TL;DR Choose Billy’s factory thanks to customer feedback. Brush tip won. New box, instructions below. Wink is changing it’s name. Everything switches January 1st and new product ships in January. Sign up to be the first to know about the new bottle here.
TL;DR wasn’t enough for ya, was it? Read the juicy details below! But beware: it’s a long one.
Hello Wink Fam!
I’m going to go over ALL the new Wink updates in this email, and it’s jam-packed from start to finish, so I’ve divided it into sections:
1. Bottle
2. Instructions
3. Box
4. Formulation
5. Company
Enjoy!
1. BOTTLE
After a couple of nail biting weeks (for me, not for you!), and thanks to our loyal customers who graciously offered to test and review the new bottle, we finally have a winner. You guessed it — we’re going with Bill’s factory.
To give you some background, the testers were sent a test bottle in the mail, along with instructions on how to use it and 10 metrics to test the pen on, including how many rotations for an application, ease of application, ease of cleaning, etc. They were also asked about prior pens.
I wanted to detail the real feedback I received from the testers. First, here’s the raw averages:
I wanted to include their feedback about previous Wink pens, for comparison. All of these customers have been with Wink from the beginning, so they had tried all of the pens.
As you can see, the feedback was really good, and the customers weren’t as tough on the pens as I was. Some real snippets of their feedback:
“I think it would be helpful to have a mark on the both the pen base and the part that rotates. It would be easier to see when you have made a 360 degree rotation”
“A full rotation is too much product for one eye”
“I really like how the shaft of the pen is clear, which enables you to see when the pen is empty.”
“I love it! It’s perfect. Thank you for creating the best product ever!”
Not a whole lot of criticism! Scores were overall really great, and the feedback was almost completely positive. From that, we did work with the factory to include the “rotation” mark on the pen, to let you keep track of rotations for application. 1 application = 1 eyelid or eyebrow; 1 application is 1/2 a rotation. So if you apply Wink to both eyes/both eyebrows, you will need 1 full rotation. See the new design concept below:
The marks will be grey, whereas the traditional text will be black.
One thing I didn’t have the testers go over was the number of rotations in a bottle. We will come back to that later in another blog.
In any case, I am so happy and so grateful with how this all turned out. Final feedback came in by last Thursday at midnight. Friday afternoon I met for 3 hours with Bill (the factory owner) and Nikki (our sales rep), to discuss terms, QC, certifications and safety. These new bottles should be finished, filled (in the states), and ready to ship by mid-January.
Sign up to be the first to know that it’s ready, by adding yourself to this list.
2. INSTRUCTIONS
The next big change that were made for this production run was completely new instructions. Many of you have told me how utterly confusion the prior instructions were. A few of you also mentioned that you didn’t like the small size 8 font, so we’ve bumped it up to 11. So here’s a sneak peak at the ones we just sent for a production sample:
How’s that for clarity?
3. BOX
We did make some pretty significant changes to the box for this production run. Note that the black text is not printed black, but is actually silver foil stamped during production. We are still keeping the silver foil “Wink”, but you’ll notice it’s a lot smaller now. The box focuses on letting you know what’s awesome and new about the product, and especially what’s NOT inside.
The ingredients and text are size 7 font or larger. Some of you had noted that the instructions on the outside of the box were too small to read.
Which leads to me my next section….
4. FORMULATION
Wink is finally VEGAN! Now first of all–don’t freak out. I have been working on this for over a year under the radar, to make sure that we keep the same fatty acid profile that makes Wink special. Now, we can finally do it without the use of animal products.
This is not just about the Wink formulation itself, but a larger step of responsibility that we are taking as a company…
5. COMPANY
Wink Natural Cosmetics, Inc. is for all intents and purposes.. dead. Wink the company is now known as “Amalie” (pronounced: ah-mah-lee).
Yes, Amalie is my middle name, but no–it’s not pronounced like that. It is easy to trademark though, since it’s so unique!
As we gear up for our next product–the gold peptide eye cream which is yet to be named–we not only took bigger steps of responsibility in our formulation and packaging, but we also had to protect ourselves. Wink is a great product name, and we will continue to call our eyelash enhancer “Wink”, but there are hundreds of trademark applications for Wink, including those in the cosmetic category. We have no chance of protecting the name. This means anyone could make a product called Wink and sell it. We have no way to distinguish and there are no repercussions. It’s not only bad for us, but for you: the customers. Without protection, there’s no guarantee that what you’re buying is the real deal. This isn’t an issue now, but could be as we prepare to scale.
Additionally, is time for us to start branching out and including new products, which are not named Wink (how confusing!). Instead of Wink that makes Wink, we will be Amalie that makes Wink…and x, y and z products as well!
We will remain “Wink” through the end of the year, but the switch will take place January 1 with a brand spanking new website to match. We’ll keep our winknaturalcosmetics.com domain name, so if you accidentally type that in–no worries–it will redirect you to amaliebeauty.com.
CONCLUSION
When I started Wink, I had no idea how big the company would grow, if at all. I’ve been extremely blessed to have you: an amazing, supportive customer base that has stuck by me through all my screw-ups and has generously offered to test, invest, and do whatever else I needed along the way.
You all have been awesome.
Now, the eye cream testers have been emailing me repetitively, asking me WHEN the eye cream will launch. They loved it. They want it. I know I haven’t detailed it all out yet, but today’s blog already had a lot of information to digest.
In fact all of your heads are probably spinning.
I’ve asked, you’ve told, I’ve listened. I’m trying to do what’s best for the entire company so that everyone can have lush lashes and brows for years and years to come. ?
Please email me personally at [email protected] (soon to be [email protected]) if you have any questions, comments or concerns! Bottle production has already started, but box and instruction samples arrive Monday. We still have time for last minute feedback.
xoxo,
Megan
