TRAIMAK.BY
By Ed Avis
There aren’t many retail situations more intimate than the make-up department of a costume shop. Many customers want to see how the make-up will look, naturally, so they expose themselves to testers of unknown age and applicators that may not be sanitized. How can you ensure that your make-up department is not spreading germs or allergens? Here are five tips from an NCA webinar that featured Tushar Mehta, owner of Camden Passage, and Jordan Plath, head of education for Kryolan. (Click here to watch the whole webinar.)
1. You Get What You Pay For
High-quality make-up uses pharmaceutical grade ingredients, which is expensive, and companies making it pay a lot of money for testing and audits. That explains why good make-up costs more than shoddy make-up.
“If cosmetics are noticeably less expensive, I would exercise caution with using them,” Plath said during the webinar. “Products can contain contaminants, so you want to make sure you work with makeup that has a good safety track record and is made from quality ingredients.”
Mehta explained why cosmetic companies use pharmaceutical grade ingredients: “People think that food grade is a high standard, but it’s actually lower than cosmetic or pharma because your kidneys and liver clean out the potential toxins, whereas cosmetics are applied to the skin, which directly leads through the skin into your bloodstream. That’s why there’s a higher standard for cosmetics.”
2. Don’t Worry Too Much About Shelf Life
Unopened make-up should be fine to use after even a couple of years on the shelf, the panelists said.
“Shelf lives are generally very, very long,” Mehta said. “A general rule of thumb is two to three years…. Things like water-based face paints, wax-based crayons, lipstick, nail polish, it's pretty much unlimited shelf life unopened.”
But how you store the make-up matters – ideally your make-up should be in a cool, dry place out of the direct sunlight. And of course if you open a container and it smells weird or appears discolored, that’s a sign that it’s going bad and you should just pitch it.
3. Practice Applicator Safety
The rubber hits the road with make-up safety when customers want to try it on. The first piece of advice our panelists gave was to use disposable applicators…but even then, make sure nobody is “double dipping” into a pot of make-up after applying.
“If there is double dipping, it's a little tricky, but what we do is we’ll wipe the surface off and then we’ll spray it with lightly with 70% alcohol,” Plath said.
If you really want to provide non-disposable applicators – which sometimes is important if your customers are professionals and want to try the make-up under real-world conditions – just make sure you properly sanitize the applicators between customers using hospital-grade sanitizing products.
Best case scenario: Have your own staff do the application, rather than letting customers do it.
4. Monitor your open containers and clean them regularly.
“It’s very important to go around and make sure everything’s clean,” Plath said. “Whenever you clean your testers, you’re cleaning everything -- the base that it's held on, outside of the container, the lid.”
Open testers can be used for a long time, but if you sense contamination – for example, if you observe someone dipping their finger into a container or repeatedly double-dipping – sometimes the best move is to just pitch that container and start fresh.
5. Know the Ingredients
If someone tells you they are sensitive or allergic to a particular ingredient, you want to make sure they don’t use make-up with that ingredient. Nut oils, for example, are found in some make-up, so someone with a nut allergy may not want to use such products.
Fortunately, make-up labels clearly show the ingredients. And if you have any doubt, you can visit the manufacturer’s website for more details, or contact someone there.
“If you have any confusion, you're more than welcome to reach out,” Plath said. “If you have specific questions about ingredients and skin compatibility or potential reactive ingredients, we can help.”
However, Plath noted that special effects products do not always list ingredients on their panels, because they fall into a different product category than cosmetics. So be more cautious if you are selling special effects products.
The webinar included much more information: Click here to watch the webinar recording.