I can't believe we're 2!

Post by BR Merilyn

“I need a logo” I said to my agency contact, “for this new website I’m launching”.  “So what does it do?” he said. “Weeeell, it’s sort of going to feature beauty products, and women that have used them can go in and review them, but it will be targeted at NZ woman and we’ll talk abit about other beauty stuff too……I think.”  “So what’s it called?” he said. “Beauty Space”, I replied.

I’d forgotten about that actually, forgotten that for quite some time, while we were in our planning stage that we were intending on calling ourselves Beauty Space.  I can’t quite remember why we changed it to Beauty Review, I think in the end I felt that our brand name should essentially encapsulate exactly what we stood for, and now, it’s impossible to think of ourselves being called anything else.

I get asked quite often where the idea of BR came from and to be honest I can’t really remember.  I think it ended up being a mix of a couple of things really. 

Often you hear people who have started their own businesses saying things like “Well, I really wanted a lipstick that was made totally from wings of the giant eaglebeatle from the Amazon,  and I couldn’t find one that I really liked so I made my own.” But it wasn’t really like that at all.

I knew from my time in beauty corporate land that consumers were becoming more and more skeptical about beauty product claims and advertising, but ironically where really could they go for an independent view on beauty products, from real consumers? 

Oh sure most brand sites have a review section, but are they really going to show ALL the reviews? Even the ones that don’t think their brand is as good as they claim?  Hmmmmmm, and even the magazine Beauty Editors…ever seen them write less than a glowing report on products they have been sent by brand PR Agencies? Methinks not...perhaps if they don’t like it…they just don’t write about it?

So put all those things together, and what do you get? The seed of the idea for an independent online beauty community hosted independently but driven by real consumers was planted.

Of course BR hasn’t always looked like it does now although the basic look and feel hasn’t really changed. But the fascinating thing has been, that like a real baby, it is a living-breathing thing that grows and changes depending on what we feed it and where we take it.

85% of our content now is written by our members, and a number of initiatives like, the forum, ability to “favourite” a review or an article to your inbox, and more frequent and in depth articles, came about from suggestions from our members.   

So what has been some of the highlights over the last couple of years? 

The fact that we are now NZ’s largest beauty website with over 100,000 visitors per month has got to be up there. But I think more than that it has to be the wonderful community feel that we get from the majority of the women on the site that interact with us.

I love the fact that we are so much a part of our readers life that they fondly refer to us as BR! We’ve had some amazing care packages turn up to the office and the fact that people have even thought to do that, is incredible. But then of course what is also amazing is all the incredibly generous messages of support we get when on the odd occasion things have gone tits up – like last weekend!

I love the fact that two of our fabulous Beauty Crew have actually been a member first  (didn’t know that did you?) oh and you’d be mistaken if you didn’t think we haven’t got our eye on a few more of you.

Some of the learnings?  Well we’ve learnt a thing or too about human nature, I can tell you.   I would estimate that 50% of correspondence to the lovely Beauty Crew start without any salutations (hello, hi, please would you…) and finish without a thank you…and you’re looking to go on a trial team anytime soon are you? And I won’t even mention the others that include four letter words most unbecoming of a lady, only to say, this probably isn’t the right site for them

I’ve learnt also that it’s never to late to start learning. I’ve been exposed to beauty products I never would have considered if I didn’t do what I do, and also been looped into  fun and fabulous beauty ideas from our members….this is indeed proof that the world is working like it should.

What will the next two years bring? Well,  only time will tell, but one thing you can guarantee, is that that you, lovely readers, will certain be a corner stone of shaping the future!


If you’ve got any questions you want to ask…ask away below…