When they take a theme and do it to death — e.g. Urban Decay Naked, Pat McGrath Divine Rose, etc. I love a good theme, but I want to see genuine exploration rather than feel like it’s on repeat.
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Bad quality at BIG prices (hey, Tom Ford – I’m reluctant to try any of your pricey eyeshadow quads for this reason). Also, difficulty in seeing the products in store/in person/for myself (this has been my struggle with Sydney Grace, ColourPop and so many other “online only” brands).
I don’t mind a company milking a theme to death if the products themselves are good. I didn’t tire of the Naked theme initially, until UD started releasing a bunch of palettes that really weren’t “naked” at all.
And more now, in this age of #metoo and #Black Lives Matter, companies that have really bad practices regarding how they treat employees, respect (or lack thereof) for customers – that’ll do it. I never had any of her products but I remember the fiasco of Jaclyn Hill’s lipsticks that many said had mold and other things growing in them. I don’t know if that was ever resolved or if it was the nail in the coffin of that company but I recall lots of denials, denials, denials. Didn’t look good on her or her company.
I agree about Tom Ford. I haven’t bought any of their products for awhile now for the same reason. They peaked for me with the cream eye shadows and nude dip formula quads.
Bad service. MAC keeps sending me wrong items and makes little to none efforts fixing it. No matter how much discount they give, I’m not interested since I don’t know if I’d receive the items I want! I probably would only buy from their physical stores in foreseeable future.
I wonder if this is an issue with the order fulfilment center, not specifically MAC. I never had such issues myself, and I sometimes even get my MAC orders next day.
But I would definitely say that big brands should offer consistent quality not only in their products, but also in the employees, from packing and shipment, to training costumer service and in store employees.
This is a timely post. I was looking at the Post McGrath sale, and it pains me to say that I feel like I have too many similar colors to want to get anything from the recent Divine Rose extension releases. I feel like the price point isn’t worth it for me, even though the quality will be excellent. If she released something as new and interesting as the Star Wars palettes were, I would dive right in.
For Sephora, I had a poor response to customer service because the online and physical stores aren’t linked. The clerk at the physical store put the wrong item in my bag, and the issue had to be resolved in-store during the pandemic. If they fixed this customer service loophole, I’d be happy to shop in stores again. I haven’t had issues with their online only store.
Oops, *Pat McGrath. Dang auto correct!
😄
Could be an interesting cross over, though – awhile back, Crocs had a Post Malone offering.
I’ve never bought into a theme abd could care less about them. I would lose interest in poor quality which so many seem to have these days. I’ve lost interest in items that supposedly got decent reviews and I didn’t care for it.
I don’t look at reviews anymore except for yours to purchase new items. Poor quality is my number one reason I lose interest
I find it frustrating when companies constantly discontinue things. I get the special collabs and limited edition colors and finishes, but too often I go to replenish a lipgloss supply from a high end company…liking at you Chanel… and it’s no longer available.
Poor value, such as paying $50 for an eyeshadow quad that isn’t much different from what you can get at the drugstore for $10 and might be made in the same factory. How can it possibly be 5 times better? How do you measure that?
Too Faced’s Better Than Sex is another that needs to go! I got bored of CT’s Pillow Talk and Pat McGrath as well. I don’t need 50 shades of pink or gold lol
Amen to that, sister!
Same!
Also using ingredients in complexion products that I can’t have on my skin. And/or up-charging like crazy on basic, simple ingredients. Also if they choose a person to be the face of a brand, or if it’s the owner, and they’re just gross to me for one reason or another. I prefer my money not go in the pocket of hypocrites and lunatics when possible……(she says while paying taxes in america)
I hate when companies preach politics at me. I don’t purchase beauty products to make a political statement. I just want nice products.
Exactly! I came to read the responses before posting mine, and this was my thought. Sometimes, they think they will get everyone to join their soapbox, and I immediately jump off.
