Youngblood brings the Effortless California Lifestyle to Cosmetics

Pauline Youngblood began her illustrious career in skin care as a medical aesthetician more than 20 years ago. She was caring for patients with sensitive skin who were using the best skin care, then going home and applying thick makeup that clogged their pores, felt heavy and looked like a mask. Dealing with severe acne herself, Youngblood faced similar challenges to her patients—finding cosmetics to conceal the condition without making it worse. In her free time, she would visit department stores to search for healthy and safe cosmetics that would provide adequate coverage while feeling light and looking beautiful. What she found were cosmetics that could not conceal, were heavy and irritated the skin, giving the feeling of a mask.

Youngblood knew that mineral cosmetics were the answer. She worked with chemists to create a mineral foundation that would cover raw, inflamed or discolored skin, while allowing it to breathe and heal. Her first loose mineral foundation provided excellent coverage and a natural appearance without clogging the skin. She started sharing her samples with the dermatologists and plastic surgeons, filling orders in her garage. Youngblood’s patients experienced such dramatic success with her formulas that they continued using them long after their skin had healed. Before long, patients and friends convinced her to make this natural mineral foundation commercially available, and in 1996, she founded Youngblood Mineral Cosmetics.

“Patients were thrilled because they finally had a product that could camouflage their red skin, all while feeling like they were wearing nothing at all,” she explains.

Today, Youngblood’s Natural Mineral Foundation is the flagship product, and Youngblood Mineral Cosmetics is now a complete line, offering dozens of products in a comprehensive palette of shades with realistic skin tones and beautiful, natural finishes. Products are available in 55 countries. Youngblood continues to lead with passion, pride and integrity, and with three teenage daughters, she has a built-in multi-generational focus group. That has helped to shape a new direction that will drive the company into the future, while appealing to clients from Millennials to Baby Boomers.

“Our new positioning combines cosmetics with the effortless California lifestyle—think t-shirts, jeans and loose, wavy hair, creating a look that is natural yet pulled together,” she shares. “I’m a California girl and with natural, fresh and healthy formulas, our products complement the healthy, casual, on-the-go lifestyle that we love. We did a beautiful photo shoot on the beach in Malibu, which will lead our marketing going forward.”

Which brings us to the decision to partner with ISBN. In an age in which hair care sales are flat at best, cosmetics sales continue to grow, offering huge and largely untapped opportunity to salons and spas. Youngblood and her team are partnering with salons and spas to turn their businesses into destinations for cosmetics.

“While women are no longer going to the department store like they used to, they still love to go to the salon and spa,” says Youngblood. “That provides the perfect opportunity for salons and spas to capture their cosmetics business. It’s the perfect environment, because you have your clients’ full attention for an hour or more. When you change a client’s haircolor, that usually requires a cosmetics adjustment. Cosmetics provide a great conversation starter and a huge opportunity to grow an incremental business.”

To help ISBN members engage clients, Youngblood has developed a series of customer service educational programs, application video tutorials delivered through social media and live events. The conversation starts with an express makeover and you don’t even need an aesthetician or makeup artist to offer it to your clients.

“It’s as easy as asking about the makeup the client has in her purse,” explains Youngblood. “Features and benefits are important, but at the end of the day, building a successful cosmetics business is about the results you help your clients achieve. We’re ISBN members’ partner in that. In fact, with all of our videos, tutorials and other information online, your clients are learning about Youngblood before they even see our products in your salon.”

For more information about how Youngblood can help your company build a cosmetics profit center, reach Warren Peskin, general manager, at 805-210-7824 or warren@ybskin.com. Visit ybskin.com.