#19 Cosmetics Store! Where?

I am so disappointed! Why you ask? Well I was in central London the other day and had a spare half an hour, so I thought I would pop into Trocadero’s in Piccadilly to finally check out the Vanessa Blake Cosmetics store. Vanessa Blake is a new makeup line for women of colour and their store opened up in February 2009 but every time I have tried to go down there something always seemed to crop up. Anyway I finally got the chance, but when I got there it was such a big let down. First up I simply could not find the store! and after walking around Trocadero for about 15 minutes and asking a number of people who didn’t seem to have a clue of what I was talking about despite the fact that they all work there, I was finally told to go into the centre and look for all the stalls surrounding the escalators. (obviously this is where I had been going wrong as I was led to believe it was going to be a store)

Now on arriving at the stall I was immediately confused, the main sign above the stall had a completely different name, but right at the bottom there was a small poster with Vanessa Blake written on it, which had me thinking, well whose stall is it? I then noticed some beauty samples with the words “try me” but all of them were empty. At this point I became aware of the fact that the stall seemed to be manned by a large oriental man who (a) didn’t appear to speak a word of English and (b) was staring at me suspiciously while I was looking at the samples. Five minutes into speaking to him, I finally managed to convince him that I wasn’t trying to steal the empty sample bottles but was hoping to speak to someone else who could help. He wandered off and reappeared with another oriental lady who then led me to a limited stock of products with no samples to try out, and then proceeded to drift off to talk to her friends. At this point I realised my thirty minutes was up and I obviously wasn’t going to get anywhere.

Now not to be put off and still trying to play nice, I went home and tried to look at the website but the site seems to be disabled, I then tried calling the number on their facebook page but it always seems to go straight to voicemail. So ladies at this point I give up! It’s such a pity as a couple of other bloggers had written some positive remarks about the brand and I for one am always ready promote a brand especially if it caters for us women of colour but on this occasion it was unfortunately a let down. Having worked in PR I can’t stress the importance of branding and your perceived image!

Well If I ever manage to get hold of them and find out what is going on I will keep you all posted.

Xoxo