Making with the customer: The story of the Skin Tint: India’s first crowd-sourced beauty product
Last year, we created beauty history with the launch of the Skin Tint. The 99.3% natural Tint, that blurred the boundaries between makeup and skincare, was the first product of its kind in India that was made entirely based on customer feedback. This year, we’ve tried to go a step further. Thousands of women came together on Instagram and Facebook to launch new shades for the Tint to be able to cater to all possible skin tones – no mean feat in a diverse country such as ours. We now have four new shades of the Tint suitable for most Indian skin tones.
Why is this a big deal?
Is the Tint being a path-breaking invention? Perhaps not. You may have come across similar products earlier. But what makes this special is how it was conceptualised, made and what it signifies for us in the context of the fairness-obsessed mainstream beauty industry in India.
Indian beauty companies, both big and small have followed an extremely formulaic approach to product development over the years: Spend on advertising, create ideals of beauty, form trends, fuel them with more advertising and then sell products to these trends. But, there is one important piece missing in this ‘top-down’ approach to selling beauty: you, the customer.
For us, that is a problem. How can the consumer not be a part of the product development process? After all, we live in a ‘pick-and-choose’ world rather than a ‘take-what-is-served’ world. We’d rather stream a show on Netflix over watching what’s on television. We’d rather seek out what we want than pick what’s readily available. Why shouldn’t it be the same with the beauty industry?
Why should you be told what you should look like and what products you need to use to look that way? Why can’t a beauty company, instead of defining the ideals of beauty and offering products to achieve those ideals, first listen to what you really need?
At Just Herbs, we are trying to build a direct-to-consumer, new-age beauty brand that stands for challenging the status quo. This means pushing the boundaries on what is traditionally being done in the beauty industry whether it’s around product development or around product distribution.
We believe that the future of the beauty industry belongs to products and brands that empower the consumer and offer them innovations that satisfy unmet needs. We want to be leading this change towards a more inclusive, more democratic and a more customer-centric beauty-industry.
When we were looking for product development ideas, we brainstormed internally and thought of reaching out to our customer base directly, rather than relying on the findings on a market research firm or simply imagining what our customers would need based on what they’re currently buying from other beauty brands.
Crowd-sourcing: The Journey
It all started with a poll on Facebook. Over 450 women from different age groups and different parts of the country were asked about their dream product. After the initial survey, we found out that our customers desired a makeup product that was safe enough for everyday use and give a fuss-free no-makeup look.
This was a challenge for us as we hadn’t done makeup ever. We are primarily a skincare brand. But then the idea sparked an internal debate. Why can’t makeup be healthy? We are a safe, honest, effective and a functional brand that and the demand that our customers had put to us was well within the realms of these values.
Dr. Neena Chopra, our co-founder and in-house Ayurvedic expert was put to work to delve into ancient texts and find solutions to this modern- day concern.
Over a period of 6 months, through a meticulous crowdsourcing process involving initial survey, product feasibility, and conceptualisation and most importantly testing and reviewing, we managed to create a product that bridged the gap between natural skin care and effective makeup.
With the herb-enriched Skin tint, we have created a new product category – that of a make-up and skincare- hybrid which is the first for an Indian Ayurvedic company. The Skin Tint has received a tremendous response and has very quickly become one of our best-sellers
Going forward, we are looking at developing more products through crowdsourcing and stay as close as possible to our most important asset : you, our customers.
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Shop the tint here