What started as a "pie in the sky idea" came to life recently to launch our new Body Glow.
If you didn't see us in person at Coogee Beach, you may have seen our activation shared on our social media. What was it? A giant size replica of our OG makeup palette, turned into a pop up makeup studio.
Here I'll walk you through the process and what challenges we came up against, and overcame, to end up with an incredible product and successful launch.
THE CONCEPT: Around 4 months ago during a brainstorm session for our summer launches, we had a crazy idea. What if we made a giant makeup palette? It had to be mobile, stable, structurally strong and look exactly like our original and most popular palette. And be made in time!
We started with a very rough amateur sketch on a notepad during our brainstorm session.
Now what? What do we do with this.. how do we make this actually come to life?
THE PROCESS: We started contacting prop companies, builders and contacts we had, with what felt like a wild idea and a very bad drawing. To explain our idea further we made a (dodgy) model. NB: a makeup palette was harmed in the making.
As you'll see, it originally had a flap opening which we envisioned would open out to a covered roof area. But after speaking with engineers, sadly this wasn't going to be done. So we revised our idea!
After a few phone calls, each one lead us back to the incredible team at Designed and Made. And as it turned out unbeknownst to us, we actually knew the guys from High School. They're based in the suburb in Newcastle that we grew up in. Some would call it fate.
Will and Luke worked with us to refine our idea and came back to us with the perfect design.
It's also important to note that at this stage we were clear with our budget, and the Designed and Made team came back to us with this to fit our budget.
Needless to say, all was approved. It looked exactly as we had imagined it. But time was going to be our next challenge!
THE TIMING: Ideally we wanted to launch in November, just before summer kick off. We wanted it to be outside, somewhere busy and a typical Australian summer setting. We decided on Coogee Beach! It is easily accessible and always busy with foot traffic. BUT.. the Randwick Council informed us that we couldn't get a permit any later than November 11th due to other planned activities at that time of year. We could make November 11th work on our end, but would it work for the Designed and Made team? And would our actual Body Glow products arrive in time?
We kept asking the council the "what if" questions, and they were adamant that November 11th was the absolute latest we could do it.
So the magicians at Designed and Made got the job done for us quickly, and we had a smaller batch of the Body Glow quickly made and shipped so we would at the very least have our mini's available for giving away at Coogee and a decent stock level for launch day online. Phew!
THE RESULT: Tada! After being brought to Sydney via a removalist, the giant palette arrived at Basics by B HQ. We hosted a beautiful launch dinner with it set up as a Glow Studio, before taking it down to Coogee Beach on November 11- the perfect sunny beach day! We gave out HUNDREDS of mini size bottles of our brand new Body Glow, met loads of our customers and new faces too.
sourced from instagram