‘A strip club. This was the cloakroom,’ Dina Kane said, matter of factly.
‘I see.’ They were sitting round a long, narrow table, made completely of Perspex, with laptops and a huge router plugged into the wall. ‘What’s it going to be next?’
The alcove was barely four paces wide, and the table took up most of it. Plunging, slippery black stairs led down to the hole where the men were working.
‘You can’t even fit customers in here. It’s a useless space.’
Dina smiled tightly. ‘Nothing’s useless. This will be a giant wall of high-res screens, projecting our slogan and showing clips of ordinary women, their faces being made over with the products we stock. You won’t see the hands of the make-up artist, just beauty appearing on the skin. Different women – all ages, all races – and, beside them, popping up in bubbles, some of the products we use.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Goddamn,’ Damian said. ‘That’s fucking cool.’
‘There will be men in there, too – groomed, shaved – looking sharp, like James Bond. We have a male section.’
‘What’s the slogan?’
Damian’s partner was Cliff Green. He was just as brilliant, maybe a little more of a businessman. And this girl had his antenna up.
‘Dina Kane – Extreme Beauty.’
He exhaled. ‘I fucking love it.’
‘It’s perfect for New York,’ Damian said.
‘And building my site is going to get you guys where you want to go, believe me. I don’t have the cash to go hiring the blue-chip firms, those tired old bastards with fancy offices. My architect is a Russian refugee. My first store is a basement strip club. You guys are students. But, together, we are going to build an empire.’
It could have sounded hokey, in the tiny dark room with the drills and the plastic table, but the young men were drinking in her every word.
‘Everybody on this team is making their name. You’re about to debut the smoothest site since Net-A-Porter. Since Sephora. You got it?’
‘Shit. We’re taking notes.’
‘So –’ Dina rose up and started to wave her hands, like she was literally building castles in the air – ‘this website is the business. The store is going to be amazing – and there will be more stores, bigger stores – but the website is where we make our money. Chanel doesn’t make money through ten-thousand-dollar suit jackets; it makes money through No. 5 sold in every airport concession in America.’
‘Right.’
‘So let’s start with the basics: it’s so easy to pay. Customers can use PayPal. They only need to log in once, then they stay logged in for six months. Credit cards are automatically retained, unless the opt-out box is selected. Password – six characters – anything you like. Understand?’
They nodded furiously.
‘Next, Extreme Beauty is immersive. First, you organise the products by type. I’ll give you the categories. Next, as soon as something pops up, I want videos of its application – just like the fashion sites show women walking in the clothes – consumers want it. We will have ten-second before-and-afters.’
‘Yeah. Cool.’
‘With every product, we add in partners. “Goes great with . . .” and two other things pop up. I will give you the list. There’s also, “Best suited to . . .” and categories: blondes, African-Americans, oily skin, whatever.’
The boys were typing now, barely looking up from their screens.
‘We want women to linger on this site – to play on it. Every image can be tacked to Pinterest – they all link back to us.’
‘Great.’
‘Search. You can search for product category, by your hair colour and type, by your skin colour and type, by new products, by most wanted, and the last category I’m doing is “Toys for Girls”. That’s like our personal recommendations. There will also be Extreme Style, the men’s section, and gifts – stuff that works for everybody.’
‘OK. OK. This is going to be a big site – lot of real estate; lot of usage.’
‘I have the money. Animation must be smooth. Recommendations must fade in. I want you to think of this as the hottest make-up site you ever saw.’
‘My girlfriend is going to freak,’ Damian said.
‘Dude, shut up. You don’t have a girlfriend.’
‘I will after this.’ And he grinned.
‘You can sign up and, after you spend a certain level, you become a VIP and get discounts, makeover vouchers and free samples.’
‘OK.’
‘There needs to be a community section. It’ll be moderated; girls can send in photos of themselves using the products, offer their endorsements and suggestions. No reviews, though; I don’t need spammers marking the stuff down. Everything on Dina Kane is going to be perfect – if it’s properly used. Do you get it? Are you with me?’
They nodded furiously.
