Beauty Launchpad Magazine

SEP 2017

Beauty Launchpad is everything beauty for salons & stylists! Stay on top of the latest hair style trends and products for hair, skin, makeup and nails. Get hair color ideas, business advice, education tips and beauty industry news.

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M y goal is to excite the consumer every day, and what's more exciting than launching a new collection? This process begins two years out, starting when I look through trend books from Milan and Paris. For destination collections, I also fi nd inspiration in our selected city, which is always a must-see locale ranging from historic to trendy. My job allows me to travel around the world (not a bad perk!), where I soak up music and culture while sampling food and studying street fashion. I take all of this inspiration back with me to the lab, where I don my lab coat—a good luck charm spattered with 15 years' worth of nail lacquer—and work with OPI's wonderful R&D; team. Amazingly, it takes up to six months to design a new collection of colors, with up to 10 iterations of a color created just to fi nalize the perfect hue. It's this time in the lab that I enjoy most. Working with color is continually fresh and exciting. I love the opportunity to experiment with new color combinations, technology, and pearls and micas. At the beginning of my career, I was known for my reds. To me, this shade epitomizes chic Hollywood glamour, and I had so much fun coming up with new variations of this sexy hue. Today, red is still a favorite, but I'm mostly inspired by colors like blue, green, yellow, orange and lavender, which are hot shades right now in fashion and home design. When it comes to the beauty industry, these colors need to be translated into tones that are wearable for nails. This process always challenges my creative muscle, for which I'm grateful. After the colors are fi nished, a small group of employees from various departments throughout OPI gets together to name the shades. We individually brainstorm beforehand, so we meet with our best, funniest and most creative names to share. For destination-based collections, we often play upon unique, interesting or noteworthy elements from the inspired country or city to come up with hundreds of names for consideration. It takes a full day to name a collection. The name for a single shade might be decided quickly, or it might be deliberated, shelved and revisited throughout the course of the day. We bring in lots of food—food is very important at OPI! In fact, many of our lacquer names revolve around food, from Coney Island Cotton Candy (one of the original shades launched back in 1989) and I Eat Mainely Lobster to I Cannoli Wear OPI and Tiramisu for Two. Each destination collection also includes one shade bearing my name, such as Suzi Skis in the Pyrenees, Suzi Shops & Island Hops, Suzi's Hungary Again! and Suzi Has a Swede Tooth. For OPI fans around the world, our shade names spark emotion. On a personal note, they transport me back to the era in my life when I was creating, naming and introducing each one. From start to fi nish, it's truly a fantastic process and I'm lucky to call it my job. —As told to Jasmine Coreas Live & Learn/ POV 44 | BEAUTY LAUNCHPAD | SEPTEMBER 2017 OPI cofounder and brand ambassador Suzi Weiss-Fischmann chats about OPI's legendary polish naming process from conception to production. The Name Game OPI's Suzi Weiss-Fischmann i d b COURTESY OF OPI OPI THROUGH THE YEARS 1980s • OPI is created as a dental products company by cofounders George Schaeff er and Suzi Weiss-Fischmann. Schaeff er notices that nail technicians are buying dental adhesives for applying acrylic nails and decides to create a product specifi cally for them. OPI begins actively expanding into nail lacquers. • In 1989, OPI introduces lacquers with memorable names like Coney Island Cotton Candy. 1990s • OPI expands into Europe and Asia. 2000s • I'm Not Really A Waitress becomes an instant classic. • Lincoln Park After Dark is launched, bringing alternative nail colors like black and gray to the forefront. 2010 • OPI is acquired and becomes a part of COTY. Today • OPI is sold in more than 100 countries. Coney Island Cotton Candy I Cannoli Wear OPI Suzi Has a Swede Tooth

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