Why Beauty Con LA 2018 Was a Bad Experience For Me

BeautyConLA 2018

BeautyConLA  2018 Worth My Time & Money?

As a girl who has been passionate about makeup since the day I sneakily borrowed my sister’s 1999 CoverGirl Clean compact, BeautyConLA 2018 marked a significant milestone for me as it was my long-awaited debut at the event. Despite hearing about it in its early years, I had never found any girlfriends who were willing to join me, and conflicting schedules often prevented me from attending. However, this time, I made up my mind that nothing would hinder me from experiencing it firsthand.

In retrospect, it’s fair to question whether it was a big mistake or not. By the end of the day, my feet were throbbing with pain, and I felt utterly drained. However, was it truly worth my precious time and hard-earned money?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. BeautyConLA 2018 was not at all what I expected and I do not feel I got my money’s worth.

This is literally all I got from BeautyConLA 2018

How Much Was BeautyConLA 2018 ?

First, let’s talk about the cost and evaluate the worth of the event. The good (or possibly bad) thing about BeautyConLA 2018 is there are multiple tiers so it can be somewhat affordable. If you can buy an eyeshadow palette, you can buy a 1 day ticket to BeautyCon. At one point general admission tickets for 2018 sold out due to the announcement of Kim Kardashian’s appearance but eventually they added “extra tickets” causing it to be extremely overcrowded. This year you did not receive a goodie bag right off the bat like you did last years BeautyCon. Unless you waited in line and performed the required tasks (post picture/follow ect) you did not get any goodies. Is it really worth it? Pretty subjective IMO.

Pricing:

• General Single-Day admission tickets are sold at about $50 plus tax
• General Two-Day at $70 plus tax
• Two-Day Hauler Package $200 plus tax – allows you to enter 2 hours early (10am) + VIP tote bag with limited edition merchandise
• Two-Day All Access $1,000 plus tax – early entrance (11am), front-of-the-line pass for brand booths + front row seats at the Main Stage to see celebs/influencers + custom merch+ the Social Package and Hauler Package

The Good the Bad & The Ugly at BeautyConLA 2018

I attended BeautyCon with a general admission two-day ticket. The first red flag was the entrance line on Saturday it literally started from the front door (S Figueroa St.) and zigzagged all the way towards the end of the Convention Center block where parking is located (S Hall Dr.). God bless all the lovely ladies who arrived early to get a good spot in line because that line was a disaster. Once you made your way inside the Convention Center after sweating balls in 80 degree weather, there were even more lines waiting for you inside.

THE GOOD

1. Full Sized products from Certain Brands:

Let’s talk about the freebies. YAY. I was surprised to see drugstore brands give out the bigger and better items at BeautyConLA 2018. I have to give a lot of credit to booths and giveaways by Target, CVS, Sally Beauty, Rimmel, Almay, and NYX (although very very slow line I left). Target was giving away the cutest see-through pink fanny packs that gave them one of the best branding at BeautyConLA 2018 IMO. The best giveaways came from booths by:

• Sally Beauty: you receive 2-3 random full sized hair products from their amazing (fully functioning) ferris wheel/circus-themed booth.  Honestly best booth there!!! They also gave away cute light-up heart or star head bands.
• CVS: a white paper bag with 3 full sized drugstore beauty brands. All random and ranging in price. I received a rather underwhelming bag while my friend received an awesome bag with Wunderbrow, skin care product and liquid lipstick.
• Rimmel: You could receive up to 3 full-sized lip, eye and eyebrow products depending on how many pictures you posted on IG with their hashtag.
• Almay: 1 full sized glittery lipgloss with 4 color options from their very colorful kaleidoscope themed booth where oyu could even get a card reading! How cool.
• NYX: color matching and 1 full sized foundation if color in stock otherwise 1 full sized brush + sample foundation for your troubles. However, this line moved slower than slower and I was v disappointed because I love NYX and I wanted to try their foundation.
• MAC: 1 full sized lipstick from 4 color options

2. Hydrate & Charge Your Phone For Free:

BeautyConLA 2018 was held at the Convention Center so you would expect to pay an arm and a leg for water and to charge your phone. Nope. To my surprise, BeautyCon provided free water stations and charging stations located throughout the entire floor. Water cups were replenished often and I never found a table without cups for the exception of 1 time on Sunday when I was leaving but no biggie. Big props to them for doing this. Maybe it’s a law though, keep guest hydrated and prevent dehydration? 🤔

3. Tons of Photo Ops:

Pictures galore! There were many great photo ops located throughout the convention center from inside the booths, the entrance steps (which security kicked me out before I took my pic) to the flower arcs and walls located throughout the event, colorful macaroons, BeautyConLA pink carpets, unicorns ect. There is something for everyone and you will leave the event with tons of pictures.

