Valen’s Vanity Square

As mentioned last week, I received free samples of skincare products to try out. They are products of Institut Esthederm Paris, given on the courtesy of Lolyco.com.

There were three of them:

From left to right: Eye contour gel cream, pore refiner concentrate, royal jelly vitalizing cream

Eye contour gel cream
This cream has a nice sweet fruity smell. It is rich and very moisturizing. For me, it may be a tad too heavy. But if you have dry skin around the eyes, I believe this eye cream is able to help.

Royal jelly vitalizing cream
A moisturizer with a mild but pleasant smell, it can be used day and night. But since it doesn’t contain SPF, so it must be followed by an SPF lotion in the daytime. I’m only using it at night. It doesn’t feel too heavy on the skin after application. So far I haven’t noticed any difference from using this cream (3-4 applications).

Pore refiner concentrate - must have!
This is what I like and will recommend! As it name says, it did really refine my pores after 4-5 applications! It is applied after the toner and before the moisturizer. My usually enlarged pores looked ‘tighter’ and so much less obvious. Too bad I have finished up the sachet. One 50-ml bottle of this concentrate costs RM223.50 at Lolyco.com. A bit pricey. But it will be a good, shall I say, ‘investment’ for a smooth, silky skin? Furthermore, a 50-ml bottle can last for quite some time. Hmm, I wonder when I will receive my pay checks…

I don’t know where else one can get Institut Esthederm products apart from Lolyco.com. Anyway, if you are interested, do check out their online store, okay?

Online shopping is the modern shopping trend. One can buy almost anything online – fashion, property, furniture, computers, foods, accessories, cosmetics, kitchenware, etc. If hardware such as air tools can be compared and shopped through the internet, what else can’t?

What is even better is that the online purchase can be made for a charitable cause; like what Marni is doing with its Self-portraits series T-shirts.

These T-shirts are not designed by fashion designers, but out of the creativity of children who sketched their own portraits by looking into the mirror. Out of thousand of drawings by children from Columbia, Tibet, India, Guatemala and Brazil, only six of the drawings were selected to be printed on T-shirts and sold through Marni Virtual Store. All the proceeds from the sale of the T-shirts are sent to charity to help children around the world to achieve their dreams.

The price of the T-shirt, which comes in different sizes for men and women, costs $125 each. Wow… not that kind of charity that I can ‘afford’ to do. But I’m sure there are many out there who are generous and have the means to buy these T-shirts for a good cause.

My sister and I are embarking on a small online business project targeting female consumers, hehe.

Well, I can’t say it’s a business yet. It’s still at its very early stage of preparation. We are sourcing and comparing different suppliers. We have to go through lots of the nitty-gritty stuffs like calculating costs and comparing shipping fees.

Whew~ There’s surely a lot to do!

Since we may not have many things to offer at the beginning, we may just ‘rent’ a unit from one of the e-malls.

Later, when our inventory expands, then we will consider setting up our very own online shop using one of the ecommerce software available.

Using the appropriate shopping cart software is very important to make online shopping a pleasant experience for the customers. In addition, it also eases the life of merchants like us, who have no web site designing and programming skills, and are busy with other work or personal commitments at the same time.

A good shopping cart software provides features such as easy set up, web-based store administration, free technical support, easy inventory control tools, efficient integrated payment system, etc. It’s worth investing in such tools to run the business more smoothly.

Hopefully all these efforts will make our shop a very welcoming and consumer friendly place for online shopping in the future. For now, more calculation to do!

And don’t worry, I will surely announce it here when the business is up and running!

Online shopping has become so popular now. Even my sister has started to develop an ‘interest’ to shop for clothes, accessories and skincare products through the internet. According to her, the prices were lower when bought online compared with buying the same items from actual shops or department stores.

One of the online shops that I’ve come across recently is the Hair & Beauty Bargain Bazaar. The company started out 4 years ago as a wholesale supplier of professional hair, beauty and nail products to salon. Now, not only the company imports and distributes high-quality products in Australia, it also manufactures its own range of hair and beauty accessories.

The company’s online store sells a wide variety of products over the internet. You can even source all the supply you need to set up your beauty and hair salon or nail shop.

If you are running a hair salon, you can bulk purchase things like hairstyling products, hair pins and clips, hair extensions, hair colors, and even shampoo basins and styling chairs from them.

Need beauty beds, facial vaporizer, day spa products or false eyelashes for your beauty store? Looking for manicure and pedicure sets, nail polish display rack, and nail art paint and glitter to start your home-based nail service? Then may be you would like to take a look at their catalogue or browse their online store to find what you need.

Of course, even if you are not making bulk purchase for business purposes, you can just order the number of items you need for personal use.

Having said so much, the only problem now is: they only deliver products within Australia. That’s a pity, because most of the brands they carried are not found in Malaysia, and I like to try things that are not available in Malaysia.

Oh well, guess I will shop in the real world for the time being then.