Glossybox Review. All that glitters…

Posted By Laura in Just for You, Review | 1 comment

The idea behind Glossybox is to help you stay up to date with current trends in the beauty market, and discover new niche brands. It is £10 a month to join (plus £2.95 P&P), and every month, GLOSSYBOX delivers a mix of 5 product miniatures for you to test at home.

It looks and sounds fabtastic – I have No Clue about the latest brands, tending to stick to my tried-and-tested old favourites, or occasionally splashing out on something I read about in a rare Glossy Mag purchase.

So when the September issue of the Glossybox arrived at the door I was really excited… And a squeak may have escaped me as I opened the box to discover a lot of really very lovely packaging. Gorgeous, in fact – box, tissue AND ribbons. Perfect.

However, once I made it through all the packaging, my over-riding emotion was one of… disappointment, actually.

Although this was a complimentary box sent to me for review purposes, I kept in my head the fact that I had just theoretically spent £13 to receive this. The picture above is an example of what Glossybox suggests you will receive (there’s a mix of items available each month, and everyone gets a random five in their box).

My box? Looked like this… (NB I added the pen for scale, it wasn’t included!)

My first issue was that my HD Brows (Eye&Brow Palette) looked like someone had already used it. I think actually it was probably just damaged, but as the parcel was so gorgeously stuffed with tissue I’m at a loss as to how this could have happened after it left Glossybox. This of course coated everything in a fine brown dust, which got everywhere – coating my fingers, clothes, desk and anything in sneezing distance.

Putting that to one side, I looked at the rest of the package contents.

• HD Brows – see picture above, which you don’t seem to be able to buy online, the Glossybox link takes you to the HD Brows site for their entire brow-shaping treatment.
• A tiny vial of Plum perfume – a little sweet for me, but nice. Interestingly marked ‘sample NOT for resale’
• Four sachets of Rahua  – 2 shampoo/2 conditioner – which was a fab product the two times I got to use it.
• 10ml Nuxe Multi-Usage Oil – Gorgeous, smells delicious.
• 5ml pot of Omorovicza Thermal Cleansing Balm – a pretty glass pot with te-e-e-eny tiny teaspoonful of balm inside it.

Enclosed in the box is a card with discounts on all the products, which is nice.

I hadn’t heard of any of the brands (which didn’t actually surprise or worry me), and I was pleased with the quality of them.

But.

When Glossybox say ‘samples’ they really do mean samples. These are not trial size products, these are the size you get given free if you wander through a department store. For my £13 I would have expected… more.

To find out how to use the items in my box, I had to visit the Glossybox website, go to the Products page, and scroll down to find each of my items individually. For me, that information should have been in the box.

I was also surprised to find that where the web site states :”In addition to luxury miniatures, the box contains product information, application notes and tips and tricks about beauty and style. Our GlossyBook publishes interesting features on a regular basis on how to use the products in your box.”
What they mean is that the information is on the website for you to go and look for.  The only ‘information, hints and tips’ I could find were on the magazine page – which is for August, and irrelevant to any product in my box. And it is less a magazine full of beauty hints and tips, more a set of adverts for each of the products they are featuring -“get this look… by using THIS product”.

I do understand the idea of receiving samples to try for yourself at home, with no hovering sales assistant. And learning about new products is always great. But for me? There’s not enough value in the box to warrant the £13 a month spend – I’d get more information from a monthly purchase of Cosmo and a browse of my favourite beauty blogs.