a beauty subscription start-up and, while there, I learned A LOT about beauty. Specifically, I learned a lot about the cost of production for beauty products, marketing beauty products, laws and regulations around ingredients that went into beauty products, how much beauty influencers made, and the demands of the beauty consumer.
Fast forward to 2016 and I am bored with my life. All I do is go to work (at a different, more affluent start-up now) and go home. What do I do? Enroll in esthetics school obviously because I’d spent the last five years sort of obsessing over beauty products from a consumer standpoint, I wanted to learn more about the professionals in the industry. The funny thing is that I never planned on actually working a day in my life as an esthetician. It was all just supposed to be research. Ha! But it turns out, I was pretty good at being an esthetician and here I am now: an established esthetician launching her own skin care brand.
About The Brand
The brand is an extension of the FAIRY GLOW MOTHER® studio. It’s chill, a lil playful, and works like magic. I’m focusing on creating great products that work with your skin at your pace. I’m avoiding creating aggressively abrasive products because I feel like those always work really well for the first 2-4 weeks of use but after that, they start to work against you. That’s not the way to glow. I always want the best for my clients and this is true for my potential customers as well. So I’m giving you the best that I’ve got, word to Anita Baker.
The brand is completely American made—from the ingredients sourced down to the packaging. Surprisingly, making an American brand in America has been the biggest challenge for me. It took creating my own brand to learn that just about nothing is actually made in America anymore. This is one of the reasons why I’m so broke now. American production ain’t cheap! I’m working with a few somewhat local labs (a 4-hour drive is kinda local right?) and one lab in Georgia for formulation. So it’s like 99% California made, for those who have a special allegiance to my home state. Everything is hand-labeled by me and my two best friends though because, bruh, labeling turned out to be incredibly expensive. Please sell this line out when it launches so I can pay someone else to do this because my friends are starting to hate me.
My brand philosophy remains the same: skin care without scams! Everything just works (when used as directed). I am unbothered by the fear-mongering happening in the clean/green beauty community and personally love parabens and a very light fragrance. However, I *am* going out of my way to ensure there are no known irritants included in my products. Of course, every product I release won’t be for everyone but I want to be as safe for my sensitive skin gang as possible. I am also avoiding trendy ingredients just for the sake of the trend. If there is no viable, peer-reviewed research on a particular ingredient… I’m cool on it.
About the Products
This is the exciting part! I plan on launching 6 products over the next 6 months. Unfortunately, I can’t launch everything at once as I’d like to because, again, a b*tch is broke. I currently have the six products I’m considering being tested by some of my clients and long-time followers. Their feedback will help me decide which products to release first.
The products currently being tested were engineered to be acne-safe as those with acne make up the majority of my clientele. And they also focus on hydration and reinforcing a healthy skin barrier. Of the six products being tested, only one of them can’t be used by everyone.
As mentioned earlier, I’m focused on creating products that just work. So don’t be surprised when you don’t see me shouting a bunch of ingredients at you. Aren’t you tired of both not being able to pronounce “niacinamide” and not knowing what it does or how it will help your skin too? I think brands that only talk about individual ingredients in their products is lazy marketing. They’re like, “Here’s this AMAZING ingredient that does this ONE thing we know about and I’m only including it to get your attention!” I plan on taking a much different approach.
I’ll be sharing more details about the products over the next few weeks. I only have two product names picked for right now but I’ll be working to finalize the rest of the names soon. Y’all know I am too hype about that part!
If you’ve read this far, go ahead and sign up for details about the launch (which I’m currently slating for some time in October) by clicking below.