‘This is more than a place to buy cosmetics. It’s full of videos, bubbles, games, makeovers, enchantment. It’s Aladdin’s cave. It’s immersive. You know, Net-A-Porter built a billion-dollar business selling purses that cost a thousand bucks. There are a lot more women out there who can buy a top-line lipstick at thirty dollars. You know why Net-A-Porter works? Because it’s not work. They show the product on a woman. They video the product on a woman. You search by size and colour and they tell you what goes with it. Rich women are busy; they love it; it’s like a personal shopper on their computer. Understand?’
They nodded. She could sell ice to Eskimos, and the two gamer freaks were suddenly all about the cult of mascara.
‘So, you guys start. Send me links to the alpha pages. Use dummy items and prices.’
‘Absolutely,’ Damian said. ‘Yes, Ms Kane.’
Dina smiled at that. She liked it.
The site was coming; the store was coming. The last piece of the puzzle was the billboard, but Dina wanted to wait on that. Everything would be exquisite, the way she’d wanted it for Torch – no, more gorgeous, better. She was doing things her own way, not limited by Ludo or other departments or anything else.
But it started and ended with quality. Perfection.
Dina would only sell the best. That meant cherry-picking from a range, just like the big stores did from the fashion collections. It meant limiting big, powerful companies, who wanted you to take their whole stock, including the stinkers. She had to curate it, do the customers’ work.
Painstakingly, in between trips to the building site, conversations with Natalya in her halting English and meetings with the kids ploughing through her site, Dina Kane sunk herself into the world of beauty.
She tried to remember that wonder she’d first had with Hector at the Green Apothecary, when she was just a customer and everything he had was fusty and dust-covered and imported – but it
worked
.
As Dina toured stores, pored over make-up websites and underground beauty blogs, and scoured the magazines, she tried to forget everything she knew. In jeans and a T-shirt, she was just another girl with a pretty face. She went for free makeovers – everywhere except Torch; sat on little stools in Nordstrom and Bloomingdales, trying samples; took some days to spa at Bliss and Elizabeth Arden; wandered around Sephora and the boutiques in the West Village; she even studied the drugstore shelves.
What did women want? So much choice; so little time. It was all in the thrill of discovering a new wonder product, the thing you had to have – BB cream; Meadow; Great Lash mascara; Eight Hour cream; Chanel No. 5 – the blockbusters and their funky new cousins: Bobbi Brown’s shimmer bricks; Urban Decay’s nails . . .
Dina studied the executives swooping on the premier lines, the younger women lingering, like kids in a candy store, trying several items, shopping as leisure. She listened to the chatter from the shopgirls making her up, followed the gossip on the websites. Everybody was looking for that new big thing. Minimalists, who wanted a small bag of reliable cosmetics; maximalists, fashionistas who loved to experiment; girls in the middle, who were just impulse buyers, influenced by the full-page ads in the women’s magazines that week – there were so many types of girl, and Dina wanted to cater to them all, to own them all. Dina Kane was going to be different; taking herself back to that lover of beauty, that young girl . . . this was key.
The guys at the building site asked if she’d stopped working when she turned up with her shopping bags tied with pink ribbons, her face fresh from a makeover.
‘I never stop working,’ Dina said, and headed back out to the stores.
She tried to recall her first trip to Saks, her first muslin face cloth and Eve Lom cleanser, her first Bobbi Brown bronzer, the tight, bright Beauty Flash Balm by Clarins, Issima’s Midnight Secret when she hadn’t slept through the night. It was more than vanity; it was exciting – a thrill – to use her own face as a canvas, to be the artist. This was luxury she could afford.
Beauty was your best self. Beauty was armour; it was a weapon; it was a sign of great taste, grooming, elegance. Even a waitress could save up for that special Touche Éclat radiance and concealer. And then there was the joy of the drugstore find that beat all the boutiques – her Maybelline Great Lash mascara, which stayed on all night, didn’t smudge, didn’t run, beat her weary tears.
She was selling excitement. She was selling confidence. She was selling art. And everything for sale at Dina Kane had to be
great
. Just so goddamn good that a girl knew that
anything
she bought in the store, on the site, was quality. No fail.
