When it comes to blogging, my mental trajectory over the last couple of years has looked something like this: Looking back, I’d love to say I was an early adopter. The truth is, I arrived late to the social media party and hardly mingled when I got there, choosing, instead, to mope alone in a […]
#FreedomIsBlogging
Originally published in April 2012 in Blog
Show me the money ~ Part 3
Originally published in March 2012 in Blog
I feel a change in the air. No, not spring. This may be even better than raindrops on tulips and girls in white dresses. The first sign of climate change for freelance writers is emerging for real, and, in a very unexpected twist, the future looks bright. Really bright. After four decades of earning a […]
Comeback Kid
Originally published in February 2012 in Blog
When Delia Martins talks about her work as a hairdresser, her voice revs up like an engine. “Hairdressers are artists. We sculpt, we carve, we notch, my point cut, we slither and twist,” she says, dancing on the spot. “It’s all about flair and using your design sense.” Next, ask her about hair colour and […]
Show me the money!
Originally published in November 2011 in Blog
People sometimes ask me, “Do you make money from your blog?” “Indirectly,” I say. I have no advertisers flashing in the sidebars. And in the two years I’ve been blogging no one has offered. While the houses of Chanel and Dior flock to beauty blogs, there are no obvious products you can throw at a […]
In conversation with Evan Jones
Originally published in May 2011 in Blog
Reclining numbers
Originally published in October 2010 in Blog
As a field, economics doesn’t need an XY graph to support it, it needs a couch. When times are flush, most of us are drawn to the double-page analytics spreads in investor reports. They’re designed to boil down and reinforce our belief in the science behind it all — you know, the rainbow pie charts, […]
Rimmel Underground
Originally published in June 2007 in Cosmetics Magazine
(Originally appeared in The Coty Trends Report — special supplement to Cosmetics Magazine) When Coty launched Rimmel Underground this past February it closed one of its most important real estate deals to date. Several recent failures in colour cosmetics—namely, L’Oreal’s HIP line of intense shades for ethnic consumers and Revlon’s Vital Radiance for women over 50—opened up […]
The celebrity fragrance trend
Originally published in June 2007 in Cosmetics Magazine
The Coty Trends Report (special supplement to Cosmetics Magazine, Rogers Media) Summer 2007 Five years ago you would have been hard-pressed to find a celebrity striking a deal with a fragrance house. “Celebrity fragrances were viewed as commercially non-viable,” says Catherine Walsh, Coty’s senior vice president of licensing for the Americas. It’s no secret, the […]
Coty history
Originally published in June 2007 in Cosmetics Magazine
(Originally appeared in The Coty Trends Report — special supplement to Cosmetics Magazine) François Coty had a sense of destiny so strong it practically radiated from his pores. In 1908, the 34-year old former haberdasher and journalist with the Rudolph Valentino gaze opened his first perfume shop in Paris in the fashionable Tuileries Quarter. To […]
