Makeup is money. Each year, women purchase billions of dollars in cosmetics and skincare. Although the drugstore market is significantly cheaper, most consumers lack the expertise to determine solo what products are right for them, and without testers, end up wasting money on incorrect colors. For these reasons, millions of women turn to luxury retailers, putting self-shop behind them and entering into the terrifying world of salespeople. Driven by daily quotas and commission percentages, these harmless-looking creatures size you up, decide how much money you have to spend and then set out to make you spend a little more.
Laws regulate what companies can claim on the back of their packaging. Sales associates, though, are a different story. Over the course of my seven-month internship in beauty retail, I told customers everything from "this product will work like a face peel without the side effects" to "the mascara you're using is going to tear out your lashes." Some of it was exaggerations; some of it was guesses; some of it was lies.
Experience as a consumer myself informs me that such behavior is not limited to the company I worked for. At the counter of a well-known beauty brand, a salesperson tells me that the lip balm I'm trying is actually a lip smoother, packed with gentle exfoliating ingredients. Curiously, the packaging of this $22 product makes no mention of the extra properties I'm being sold on.
Incidents like these are reflective of problems in the industry. First of all, department store employees frequently switch between counters (known as floating), and end up selling the same product on Tuesday that they were calling near-toxic on Monday. Many are never actually trained by the company whose products they sell. Stranded on the sales floor without concrete information, they are left to improvise.
At higher levels, lack of communication between the department that develops products and marketing personnel leads to deception. If, say, a $22 lip balm performs poorly in store, marketing executives will invent alternative selling points for the product and send them in memos to field employees. At my company, when a cream designed to calm allergic reactions began to accumulate in our stockroom, corporate offices proposed we suggest it to customers as a remedy for diaper rash and bug bites.
Other times, the lies originate with in-store management. "It's all about how you put things to people," my boss explains, as she instructs me to tell customers over the phone that we received "a very limited shipment" of a product we actually have piled in box after box in the backroom, so they "better order right now."
Even when salespeople have good intentions, they frequently end up misleading customers simply out of ignorance. Only a handful of mall employees have attended cosmetology or esthetician school, and they certainly aren't dermatologists. I've watched associates sell hundreds of dollars in powder foundation to teenagers with blemishes, completely unaware that although it might look great, a product that heavy is only going to make them break out more.
So what's a girl to do when faced with this gauntlet of ruthless industry deception? Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Remember that what works for one person might not work for you, and if all else fails, return.
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