Wasteful packaging, stop it Pat McGrath! I cannot buy from this brand due to their insistence on instant unnecessary garbage
High churn rates (colourpop)
Dicey performance (MAC Le’s, UD)
Celebrity money grabs
Inconsistent quality. As an example I used to like Too Faced many many years ago but over time it seems like their standard quality has never improved with the times and their limited edition releases and holiday releases are almost always very sub par. Their aesthetic also ping pongs back and forth between cute and nice looking to tacky beyond reason which is another thing that gets me to lose interest. There are some things that are just tacky to me including but not limited to bad looking animal print(it can look nice), hot pink, gross product names…
Lack of transparency when it comes to animal testing. A brand that states it doesn’t test on animals but hides the fact that it sells in China loses me immediately. And I concur in what everyone else here is saying—-repetitive releases, poor customer service, unjustifiable price point relative to quality. No, thank you.
When they lose in quality and don’t come back with anything special. MAC and Smashbox are two examples for me eyeshadow wise.
Consistently inconsistent quality! I hate that with a passion when the quality is all over the map and I never know what to expect. ColourPop, Too Faced and Urban Decay immediately come to mind.
Also, what you said up above concerning brands beating a dead horse to death, Christine; ie, PML Rose ever.y.thing. and UD Naked ever.y.thing. It’s so redundant and tiresome.
No colors with cooler, pinker undertones. Also repeated bad or uneven performance.
I’ve heard a few companies say they don’t believe cooler undertones look good, and prefer me looking like a dialysis patient. I drop them fast. Fine, my skin looks like a preeme-newborn rat. They should live up to the platitudes so many of them wallow in and make it work.
I chocked laughing at the “dialysis patient” part, because I often get either that or “liver issues” or simply “are you sick” comment. 😅
I have naturally a very yellow undertone (but I’m perfectly healthy).
Inconsistent quality like Melt and Urban Decay. I don’t have confidence in buying from a company that’s too much hit or miss. Also lack of inclusivity of shade ranges. If I can never buy from your brand because your colors can’t work for my skin tone I lose interest in purchasing from that brand.
That’s the reason I personally stopped buying from L’oreal and Maybelline. They have some amazing products, but so many times they have some big fails. And they aren’t even consistent with the same product; I would love an eyeliner, mascara or brow pencil, purchase it again and being a miss, trying it years after, great again. It’s like gambling.
The Naked theme is actually the only thing that I find of interest with Urban Decay. 😄 I like the variations on “Naked” – I wish Pat McGrath would do this with the Divine line, like Divine Terra (earth tones), Divine Realms or Cosmos (galaxy-esque colors) Divine Depths (oceanic colors), Divine Animalia (browns, russets, royals, blacks)….Divine anything other than pink being the focus.
Anyway, I lose interest when there are:
1. Constant releases by which I feel overwhelmed (i.e. ColourPop, MAC until recently)
2. Redundant color stories (i.e. Divine Rose)
3. When items go on sale shortly after release (Pat McGrath, MAC, ColourPop, UD)
4. Constant promotion/marketing, especially permanent lines.
5. Quality declining, especially in limited releases, which to me translates as a money grab and/or trying to stay relevant when maybe it’s just best to sit this theme or season out if your going to offer a sh*t sandwich in sparkly plastic wrap.
6. Owner or company ‘drama’. Perhaps that’s a challenge of social media – deciding what’s appropriate for a business vs. professional account, unless you want business to be personal 🤔 For me, being accessible and friendly or courteous does not mean we are friends and I don’t want or need it to crossover. For me, it’s don’t complain/vent/share/”I’m gonna be real with you guys” – you’re not coming over to my house for dinner, we are not friends, I don’t care. For me, keep business social media professional and about the product, please.
Liked the 6th point.
