I was approached by Glossy Box to review one of their monthly boxes back in September and I figured it sounded like a good concept so agreed to sample the September box and give a review on the site.
My first beauty product review and I was quite excited, I even commented on Twitter about it using the hashtag #glossybox. Immediately I got pretty much attacked by beauty bloggers demanding to know 'who I was' and generally being green with envy that they had not be selected to do the review. I was even more excited, clearly this was going to change my life.
The concept is a nice one, you subscribe monthly to the delivery of one box per month. In each box is about 5 products some full size, most trial/sample size of 'mojor' brands for you to try out and the idea being re buy the ones you like. I thought a years subscription would be a great present for someone to receive, meaning a monthly gift all year.
When the first box arrived I was over the moon, it smelt divine and the packaging is top class. A beautiful pink box with black paper and pale pink ribbon bundling the contents together.
The products in my first box were good, an HD Brow set, some perfume samples, a few Salt Scrub sachets and a full size tube of Neal and Wolf conditioner. I gave to brow set to my mum, the samples I chucked in the cupboard and the conditioner turned my hair into silk and got me compliments daily until it ran out.
I did however notice much unhappiness on Twitter. Many of the HD Brow set had arrived smashed to pieces or un packaged and people were not happy!
I have emailed the PR company to see what happened to those complaints and received this reply:
''Every single subscriber that contacted us with a photo of their damaged HD Brows got a replacement sent to them. We then sent out an email to all subscribers to contact us if they received a damaged product so we could replace it - in case they were not aware that we were offering replacements.''
I also raised the issue of the boxes random nature, I noticed many complaints of 17 year old girls getting anti aging products etc and it was not just me who felt a little peeved when we read of other peoples boxes containing in our opinion better items. The PR company did respond on those issues so I have included the reply below:
''Although we believe that the real value of GLOSSYBOX is within the experience of finding out about new brands and products, we are confident that it is very good value for money.
Our brand team work hard to make the quality, price and size of the box equal throughout all of them. We try to customise our boxes to the best of our abilities and are still learning every month on how to do better. Some customers may have received unsuitable items in the past and we are aware of this and promise to improve in the future.
Sometimes, there will be a difference in value of products sent to subscribers in terms of retail price. However, while GLOSSYBOX on the whole always offers fantastic value for money, that is not the point of the concept. On the whole, the idea behind GLOSSYBOX is that we help women discover products they may not have known about or considered if they had not been featured in our box. This means that on and off, you will receive a product that you would never have bought. Often, women will complain to us about receiving a fake tan because they never work on their pale skin or don't think nail wraps are suitable for them. The fun part for us is then hearing back a week later from the same women with a message about how many compliments they have been receiving after using the fake tan we sent them! We have heard back from women saying that it was the first fake tan they ever used that looked natural on their skintone and made them look younger and more rested. We heard back from mothers who initially thought that nail wraps are only for young girls into very fashion-forward products and after trying the nail wraps, many of these busy mothers realise this is an amazing way to look groomed and have smudge and chip free nails! This is what we endeavour to achieve at GLOSSYBOX. ''
I get their point but I have to say I felt seriously let down by the second box I received in November. There was nothing in it I would use at all and if I was paying for that I would be very annoyed.
However the pink boxes are very cute and are now being used as hair clip storage in Tabithas room so every cloud etc....
Check out the site GLOSSYBOX if this sounds like your kind of thing.
