Jess Southall, Owner and founder of Beautythings Ltd with over 20 years of experience in the beauty industry.
Beautythings is an online retail company prodominantly selling popular brands of skincare such as Dermalogica and Decleor, established in 2011.
Available at: https://beautythings.co.uk
Interview
Tell me a bit about yourself and what you do.
My name is Jess, I run a e-commerce website in the Hair & Beauty Industry. Having 25 years in the Beauty industry, having previously owned salons and now do skincare treatments from home selling products to clients. We then took the business online in 2011.
Tell me a bit about Beautythings?
Beautythings concept was to sell anything beauty related online and nationwide. We started with a strong brand that complemented the treatment side of the business. Over the years we have expanded to sell in the region of 36 brands and always looking for new brands that will work well with the ones we already have.
Why is Social Media important to you and your company?
Social Media wasn’t such an important thing when the business first started in 2011. The best way to communicate was via email. Now Social media is an important element and time consuming task in our business. We use social media platforms such as instagram and facebook to advertise our monthly offers to our clientele alongside promoting all the brands we sell to encourage people to go onto our website.
Do you believe the growth of social media has had an impact on the growth of your website?
I believe that social media is essential in our business, for recognition, for brand awareness, making sure you stand out or are remembered all of the time. Eye catching images keep people inspired, when I see a great image of a product it encourages me to want to try that product. Social media is an especially great way of getting this photos to be seen and encourage other people to try the products.
As social media grows, my website grows. I started Beautythings in 2011, working alone alongside a full time job and packing 1 to 2 orders a week. As the business grew, I hired my first employee to help me take my website to social media and since then our website has blossomed into a huge success for me. I now dedicate all my time into Beautythings... we use online resources to identify where the majority of our sales come from and we have found that in the past year social media alongside the emails we send out have bought in the highest amounts of new customers.
Dermalogica is one of your biggest selling brands. They used Georgia Toffolo to endorse some of their newest ranges; Clear Start and Active Clearing. Georgia Toffolo made her skin issues quite apparent on ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here’ in 2007. Did you see any impact of this celebrity endorsement on your sales of these particular skin care ranges?
Celebrity Endorsements are a huge help to product awareness and generate lots of sales. This particular endorsement of Georgia Toffolo did create a huge interest in the skincare range on the whole. This along with the social media. A celebrity admitting to a skin issue and endorsing a product to help, gains lots of trust from the individuals in that sector.
Do you think your social media presence has an impact on brand loyalty?
I do think that eye catching images of the brand you love, does make you want to purchase more and inspires intrigue into new product launches as soon as they are seen on social media.
Also, doing this via social media allows the viewers to make a visual connection between these brands and your company which will hopefully encourage them to remember us and come to us when they want to purchase that item.
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