As esprit Magazine Australia October 2019 issue hits your stores and desks, here we feature our Editor’s Letter.
Take a look at this photo from the recent Dream Ball.
Look into their eyes. Deanna Chapman spoke at the Ball from the perspective of someone going through cancer treatment and attending a Look Good Feel Better Workshop. This courageous woman is now on the happy side of her diagnosis and her beaming smile tells of her lust for life going forwards with her family.
Makeup and community played a magical little part in making Deanna’s journey more bearable. Playing with cosmetics in a group of women in the same circumstances as her yet delving deeper into lippie shades and foundation application led the jovial conversations, rather than sombre exchanges of treatment protocols. And then using the makeup in their day-to-day lives – it brought them back to themselves. They felt more like their old self and their confidence began to return.
This is the transformative power of the products we sell every day. We want to look our best and we want to shine brighter sometimes. Popping on a pinky pout or brushing up a bold brow, helps each one of us feel like we can take on whatever presents itself just that little bit more zestfully.
Change of Guard
Terry Little – GM Oceania, Estée Lauder Companies has announced his retirement. He’s off! And Bon Voyage to you my friend. I have known Terry Little since the ‘80s – when we both had big power hair-dos (wish I had a photo to show you) and boy has he given this industry his best. But it’s time to take on a different pace of life; the golf course is calling and good on him for accepting that call. See you on the 19th hole for a pint Tezza.
Uri Ferster has moved aside from the Managing Director’s role at Frostbland, giving long time management colleague, Amanda Gani the reins. Uri is now feverishly excited about standing back and working on overall strategy for building the business. Away from the day-to-day, he has a helicopter view serving his creative business mind.
And then there’s me. I always thought 2019 was going to be a year of busily putting new things in place to build upon and watch flourish in 2020. First up my hair broke off in bits at the beginning of the year. My blonde bombshell ‘do’ had exploded. As good timing happens I saw a hair growth brand on Life Pharmacy’s (Queenstown, NZ) Instagram – évolis. I arranged to meet the Sales Director, Gary McCaw at the APP pharmacy expo. With an évoliscope analysis he prescribed Reverse Activator. That was April and now at time of writing – on October 1st – with twice daily diligent application, I have a forest of new hair growing. And no more peroxide, meaning nature is taking its course. I have been trying all sorts of toner shampoos and am embracing a silverier hue. Searching for a shade name I feel comfortable using to describe it, I have discarded ‘silver’, I won’t even say the ‘g’ word and I have chosen ‘champagne’.
Like Terry, I have worked in the retail beauty business for yonks; as editor of this magazine since setting up my own publishing company in London in 1987. I had worked on the hairdressing and beauty trade press in the UK since 1977. Using all your fingers and toes a few times over, you’ll understand the maths that have driven my decision. I have reached a stage in my career when I am going to move…not away, not up… but ‘at large’. My Editor’s seat will be filled with someone absolutely fabulous who ‘gets’ you, our faithful readers. And I will be out and about, like Uri, with a helicopter view and my hand still on, but not all day, every day. I am looking forward to having the space in my mind to be creative and continue to bring my years of experience in publishing and trade beauty into the mix, as Editor At Large.
I am loving the evolution of esprit with the launch in May of our website. It thrills me to go “in the back end” (an expression I always find humour in the inuendo … I’m sorry, I can’t help it, nor do I wish to stifle my cheekiness). In the back end I can write a report, press a button and boom, it’s published. Dang! A typo. Back in I go and amend the error. Boom again, it’s ship shape and we’re instantly delivering you, our digital readership a fresh story literally hot off the wires.
I ‘get’ the digital publishing benefits now – after 42 years in print publishing. There’s power and pleasure in both. The way Intermedia Group (esprit’s new publishing home) has worked its expertise of running 30 magazines, each with its own dynamic website, it all makes sense. Websites are not static information sites. Ours are moving and fresh every day. Once a week we scoop up a collection of news, views and features for our newsletter. This you must sign up for. Scroll down on this website now and sign up! If you’re reading this in the newsletter, you already have!
Pat yourself on the back for the part you play in this empowering beauty business. Your customers are your community and you are theirs. As the whole business evolves in a more environmentally, sustainable, cleanly formulated path, it’s giving back more than that which is just skin deep.
Andrea xx
To subscribe to esprit Magazine Australia and receive your October 2019 issue CLICK HERE.