Making Makeup Easier Will Be As Revolutionary To Beauty As The Desktop Was To Computing
Or Why Hacker News Loving SysAdmin Linux Nerds = Beauty Obsessives With 50 Product Makeup Routines
I’m a nerd so I think about a lot of topics that don’t go together. Two of those topics are the history of computing & cosmetics and they have more in common than you might think.
This is a blurb from a Sephora email about a well known makeup brand’s new product. It is advertising a feature set so far beyond what the average woman requires that one could easily surmise that Sephora is focused on selling to only the top 10% of the makeup wearing user base. As a “priming, color correcting skin prepping, skin tone adjusting eyeshadow base” that costs over $25 it isn’t really designed for the woman that just “wants to look my best.”
A reasonable base of women adore the complexity of cosmetics. Beauty is a 60b dollar industry in the US alone so that segment of geeks is pretty large. They find 15 minute YouTube tutorials to be a terrific hobby and love exploring the overflowing shelves of Ulta & Sephora. There’s even enough to have created a multi-billion dollar industry with Ulta’s IPO being the most successful of any in 2008 (and undergirding the fortunes of a number of high profile funds).
But let’s remember that computing used to be a hobby for most people and largely the domain of professional computer scientists. It was also a highly profitable, multi-billion dollar industry even back in the day. But once it became easy enough for regular people, personal computing exploded into a industry so large & worth so much you are probably reading this on a mobile computer in your hands.
Don’t you wonder why it is that makeup hasn’t had this explosion? It is a big industry with a lot at stake, but largely serves very skilled women with a lot of time & often cash on their hands. It serves very skilled hobbyists & professionals. But shouldn’t it serve any woman so that say someone like me can use it with ease and joy?
o let’s compare makeup today to where computing used to be and see if we can discover anything about what is going on here.. Let’s go back to 1982 and the birth of PC Magazine. Anyone else remember Hello World? We used to interface with computers via the command line and command-line interfaces are still often preferred by more advanced computer users, as they often provide a more concise and powerful means to control a program or operating system. (Read this excellent history by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson for more)
Similarly, makeup professionals love tools like color correcting primers or angled brushes as it is is a more elegant, concise and powerful way to use makeup. But not everyone wants to develop that particular skill set. Nor should they have to, because the power of makeup (or computing) should be in the hands of everyone. Not just as a greater good, but because it is wildly more profitable and makes for a MUCH larger industry.
The graphical user interface aka the thing that lets normal people use things like a mouse pad and tabs was a huge step forward in allowing regular humans that do not wish to use command line level control to leverage personal computers. Its development and widespread adoption ushered in a computing revolution. Prior to the GUI (or graphical user interface) there was no desktop metaphor that regular folks could easily recognize and enable them figure out how to interact with ANYTHING on their computer. It read as just as much gibberish to the average person as “color correcting priming eyeshadow base” does to me.
Its development and widespread adoption ushered in a computing revolution. Prior to the GUI (or graphical user interface) there was no desktop metaphor that regular folks could easily recognize and enable them figure out how to interact with ANYTHING on their computer. It read as just as much gibberish to the average person as “color correcting priming eyeshadow base” does to me.
And makeup is just as powerful for women. It can change how you look, how you feel, how you perform, and how others perceive you. It can be a huge advantage and the lack of skill in its application can hinder you (just as lack of computing skills is now hurting millions).
I believe the power of makeup should be in every woman’s hands, just as the power of computing has been put in in the hands of the world’s consumers (literally, now that mobile has truly arrived).
Stowaway and the simplification of makeup is every bit as disruptive to the cosmetics industry as the GUI and the desktop metaphor were to computing. It doesn’t require command line interface (which in cosmetics goes something like $25 color correcting eyeshadow primers before you put on the $54 eyeshadow palettes, the $22 eyeliner and the $30 mascara all of which expire or should I say experience planned obsolescence).
I want makeup as easy as the desktop metaphor. At Stowaway our “how-to” videos are all about 10 seconds long and go straight into easy to use products & techniques any woman use. Our products range from $10 to (at most) $22. They are simple to apply and cover the basics for complexion, eyes & color. We tell you how much you need, where to put it, and you’re done — makeup for dummies! And let’s remember what happens when things get a lot simpler and cheaper: entrenched incumbents get disrupted.
But isn’t a lipstick just a lipstick the men say? Sure, if by a lipstick is a lipstick in the most versioned-controlled possible way (matte, sheer, cream, high shine, long wear, lacquer, non feathering, non drying, I could go on but I’ll spare you). But what if like me you just just want lipstick. You don’t care too much about how it is made (as long as it is safe and works) and you certainly you don’t need to “jailbreak it” for more control. You just want a usable product that makes you look nice every day?
For the computer nerds out there makeup is a chron job (for normals, a cron job is a time-based scheduler in Unix-like computer operating systems for repeatable tasks). I can’t think of a more repeatable task than a woman putting on her makeup in the morning and then repeating it via touch-ups at night.
Which is why we at Stowaway tell you how much you need, where to put it, and you are done. Makeup for dummies! And let’s remember what happens when things get a lot simpler and cheaper. Entrenched incumbents get disrupted.
That’s why makeup is frigging complicated. It is complex and expensive for the same reason that computing used to be the domain of highly specialized professionals Clay Christiansen’s basic principles of disruption make it pretty clear;
Companies pursue these “sustaining innovations” at the higher tiers of their markets because this is what has historically helped them succeed: by charging the highest prices to their most demanding and sophisticated customers at the top of the market, companies will achieve the greatest profitability.
Ah so L’Oreal, Estee Lauder and the rest of them are making money by making increasingly complex “sustaining innovations” that only the most demanding and sophisticated customers like beauty Youtube girls desire? Now that makes a lot of sense. But we all know the end to this story of disruption.
However, by doing so, companies unwittingly open the door to “disruptive innovations” at the bottom of the market. An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers at the bottom of a market access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.
It sucks to think of regular women that just want to look nice and get out the door quickly in the morning (or touch up at the gym, the office, on an airplane or in transit) as being “bottom of the market” but compared to the woman who lives for strobing & contouring, I’m a bottom of the market kind of woman and I’m betting that 90% of us would fit that description of “just wanting makeup that works and makes me look nice.
This also makes it incredibly hard for all these old incumbents to compete with Stowaway because by offering prestige quality product (in sizes you can finish and carry with you ) at better prices for everyone we’ve forced the hands of the incumbents. Imagine the uproar it would cause from their customers that are paying an enormous sum more than everyone once we move to a right-sized model. So they keep prices high, sizes large, and complexity at maximum to to maintain expensive acquisition channels and sustaining innovations to attract the top 10% of the market. It’s almost the classic Salesforce-Seibel competition where Seibel had to spend more on features and products to differentiate and justify their products at higher prices. That didn't end well for Seibel
I’d be willing to bet that there is such an enormous market out there for selling makeup to women who don’t want to spend a ton of money or develop a time consuming dedicated skill that would be thrilled purchase top quality prestige products they can actually use regularly and simply. And that’s why I cofounded Stowaway.
Because makeup should to have it’s desktop metaphor and the massive adoption and growth that comes with that kind of disruption. And to my investor friends reading it imagine the kind of money we would make from providing this service.
