Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Beautiful Vending. The concept is pretty simply actually. The company basically installs ‘Straight Up’ Vending Machines (“revolutionary, coin-operated, hair straightener machines”) at trendy, popular pubs, clubs, gyms, and shopping centers in the UK. My first thought? This is a terrible idea. Who is going to go to a pub, or club, or gym, or mall, and think ‘hmm, I just left my house 15 minutes ago but I really need to re-straighten my hair to make sure it’s perfect’? And then I realized that, oh wait, there are so many women that would absolutely do that!
Beautiful Vending has created a completely new business model: providing women with the luxury of straightening their hair on-the-go or after they face the “inevitable frustration” of stepping out into the rain, wind, heat, humidity, or whatever else the ‘Weather Gods’ can throw at us. I admit, even I have had those moments where sudden downpour has completely negated all benefits of the precious 15 minutes I spent on my hair before I went out.
The company has been particularly clever in its marketing scheme, positioning the devices as a status symbol and an absolute necessity in any chic and fashionable public place. “In today’s world image is everything. We spend billions annually on looking good not to mention the endless hours that are invested in the strive for perfection…The saviour of bad hair days has arrived, the Beautiful Vending Styler machine is now available in clubs, bars, gyms and shopping centres; so for those occasions when sleek and sexy turns to shock and horror, we have the solution,” they say. They are aggressively trying to penetrate this new market- so much so, in fact, that they recently sued a company that was trying to sell a very similar product (www.straightngo.com), a “copy cat company” as they called it, and have replaced all of straightngo’s machines with their own.
The concept is a little off the wall (literally, see below)…
but it’s definitely serving a consumer need and it seems that women all over the UK are using these machines regularly. Besides the fact that they will have no hair left by the time they are 50 because of all the damage they are inflicting on it, it sounds like a win-win situation for the female consumers and the company. Before you know it there will be hair straightener vending machines next to the hair dryer in every trendy UK hotel. Bravo Beautiful Vending!
Check them out at www.beautifulvending.com (not to be confused with www.straightngo.com ). Ha.
