Estee Lauder Announces the End of Prescriptives
It’s official. Last week Estee Lauder announced that Prescriptives Cosmetics will cease all global distribution by January 31, 2010. I’m so saddened by this announcement. I enjoyed my time working for Prescriptives as a Counter Manager for a year even though I loathed working for a department store. (When you work at a cosmetics counter in a dept. store you are technically employed by both companies. ) It was a brand that I believed in with a good concept and good products to back it up which is why I still use many of their products.
Prescriptives is mostly known for its custom blend foundations, powders and lip colors. They also have a really strong skin care line and popular fragrance Calyx which is an little known cult classic with a rabid customer base. As a former employee, I know firsthand that all of their make up artists and custom blend specialists are some of the most highly trained in the business.
What I really feel that the bigwigs over at Lauder really didn’t give enough attention to the Prescriptives brand. The marketing campaigns were close to nil and I was constantly struggling with the Big Three (Lancome, Estee Lauder and Clinique) and their “fancy gifts with purchase” even though I had one of the largest counters in the cosmetics department. The downfall of the brand, I believe, is that they seem to solely rely on their sales staff to lure in new customers and keep them loyal with constant phone calls and pre-selling (pre-ordering a product, usually over the phone, so that you get a gift when you pick it up) offering “gifts” that were basically samples, nothing as substantial as the gifts the Big Three offer. That may have worked for cosmetics companies for the last 50 years but with today’s consumers relying more and more on solid advertising and purchasing incentives to part with their hard earned money…well, Prescriptives missed the boat.
There is still time to stock up on all of your favorite items from Prescriptives and you can still order all of your current custom blend shades through January 2010 while supplies last. Custom Blend customers don’t panic! There are some other options out there for you the largest company being Three Custom Color. Some of my favorites from Prescriptives are the Traceless foundation (which sadly, I recently reviewed for a future post), all of the lip glosses and the brow powders. Wait a minute, the brow powder I use everyday is Prescriptives. Aw, man. This sucks.