I certainly see that for many people it’s important to create an emotional connection with a makeup brand and/or it’s owner… But I would personally prefer for brands to just keep it professional, with a neutral stance. Focus on improving your formulas, not showing your latest bag, dog, boyfriend, vacation or drama. No one would tolerate me bringing that attitude at work. 😅
“You’re not coming over to my house for dinner, we are not friends.” OH MY GOD YES!!!! This has been a pet peeve since the inception of social media. Companies are not people. Companies (or owners) using social media to put on a human face, incite drama, be super fake and weird…just…no. No to all of that.
Use your social media to tell me about sales, practices, if there is an order delay, etc.. you know, business shit.
Las not 100% agree.
Celebrity tie-ins tend to put me off. I have too many associations with cheap perfumes that have a famous face on their packaging. (Note: This is not the same as a celebrity who develops their own brand as Rihanna has done. Fenty is great.) Likewise, a lot of tie-ins to movies, television shows, etc., make me suspicious that the brand is more interested in trendiness than quality.
Too many limited collections and frequent changes to a core line are irritating for me as well. Conversely, one of the things that attracts me to a brand is a well-curated permanent assortment.
I wish there was more clear which celebrity brands actually develop formulas and which simply buy a generic one from a lab and stick their name on it.
I actually found that situation at a DERM’S office. He has an eponymous skincare line that was obviously generic, and hardly researched. TBH, I could and have done better for myself. It was so blatant, I wanted to gag.
Yup. Anything with a pop culture theme I assume is just a cash grab and won’t have any kind of serious care and attention paid to the quality of the product.
I am quite picky, so there’s multiple things that make me lose interest fast.
* Too colorful and impractical packaging, especially childish like.
* Excessive packaging, not needed addition of elements hard/impossible to recycle, and in general a non-sustainable approach.
* Too many releases, lack of a good core of base quality products.
* Quality not justifying the price.
* Inconsistent quality amongst products, I prefer brands that I can somewhat blindly buy from.
* Shady marketing tactics, taking advantage of the latest issues just to make profit and in general me perceiving the brand wants to take advantage of it’s customers more than necessary.
Boring… same old thing over and over..plus sexually explicit names constantly I see you UD! They keep beating a dead horse. Orgasm—pat McGrath with Divine Rose and constantly repeating the same shadows in palettes. Even if I like the original it doesn’t make me want to buy variations.
Poor performance.. I got a beautiful olive es $50 ! I would say the beauty of it was worth it from Chantecaille but the fall out was horrible even with glitter glue.
Long long shipping preorder times Clionadh. 6 mos.
It is difficult when it’s all online. I can’t say I think neon es are flattering and I don’t care for any of the Clionadh shadows I bought. Too bright.
Agree.. when a “theme” is repeated year after year ad nauseum, “Pillow Talk” “Orgasm” I lose interest fast.
Companies that are found to be unethical and unapologetic about their ethics (or lack thereof). Companies that release palettes that look the same. Examples include:
Charlotte Tilbury (all of their releases look the same to me so I have no interest in purchasing them)
Colourpop (see above statement).
I actually have to disagree with the criticisms on Naked and Divine Rose. Like Mariella, the Naked palettes only became an issue to me when they started releasing less “naked” versions — you can just own this is a different shade line, UD! But the thing about the multiple Naked palettes is that they showed the diversity of neutrals and actually included people of different skin tones.
I’m South Asian, and makeup artists want me to be warm and yellow. It wasn’t until Naked II came out that I realized my skin wasn’t warm-toned, and until the third palette that I realized how much heavy duty these pink-toned shadows could do to for discolouration on the eye area as a neutral look.
DR I and II are very different animals to me. I went from 0 Pat McGrath palettes to quite a few in a short period, and I thought these would be incredibly similar vibes: I asked my friend, a veteran PMG collector who was built for pink hues, if it would even be worth having both, and she said no — but as someone with the kind of light, true-neutral ethnic skin that needed to be rescued by Fenty’s push on shade selection, I found these are incredibly different (DR I is more of a neutral palette to me, and DR II is a lot more lush). Same with the new lip products she released this time around: between Christy, 1993, Peep Show, Soft Core, Venus in Furs, and the whole slew of her more natural-coloured mattetrance lipsticks, the new Divine Rose shade is finally the pink I’ve been looking for.
