Cosmetic Founder's Everyday Words

The latest spin on a well trodden business reality TV theme.

Running The Shop sees The Boss of a tired, static, failing firm leave their staff in charge for three weeks. Along with thirty grand to make changes.

Amid the juicily edited emerging tyrants and tears of struggle, a pair both aged 19 take on the daunting task of creating a brand new cosmetics department. Completely from scratch in a quiet provincial town’s 234-year old time warped department store.

Beauticians Lucy and Abbey get entrusted with half the entire budget. Pressure truly on.

A heartwarming tale of achievement unfolds.

I was happy to see one key sales pointer revealed early in their (inevitably termed) “journey”.

With all the major wholesalers ignoring them, a little help from the producers allowed them to get an appointment with the founder of a large independent producer.

Sadly this head of HD Brows was only awarded a brief glimpse of screen time, but it was quality.

Two tips were shared.

The gentler was that Nilam Holmes-Patel knew exactly where her products had to be. Hardly surprisingly, she wanted them smack bang in the entrance. Who wouldn’t. Yet it was her insistence that “as a woman you have to stop and touch colour” that set her stipulation apart.

It was a good reminder that when you ask for what everyone else wants, you need solid and unique reasoning that appeals to the emotions.

Then we saw hands-on training applying make-up to a practice client. During the treatment, she passed on pitch advice;

“So the words that you want to be saying when you’re using this product;

so easy to use, it lasts all day.

Everyday words.”

I nodded approvingly.

Too many times I hear salespeople use language that is the exact opposite. Filled with technobabble, alienating big words or feels like from a communist regime’s phrasebook defending the indefensible.

The beauty entrepreneur’s everyday words rule is a good sanity test for your pitch.