THE BAD (I hope you’re reading BeautyCon & Beauty Brands)

1. Very Very Long Lines & Wait Times With Sample Sized Products:

I was not surprised to see big brands with long lines that made you feel like you were at Disneyland waiting for Space Mountain Star Wars theme. I mentally prepared myself for waiting in long lines but not lines that moved slower than AOL dial-up.

What is even worse, most brands only gave out sample sized goodies or the slightly more acceptable travel-size samples. C’mon brands!! Customer satisfaction was not high. I understand BeautyCon may charge an arm and a leg to reserve a spot at the event and you still need to shell out money for booth construction, goodies and talent but that’s the downside to participating at a large beauty event. My motto to everyone is go hard or go home. If your brand is not willing to ball out and give full-size products, don’t give out any products at all and go the Target route and provide good branding via useful freebie. Sally Beauty put you all to shame with those multiple full-size products.

2. Required Social Media Photo Posts on IG Feed to Receive Goods:

Activities in booths are always a must and can be very fun/interesting/entertaining or it could backfire. There were many brands (giving out sample products HA!) requiring you to follow on Instagram AND/OR post a photo on your account. No not your stories honey your newsfeed so the picture can ruin the lovely color palette you have been working towards. Wait, excuse me? From a marketing point of view (I work in Marketing for a tech company just FYI), I know brands need a way measure the success of BeautyConLA 2018, uhm hello KPIs are important in marketing duh. Having online footprint with your hashtag trending and/or booth pictures is good way to measure but not when it’s forced; the content HAS to be organic. I know this all to well from attending and working events from my day job 😉 BIG TIP to all the brands that were doing this, allow your fans to post the required content on their stories. If your target audience is at BeautyCon wouldn’t you want to show their friends how fun and exciting BeautyConLA 2018 is via videos and quick snaps on Instagram Stories? I guarantee the engagement rate will be higher than posting a photo on their account/feed due to the algorithm. Many fans including myself (NOT ashamed) were posting and tagging the brands per requirements, receiving the goodies and quickly deleting the post.  Not to mention, I unfollowed many of the accounts I was forced to follow that weekend 🙄🤨🤔

3. Purchase items to win additional free stuff:

I mean I guess. Of course I want to purchase their products but not when it is required or forced in order to receive free goodies.  As a beauty fan, I attend BeautyCon in hope to see discounted items, limited edition items, and/or get freebies. Plain and simple honestly. But when you are required to purchase a brands products AHEM Anastasia Beverly Hills AHEM in order to participate in your activities for freebies, please make your discount more than a measly 20-25%. I can find so many discounts online with cash back offers why should I be forced to purchase items when I came to BeautyCon hoping to get free items 🤔🤨 #sorrynotsorry

THE UGLY (I’m Looking at you event organizers)

1. The food trucks!!!!

Oh. My. Goodness. There was about 9 food trucks available for thousands of attendees at BeautyConLA 2018. Unfortunately I am very serious and the LA summer heat did not help because the food truck location did not have any coverage or tents to provide shade. The estimated food truck time was between 1-1.5hrs to order food plus another 20-30 mins (if you were lucky) to get your food. SMH.

Unfortunately, I have to put food truck Baby’s Badass Burgers on blast. On Saturday my friend and I waited in line to purchase food at 3pm we waited until 3:55pm when one of the cooks peaked his head outside the window and announced they ran out of burgers. Of course everyone was disappointed but I understand, you have no more food. I looked at him and asked if they had fries his response, “yeah we have fries but it doesn’t matter, we close at 4pm. Everyone closes at 4pm. We can’t sell anymore”. Long story short, there was a lack of communication from Baby’s Badass Burgers and it could have been handled better. If food is running low it is your responsibility to announce and tell your patrons who are outside waiting in the 80+ degree weather with no shade. All I wanted was fries (I’m still vegan guys) but I was highly disappointed because their burger are actually very good and I usually recommend them to my meat-eating friends. I am sad that I have this story but every other food truck stayed well past 5pm attending and providing food to all their BeautyCon customers.

Will I be Attending BeautyConLA Next Year?

In the end, the freebies I got from BeautyConLA  were worth less than my Two-Day general admission. So the answer is no, I most likely will not attend next year. I have a lot of critiques for BeautyConLA 2018 and although I have not attended any prior years, it seems the event is well past its prime. From everything I noticed, I can gather that BeautyCon has become extremely expensive for brands and in order to maintain a presence, they need to cut back somewhere whether that’s freebies, booth or talent. This is very unfortunate because beauty events should be centered around the attendees and their overall satisfaction towards beauty and the brands attending the event. If I had to give a BeautyConLA 2018 a rating it would be a C-

Did you Attend BeautyConLA 2018? what was your experience like?

XO Andie