If you’re a beauty aficionado, or even if you’re not, you are probably obsessing over your eyelashes like millions of women throughout the U.S. I know I am. According to a recent ABC News report, the lash market is set to exceed $1.5 billion in product alone over the next 5 years.eyelash vendors
The downside for beauty companies is women are buying less mascara. Guilty as charged. A recent Business of Fashion report backs this up. As mascara loses its relevance, sales growth is expected to slow to only 2 percent through 2021, from 4 percent in the last three years.
This is all especially interesting as we are in the digital age of
“YouTubers” taking over the beauty industry with with their makeup
tutorials. With lash extensions formally a more exclusive celebrity and
model mainstay, the one beauty caveat to this trend seems to be the
growing consumer market for the longer-lasting effect an eyelash
professional can deliver. Enter LA-based The Blink Bar.
Capitalizing on the explosion of social media, friends and influencers
sharing their best beauty secrets with the world, The Blink Bar founder
and CEO, Tirzah Shirai quickly saw an opportunity to transform the
beauty industry. With the objective of providing a safe,
community-oriented environment where women can come to feel uplifted and
empowered, locations were designed to ensure each of the salons had an
open floor plan as well as a comfortable, inviting reception area.
Launching the concept in 2015 with a single pop-up shop on the weekends in Santa Monica, Shirai explained that her impetus was her inability “to find anyone in L.A. that was doing eyelash extensions that looked really natural, didn’t damage the lashes and would look good on camera. It was a need that wasn’t being met for women and it’s time was here.” Shirai took this one step further by becoming a lash technician herself, and began performing services at her pop-up.
What attracted clients to her services was that she genuinely wanted to enhance their natural beauty instead of having them conform to what others may define as beautiful. In no time BlinkBar became a destination that women trusted for consistent results.
The timing couldn’t have been better with the explosion of Instagram and the age of the selfie. In just a few short years The Blink Bar has grown revenues from $220,000 in 2015 to reporting close to $6,000,000 in 2018 and a 2019 revenue projection to exceed $10,000,000 after. Using customization as a key differentiator, the salons offer more than 300 types of different eyelashes and an endless list of options from “Coquette”, “Temptress” and “Vixen.” Shirai explained, the entire process takes about two hours and the approach is designed “to really bring out and enhance the natural beauty that every woman possesses.” After all, who doesn’t want to wake up looking just a bit more flawless?
