Very Disappointed...

This article will be about the tasteless actions happening in a makeup company I personally love and support. But first...

Anyone know a company called Lime Crime? Ahh, Lime Crime...
What started out as an exciting young artist selling pretty bright eye shadows she "made" herself, turned into false advertisement, lying, repackaging, poor customer service, harassment, and a shutdown of the aforementioned product.

For a comprehensive history on Lime Crime and its founder, Xenia (Alias Doe Deere), CLICK HERE.
For a timeline of these events, CLICK HERE.

By the way, her "magic" dust has been discontinued. Funny how things work out.

In case these links disappear, I'll insert my favourite quotes and images. 

That first image speaks for itself. This second image is Lipstick and Lightsaber's reaction to Doe's claim that she "made" her own eyeshadows because she could not find any bright enough for her taste.

• "On 4th November, Doe released this video of her calling us all big fat liars and giant meaniebeasts for picking on her and being awful, terrible bullies, spreading lies about her and generally damaging her state of sparkly happy magical gleefulness, rolling in piles of cash magical fairy dust."

• "Lime Criminal is their signature colour, here I swatched their "Magic" Dust in Lime Criminal, versus three considerably brighter greens from Aromaleigh and Sleek. In reality, "Lime Criminal" actually looks like more of a pale goldenish sage than anything resembling a lime. Doe's also obviously never heard of Ben Nye or Kryolan, who also make really bright, intense make-up. (ETA: Readers have pointed out that Doe's early make-up tutorials used Kryolan heavily. So... I guess she was just lying? Shock, horror.)"  -http://www.lipsticksandlightsabers.com/2010/01/lime-crime-beneath-glitter.html

 

This is why I love L&L:

• "I Make All My Own Colours

(Wow, you invented your own spectrum of light?)"

This Dough woman just set up this image for herself and marketed her products based on her image. She had previously attempted this transition with music and with closing design (sound familiar? She WAS an admirer of Shrinkle...).  My Personal favorite narrative about this character is HERE. Honestly a must-read for entertainment alone.

Now, Lime Crime is not the only company, big or small, that deserves a whack on the hand. A couple years ago, MAC released a collection called Rodarte which tastelessly objectified conditions for women in Juarez, Mexico. Rather than creating a collection with bright vivid colours and names to celebrate Mexican culture, or exposing their reality with charities like Viva Glam, they came up with a scary promo image with a sickly, malnourished-looking white girl, with washed-out, pale shades bearing unacceptable names like Sleepless, Ghost Town, and Factory. Oh, yeah. FACTORY.

What the hell does this picture have to do with Mexico?

Here is a VIDEO summarizing what happened there.

Onward... to Sugarpill.

Based in California, this exciting brand was founded by a bright, creative woman called Amy, or "Shrinkle". With a sparkling reputation based on her unique DIY clothing and sales of Kryolan on her ebay profile, she had a great background to market her company. The trademark of her products was high-impact colour, unique range. Lovely products, which I have reviewed HERE.

While the concept of bright colours is not unique, Sugarpill drew attention with smart marketing, a clear foundation of high quality products, and Youtube makeup gurus with huge audiences advertising their shadows virtually for free. Pre-Sugarpill, as I mentioned, Shrinkle sold Kryolan herself, but mentioned a desire to control the texture, colour and ingredients in products. The solution was to develop her own products. The time between the "tease" of her products and the official launch of her company was perfect. Just enough to get the hype out there to a lot of people without making them frustrated by inaccessability.

The release of their Heartbreaker Palette last May was also preceded by lots of marketing, teasing and hyping up for a while. Annoying, but tolerable. (The only thing about that palette that was heartbreaking was how long I had to wait, repeatedly, for that little "out of stock" button to go away.) They seem to have a problem keeping their high-demand products in stock....

Anyone who checks up on their site semi-regularly will know this isn't a one-time thing. Maybe Amy bit off a little more than she can shew if she can't keep her products in stock?

When they first launched, Sugarpill said they would gradually release new products once they were on their feet. And they did, withing 5 years of launching, release false eyelashes and the Heartbreaker Palette. Kind of skimpy in the span of 5 years, but I can't judge because I never owned my own business. However, why stick just to eye shadow? There is a huge opportunity for Sugarpill to branch out into eyeliners, mascaras, lip products and cheek colours based on their strong-selling eyeshadows.

Again, their choice, but it seems odd to me given how people literally go nuts for their products. Releasing different products would be a no-brainer to me. It's not like they have no other option like Lime Crime, whose eyeshadows lost all credibility and had nothing else to sell but chalky, overpriced lipsticks. Sugarpill would make a killing if they branched out.

Now, here is a link to a blog post made LAST JUNE about the new products Sugarpill was supposed to be releasing "in a few weeks". They gave people at IMATS a sneak peek of three new collections: Elektro Cute, Cold Chemistry and Sparkle Baby.

Let us pretend for a moment that these new collections do not contain colours that are incredibly similar to previous-existing shades in Sugarpill's 13- colour range. (Frostine seems similar to Mochi an Lumi, Hotsy Totsy and the new pink loose shadow looks like Dollipop, Candycrush looks like Paperdoll, the dark blue pigment looks like Royal Sugar, the lime green pigment looks like Acidberry and a bit darker than Absinthe...) WHY tease loyal customers with new products if they are not close to ready to being sold??? Promoting is one thing, but one year of promising these products to no avail is very frustrating.

And now, they have released this new Chromalust called Asteria (which is remarkably similar to the peachy shade in the new Sparkle Baby palette), of which only 1000 were made to be sold at PHMExpo. Is it just me, or is the vast majority of their clientele outside of LA, and thus unable to purchase this shade?

As a commenter on Sugarpill's Facebook page said:

"You've been leaving us dangling with Cold Chemistry and Sparklebaby for years now (it's been at least 2). Then you released Cold Chemistry at IMATS LA and we all thought, oh well at least that'll go up on the site soon. Nothing. WHERE IS IT?! Same with Sparklebaby...where is it? Obviously both are ready, formulated and good enough to sell now. I love you guys, I love when I get packages from you, I love the little note on my invoice and the extras inside, but THIS?! This isn't cool. Exclusives are fine for convention and I understand the logic behind doing them, but when you do those and NOTHING else, not fine. Please, carrot on a rope trick will stop working very very soon".

YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE NOT HAPPY WITH YOU.

This limited edition colour, along with their inability to keep their products in stock or release their new products within a year of announcing it, is a bad move. I am disappointed, given all the hype Shrinkle's eyeshadows have attracted, and the fact that I absolutely adore the shades I have.

They shouldn't ride on the hype from their original eye products forever. Hope they get their act together soon, because if they read their customers' comments on their Facebook page, they would see a LOT of frustration and disapproval.