I know there are other brands, obviously, that cater to other shades, so it’s not like I was deprived, or that Pat was filling a gaping hole in the market with that colour, but the end of the day, multiple interpretations of a product include a “right” option for more people. If you’re tired of a line, maybe you’ve got everything in it that works for you, and that’s okay! But I still know plenty of people who bought the original Naked because everyone was calling it THE palette, and settling for that as gospel until they met a different naked palette down the line that made them understand what nudes could be on their skin tone.
For similar reasons, I’ll never get tired of the Huda obsessions palettes — when they released with light/medium/rich, it was amazing to go in and be able to pick up a mini with my friends that had options for different “nude” interpretations.
In conclusion, I think developing a line is amazing and makes it accessible to the different skin types, techniques and colors in the beauty community — as long as that line still has its cohesive identity, and brands aren’t afraid of creating a new one to explore a new world of color stories and vibes.
I don’t understand why a brand would take a product that customers “love” and change it! Leave it alone and let it be our HG and we will come back to it again and again. And as others have said about flogging a dead horse ie. how many Divine Rose releases can you have? I love PML but this is totally turning me off. And when I purchase a product and a month later it is on sale! Really?! I won’t buy from you again for a looong time because you just lost my trust.
I loose interest in a brand when:
They put out eyeshadow palettes every other week and most of them very average indeed (like Too Faced and MAC use to and now ColourPop).
Another factor is when the brand starts releasing poor products – UD comes to mind
When the brand releases eye palettes that contain shades from previous palettes and they are mostly pink/red themes – PMG
Overly priced and waaay too expensive – PMG and Tom Ford.
When brands get stuck into a theme and then do it all wrong – UD
Another gripe is when an eyeshadow palette can only be purchased at certain retailers…so annoying if you can’t access them
A further pet peeve is when a brand d/c a really good product and replaces it with something average – MAC, Colour Pop, Clinique – in fact most brands.
When retailers, like Sephora, who have their own cosmetics – eg lipsticks – and don’t stock their stores with them – Sephora Melbourne.
Poor customer service and difficult to use websites – MAC.
I think I have just about said it all!
Hey babe how are you doing today
Things I love that just get dropped; this makes me wary of really liking a product (part. in skincare), just to discover it’s no longer being made. Anything too cutesy, or conversely, too vulgar. With extremely few exceptions, celebrity ANYTHING. And politics. Nothing is more likely to get me to drop a line than having a political agenda shoved down my throat.
I feel like I’m pretty forgiving, but I don’t tolerate bad customer service or no customer service. If it’s proven a brand is lying about a situation I remember things like that.
Constant repeats of a theme but a drop in quality eg UD Naked line. Picking a well known shade and using it everywhere bring out collection after collection eg NARS. Making child like products (shaped like teddy bears) with graphic/adult shade names eg Too Faced
Lack of innovation. With some brands it’s hard to tell if they’ve done anything new or different, even when they have. That’s a hard sell on keeping my interest.
If what’s new all looks the same. They just launched a brand new line of 47 lipsticks and they’re all some variation of rose/mauve/nude? *yawn*
Attitude. Some brands just put me off, especially if their rhetoric centers around them being somehow superior to others. There’s no need for that and it makes them look petty.
Flakiness. Do I really want to play quality roulette? How problematic are they this week?
If they have a lot of obvious money grabs or gimmicks, or if their products look cheap. I don’t like rinky dink and the more I’m paying for something the less I’ll tolerate it.
When a company is too “edgy” with their names, like NARS’ endless Orgasm products, Tom Ford’s explicit stuff, and all the ones using Hemp and Kush. It just feels like they are trying too hard and I get too annoyed to even look at the colour and quality.
When the quality diminishes or varies from one launch to the next. I don’t have time for that! So I just walk away.