In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Iris Smit, founder and CEO of The Quick Flick, a cosmetics brand selling online and with major retailers such as The Iconic, Priceline and Coles. An architecture graduate with a fondness for coding websites, Iris created a winged eyeliner stamp to help customers who struggled, like she did, to nail that look and The Quick Flick range has grown to include sunscreen and brow products. In this chat, Iris tells us all about her experiments with BeReal, what she hates about the beauty industry and how she had the last laugh with some negative publicity.
“I’m probably most proud of my own personal development and having more belief in my own abilities…there was alot of self doubt at the start.“
Iris Smit
Start up in six weeks
“The main mission that I was trying to set about solving was just creating beauty products that were easier, quicker and simpler to use. I grew up watching a lot of YouTube tutorials trying to learn how to do makeup, especially winged eyeliner. That was like my key go-to look and regardless of how many videos I watched, I still couldn’t nail it. I just thought maybe it’s the tools that need to change and it’s not actually us that needs to change with the tools.
So I was studying an interior architecture degree, had a little bit of a background in design and during my uni break, which was about six weeks from memory, I thought I’m going to start a business and create my own solution to winged eyeliner. And the brand was really just born from there.”
Fake hype
“So the initial launch video [for Quick Screen] I filmed in my local Coles supermarket. It had literally just launched and whoever did it and set that up in the store, putting the products on the shelves, for whatever reason, didn’t put the price tags on the shelf. Maybe they just hadn’t received them yet, I’m not sure. But people love to look at the little details and it started going viral because people were commenting saying, “You’ve just put the product on the shelf yourself. It’s not real. There’s no price tags. It’s clearly fake.” And normally I would’ve just deleted them or ignored them.
But I thought, hang on, this is actually maybe an opportunity to create a different talking point, create a little bit of an alternative way to hype this up by creating hype around, is this launch fake or is it legit? And because of that, it caused people to go. into their local Coles supermarket or maybe just stop by the sunscreen aisle on their local grocery shop and check to see is the product actually on the shelf, so yeah, it definitely played to our advantage.”
Hit the streets
“I also go people watching in store to see what are they buying, what are they picking up, how do they interact with the product when they pick it up off the shelf? That sounds so bizarre, but it’s actually very interesting and you start to learn how shopping psychology works. It’s quite interesting.
People will pick a product up and they automatically will turn it over and read the back. So you want your key information on the back of the product. People love to open things in store, especially if there’s no testers. So if you can create your packaging to have an image of what’s inside the box, you’re less likely to have the product tampered with in store.
With the sunscreen, I didn’t box it up because I wanted people to see the packaging on the shelf and not open it. And also the packaging’s quite strong on shelf as it is.”
Questions answered in this episode include…
- What new customer acquisition channels have been working well for you this year?
- What’s the secret for DTC brands to secure win-win deals with retailers?
- What would you change about the beauty industry?
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