She was asking American women to trust her taste. She was saying that this was important to women, and she could help.
Chapter Eighteen
She worked hard enough that every waking moment was spent sunk in Dina Kane. The visits to corporate headquarters were the worst.
‘I’m sorry, Ms Kane, our brand has a stocking policy. It’s the same for every store.’
‘We like your ideas but we can hardly make an exception for a tiny premises in Manhattan.’
‘If you take the primer, you have to take our Fashionista Mascara range. You can’t just select.’
Dina sat in the offices of yet another cosmetics house and argued with a head of sales – fifty-five years old, with steel-grey hair and make-up free.
‘Mrs Zagar, I assure you that being stocked at Dina Kane will be a mark of quality for every brand that works with us. Your best products will receive global attention. Their sales will shoot into a new stratosphere.’
‘That’s very nice, but they are bestsellers for a reason.’
‘I don’t want all your bestsellers. Some of them are no good.’
‘Excuse me?’ the older woman said.
Dina shrugged. ‘Your Absolute Riches tinted moisturiser is chalky and your Forever Lips range dries hard on the mouth, leaving cracks. These are heavily supported by marketing, Mrs Zagar. The company didn’t put any marketing behind the primer, and it sold by word of mouth. Appearance on the Dina Kane roster will
be
word of mouth.’
‘Please, Ms Kane. I agreed to see you because we liked your work with Meadow. We hoped to offer you a job.’
‘I have a noncompetition clause.’
‘Well then I can’t see what else we can do together.’
‘I want you to license me to sell six products. I guarantee you that in one year those six products will make up a third of your revenue. You will be able to increase production, and drop from the manufacturing process those items not making you money.’
The girl’s zeal was so all consuming that Mrs Zagar actually paused for a minute. On her computer screen, she tapped quietly, pulling up a list of the company’s best and worst sellers. The marketing spend was beside each one. She noted that the primer had had hardly any.
Dina knew her stuff. Well, it was to be expected, with her background at Torch, learning from Ludo Morgan, who now had such a great reputation.
‘What do you think are our worst sellers?’
She kicked herself for asking, for showing interest. Who cared what the girl thought? That was market confidential information she couldn’t possibly have access to.
‘Easy. Your Fashionista Mascaras, for one.’
Hannah Zagar jumped, but recollected herself. ‘You guessed that because I told you it was part of the deal.’
‘No, ma’am. I guessed that because the formulation is clumpy and the brush smudges. The colours are far too bright. Other worst sellers are your lip stains – again, the pigments are too bright. Your tinted moisturisers are being remaindered everywhere because they’re overpriced and chalky, and you’re behind on the BB cream revolution. Your self-tanner comes out orange. Your whipped foundation is jar-packed; it oxidises right away when exposed to the air, and that means it goes too brown in about two weeks. Plus, your Tempting Trios in eye colour aren’t tempting, because nobody goes for pops of colour on the lids – you’re not selling T-shirts.’
Hannah Zagar glanced at her screen. The girl had called every one correctly.
‘And the bestsellers?’
‘Primer. Bronzers. Your cream peach blushes are translucent and unique on the market. If I might make a suggestion, you should rebrand them, and sell them as a double cheek and lip gloss. They can be dabbed on the lips, and last longer than regular gloss. Bronze cheek powders that work on eyes too are nothing new, but blusher for the lips is a good one.’
Hannah sat up, and looked at Dina very carefully.
‘How did you come by this information? Have you had access to our servers?’
‘No, ma’am. I just know make-up; I really know it.’
The head of sales chewed on her lip. Their company needed a break. Dina Kane was more correct than she knew; they had more misses than hits, and even clever advertising was not getting their products out of stores. They had good buy-in, but complaints from the boutiques that their lines were sitting on the shelves.
She had long argued they should cut the fat and just sell what worked. Now this young woman had penetrated deep to the heart of it, in a single meeting.
‘How can you make the claim that being on your site will sell our products that way?’
‘Because I only work with the best. Women will know they can trust Dina Kane for their cosmetics. It’s the same way I got a reputation for Meadow – the same way I turned around Torch – only now there’s nobody else holding me back.’