The beauty inside the bottle, our founder’s Aha moment and how SKINSKOOL was born.
The vision for SKINSKOOL came to me in 2016. I was in the mood to overhaul my entire skincare routine. I went to a Douglas store where I live in Amsterdam. Think Sephora, but German. Due to previous work in the beauty industry, I had been quite an avid reader of beauty blogs and considered myself informed about beauty happenings. But at the time of this particular shopping trip, I had lapsed a few months with my blog reading having just had a baby and was a bit out of touch with the beauty world.
So when I walked into the Douglas store that day and saw the shelves of products and brands, I was immediately overwhelmed. It was a world of competing claims, super wide fluctuating price points and the only resource to help me wade through it was the sales associate. After about a minute of chitchat with her, I quickly concluded that she was even less informed than I felt. Even with the shelves overflowing with product, I couldn’t make any decisions because the entire shopping experience was just so underwhelming. I left that day without buying anything and became totally obsessed with the idea of solving a few problems brought to light by my experience that day:
1. There was no way to compare skincare products using the most obvious and pertinent information to a customer, the ingredients in it.
2. FOMO in skincare is real! How could I feel good about choosing one brand’s claim over another when the other had a claim that sounded just as good. Someone needed to reduce the noise and curate the best of the best.
3. The suspicion that you’re always overpaying for luxury skincare is not a good feeling. Even if you feel excited about finally investing in a product, you’re also at the same time feeling bad that you think you got ripped off. Where was the luxury-for-less concept in skincare?
They say if you can’t get an idea out of your head, then you’re probably meant to be the one to do it. Fast forward 4+ years, SKINSKOOL is a reality and we’re well on our way to tackling each of these problems.
Stick with us: we’ve got big plans.
