Known for using beauty as a tool to support humanitarian causes, this year Benefit Cosmetics has joined forces with Dubai Foundation for Women and Children to empower women and girls through the launch of the “Bold is Beautiful” initiative. The San Francisco-based brand aims at giving females the opportunity to realize their dreams and be audacious. Therefore, waxing your brows at any of Benefit Cosmetics’ stores in Dubai during the month of May will help them do so.
On this occasion, Azyaamode sat down with Annie Ford Danielson, the daughter of Jean Ford – Co-founder of Benefit Cosmetics, to talk about how she decided to join the brand, the challenges they faced, their vision and much more.
How did you decide to follow in the footsteps of your family at Benefit?
It was definitely a personal decision. My sister Maggie and I never thought that we would join the brand; it was the business of our mother and aunt. Maggie always wanted to become a doctor and I wanted to go into interior design. But we decided to work at Benefit, so we called our mother and aunt and they were okay with the idea. The CEO was also excited to have us and we knew all the employees, as we used to go there all the time given that it was where our mother worked. I started to work at our San Francisco boutique for a year and a half selling makeup products and it was the hardest job I have ever had in my life.
How do you get inspired when creating a new product?
There are a lot of brands that base their production on color trends, but at Benefit, we focus on our customers’ needs because the positioning of our products is very different. Women’s dilemmas are going to be the way they are forever, they are not fleeting. So our products stay ours for quite a long time.
Do your long-term employees become a part of the decision-making?
Yes, as a brand we value our long-term employees. Around 5 percent of them have been working at Benefit for 15 to 20 years, so they have been around the longest and they have seen the brand through everything. They are very valuable to Benefit.
Is there a signature ingredient you use in your products?
It really varies because even the texture of each product changes according to the problem that we are trying to solve. Every product is unique.
Why did you decide to name the brand Benefit?
It started as the Face Place, and after 8 years approximately, the name was changed because they were opening a new store that had a legal issue with another brand. My mother told Jane, my aunt who had gotten back from a trip to Italy, that they had 24 hours to name the stores, and it was not that big of a deal because the company was not huge at that moment. Jane kept saying “bene”, so Benefit came to their minds which translates into “a good fit”.
What is the number 1 product at Benefit for you?
I could say - it is the Real Mascara. The goal behind its creation was to solve the problem of false lashes. As you know, it is quite time consuming to wear false lashes all the time, so we decided to produce an effective mascara that makes you look like you actually were wearing lashes. When I tried it on, the effect was amazing. When my husband saw me, he asked me why I was wearing false lashes on a Wednesday.
Can you tell us about Benefit’s vision in the beauty world and what sets the brand apart from others?
I think that the brand is already successful. Our goal is not to take over and become an empire. The challenge is that we have this empire that keeps getting bigger and bigger, and we need to ensure that we stay true to the brand. We have to walk into the store, see how the employees behave and deal with certain issues. We need to know if they really know about the brand and if yes what keeps them coming back to work everyday. If they are able to answer that, then I have done my job and this is actually the most important part.
Mirella Haddad
