PiM Cosmetix: A Lipstick That Will Add Color And Flavor To Your Festival Look
If you love going to an exciting art exhibition or music festival, then you probably have seen a Body Paint Booth around the grounds. People often line up for miles at these spots to spice themselves up with some colorful bodypaint. The truth is, these booths belong to PiM Cosmetix, a Thai makeup brand known for their unique and colorful cosmetic collections. These meticulously made products come from the beautiful mind of the founder, Ratchanee Nimmanterdwong (Maew), that built the brand purely out of her love for a craft that she'd like to share with everyone.
She told us that PiM Cosmetix started from her outgoing lifestyle that would often see her travel to island parties and music festivals along with the colorful cosmetics she'd use to play with her friends.
"I love to carry around some reflective neon colors with me because it draws interest from people around me when I put it on. I always make new friends, and my friends always ask to have some. It makes my friends want to party more as well; I love it.
"I remember back then that irregular colors were extremely hard to find. We always had to order from the UK or other countries, so I just thought to myself why don't I just make some myself? I started with some easy DIYs like colorful lipbalms and grew from there. I studied from multiple foreign chemist communities, research papers, and tried looking out for suppliers that cater to small orders. I got hold of a few batches and played around with them. Everytime I make more than I can use, so I give them out to my friends up until a point where I felt like I should start making some for sale. I continied to build from that starting point and the next thing I know I'm already here. Personally, I feel like this allows me to share my happiness and get people inspired, because there's element of power that comes with a facepaint. The party gets wilder to me, and whenever I turn around and see someone also with paint, it feels like meeting a friend."
It was never an easy journey becoming the PiM Cosmetix you see today. Maew said there were many issues she had to face along the way. She never studied Marketing, so she started with something that was more up her alley like designing. Anything that involves production, she had to learn from scratch, which includes getting approval from the FDA all by herself in a process that took up to 8 months!
"Producing cosmetics is a very delicate process. For example, the pigments we use for our lipsticks must be the same grade used for making food or food coloring because it will have to be on our mouths, which makes it more sensitive than the other products. We use the highest grade coloring we can find so we can pass through all the paperwork required by the FDA. We also need to ask for every single document from each supplier and arrange it into a thick pile, much like a final thesis for college. After we finally got our approval, we proceeded immediately with our website construction and Marketing plan.”
You can often see Maew using offline tactics when it comes to Marketing for PiM Cosmetix. She opts for setting up a booth at art exhibitions and music festivals over taking up shelves at convenience stores or promotion through influencers like a beauty blogger. But why?
“We think that our makeup is "festival style" and we'd like everyone to be able to try for themselves. We feel like that if they can try it on, they'll be more into it. We initially promoted our products through an advertising campaign, but it didn't hit the real festival crowd. We decided to turn to offline channels and started off by joining the creative markets around town. The event "Art Ground" at The Jam Factory was our first. We shared a booth with our friend who is a painter, and after that, we went to Chang Chui, Bangkok Design Week, Kolour in the Park, and finally Dropzone."
"We occupy the same space as designers and artists, and we feel like it's effortless to communicate with them as they understand our way of thinking. So we decided to start off with this niche market at our launch. We ship off our lipsticks to our friends who're artists of many fields such as painters, designers, and graffiti artists for them to use in their artwork. We then asked them to send us a photo of their artwork for a showcase at Jam, so its like we're using these artists as our influencers.
One thing that makes us love making Face paints and Body paints for people who are attending festivals more than drawing on canvas is the enjoyment we get from communicating with that person."
“When we paint on a living person, a conversation often starts during the painting process. This way we make new friends all the time, but if we paint on a blank canvas, there’s no communication there. After the work is done, every time we see the smiles on their happy faces it just makes us jump with glee.”
The lipsticks from PiM Cosmetix are extremely colorful and have such a unique character. When we asked Maew to compare her lipsticks with a music genre, she was quick to say how many there were.
“Oh my, where do I start? Each color has its own character, so I have to say there’s quite a lot. Right now we’re about to release a set under the concept of music. For example, Jazz will be Brown-Gold or Bronze; if it’s a nude and polite tone, then it will be something else. If we’re talking about a Psychedelic music party, then we’d have to go with bright Purple or neon Peach.
As of now, the only product available is the colorful and eye-catching lipsticks. We decided to ask them about the future and direction of PiM Cosmetix where Maew does have a variety of other products that are not cosmetics planned. For example, Lifestyle products, accessories, or festival kits for everyone to enjoy.
If we look closely, we can see that PiM Cosmetix was born from the connection of 3 things, Music, Fashion, and Art. Maew herself agrees and also feels that these 3 things are intertwined, and all of them does have an influence on all of our lifestyles.
“They’re all connected. The type of music we listen to gives us our very own ‘category’. For example, people who listen to Hip-hop will have the same style, if its Rock music they’ll have a totally different look. We believe it’s a beginning of everything; it links to our lifestyle, our choice of clothing, everything. There are people who seem to love everything, but trust me, they have what they love the most in mind, and will lean towards that side of things more than others.”
As we near the end of the interview, we asked Maew to leave a little advice for some people who might still be shy to show to the world who they really are. Her words will definitely make you feel like picking up that blue lipstick and give it a try.
“For me, putting on a makeup or playing with colors is a type of experiment. We should try out ans many things as we can in our lives. Some of us may have never used red lipstick before, not mentioning colors like purple or something irregular. Please do try. Because if you happen to not like it, it’s super easy to wipe off, but if you like it, you might be able to discover some new looks for yourself like never before.
Right now we have an exhibition named Kraftmetix. We made a little game to send across our message the event. We put some mini-sized lipsticks in a black box and told the attendees that they’re free, under just one condition, you have to put it on right away. The crowd was shy at. First, some picked out Green and changed to Nude, but after they saw their friends in Light Blue, the person that initially picked out Green started to feel competitive and wanted to make friends, so they come back to pick out Blue. Success! (laughs) This is how you make them feel like they can try. It’s not weird if everyone can have fun with it. As I said, you should give everything a try, before deciding whether you like it or not.”