Karen Rabinovitz, creatrix of Purple Lab NY debuted her line on HSN last Thursday, Feb 18th with 5 new products. Last December, she shared the news with her Huffington Post readers:

"I have the biggest news of a lifetime … HSN! HSN! HSN! Purple Lab and I are coming to HSN! The dream! I cannot even begin to explain the excitement I have and appreciation for this – to be touching something I have prayed for, went into debt for, and worked to the bone for is just such a gift."

Purple Lab NY is a mirror image of Karens’ amazing personality, drive and passion for beauty, fashion and empowering women. I’ve been following her pretty much since  their launch last May and it is amazing what she has accomplished in such a small period of time. A lot of her success, I believe, comes from her use of social media in a fantastic way to share her experiences while inviting people to participate in her journey – very open, honest and inclusive. The debut at HSN was fully supported by her community: from the model that joined her on-air (came from a model search with 2,500 entries) to the 25 HSN blogger parties hosted across the country and Temptalia’s support backstage (one of the most influential bloggers in the beauty industry). Purple Lab NY is a brand to watch and follow. A breath of fresh air in our industry. Mwah to Karen and team! 

Read more about the launch on HSN:

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Insight by Leah

Konectors, a London-based organization that finds "connectors and mavens" that have both an online presence and the social networking power to influence product purchases on behalf of advertisers, recently released a report on the Top 50 Beauty Blogs.   It should come as no surprise that topping this list is Temptalia – a blog that we have highlighted as both engaging and insightful for its audience.  Two other blogs of note include Naturallycurly.com and Basenotes.  As noted in the report, these top 50 blogs receive over 2.8 million visitors per month, and beauty companies should realize that these visitors are actively responding to content and engaging in conversations about products.  Among the other things that Konector factored into their analysis was how the blogs used various social media networks to engage consumers on their blog, on Facebook, on Twitter and in particular, YouTube.  As Konector director, Kingsley Mauder, correctly notes, YouTube and images are increasingly important in beauty purchases.

Top 50 List

Konector Report Overview

Shared by Andrea

Blogs are great resources for marketers. Temptalia, besides having a constant stream of comments on its posts, also asks direct questions to its reader base. There were 39 responses to the question “What role does packaging play in your purchases?” posted on June 26th. Many said that packaging is very important, but functionality and simplicity seemed to be a common theme. However, product quality is still more important.  The following brands were mentioned as great examples of packaging: MAC, YSL, Guerlain and Benefit. Product development, marketing and sales teams should be monitoring the most active blogs in their categories in order to take advantage of these free outputs that are direct results of mass collaboration. Visit Temptalia to review the 39 responses.