When I first moved here, I was made fun of for looking different. And whenever I put lashes on, I immediately felt beautiful and confident. It kind of became the conduit for me to find my inner confidence. It’s the basis of our slogan for Glamnetic.
“Be Magnetic, Be Glamnetic” means that when you feel beautiful on the outside, it ripples inward to affect your confidence. Nothing boosts confidence more than lashes because of how it gives you an extra eye lift and an illusion of bigger eyes. However, most people can’t apply them so hence you need Glamnetic!
As a part of our series about how technology will be changing the beauty industry over the next five years, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ann McFerran.
Ann McFerran was born in Bangkok, Thailand and immigrated with her single mother to America when she was 7 years old. After growing up in Manteca, CA, she gained admission to UCLA and moved to Los Angeles where she graduated with a B.S. in Psychobiology. However, post-grad, she pursued her artistic passion and became a full-time fine artist for several years where she sold various abstract and pop art commissions worldwide. While she enjoyed the creativity that art provided, she was feeling isolated as a full-time artist. During these years, she knew that she had a passion for making her vision come to life and building a community around it. When she saw a gap in the beauty market for magnetic lashes that actually worked, she sought out to develop magnetic lashes in the styles that she would personally wear. One year later, in July 2019, after teaching herself everything from product development to marketing, Glamnetic was born. Six months since launch, Glamnetic is now doing 7 figures per month in revenue.
Thank you for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I grew up in a poor area of Bangkok, Thailand and moved to a little town in Northern California called Manteca when my mom remarried. I gained admission to UCLA for pre-med and graduated with a psychobiology degree. When I graduated I was in a dilemma because I was in debt but had no desire to pursue a medical career further. It didn’t feel right to me. So now I was stuck in debt and needed to find a way to pay it off fast. I had actually been doing art my entire life and had a natural talent for it so when I got my first commission for $5k right out of college, I had the courage to go after it. Fast forward 3 years and I had sold my art around the world and at big conventions such as the LA Art Show but I didn’t feel as fulfilled as I thought I would because I felt lonely in my practice. I needed something where I could work with people but still use my creative skills. I always had a business mindset and was lucky to have met a lot of successful eCommerce entrepreneurs that inspired me to start my own brand as I saw it as a giant art project. I had always been obsessed with lashes not only because of their transformative power externally, but it was sort of my tool to feel like I fit in. When I first moved here, I was made fun of for looking different. And whenever I put lashes on, I immediately felt beautiful and confident. It kind of became the conduit for me to find my inner confidence. It’s the basis of our slogan for Glamnetic is be magnetic, be glamnetic. Because if you feel beautiful, you radiate beautiful, magnetic energy. At the time, I saw a gap in the market for lashes that were easy to apply yet still looked beautiful. Magnetic lashes had already come out but they were thin, plastic-y, and fake-looking and had max 3 magnets. I thought “Why can’t you have both an easy to apply lash that’s beautiful and full?” One year later after teaching myself product development and hundreds of samples, Glamnetic was born. We now have the world’s first 6-magnet lash, the world’s first colored magnetic lashes, and they all attach via a magnetic liner that has the hold almost as strong as glue!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
During our first Black Friday last year, we had to rush ship 5k eyeliners from our manufacturer since we did not expect the demand we got and had to ship orders as soon as possible. I had to hire whoever was available, one of them being my best friend from UCLA, along with an intern and her friends. Together with my roommates, we got 5 thousand labels and boxes printed and sat there for 11 hours straight stickering, forming the outer box for the eyeliner and assembling all of the orders until 4 am. We formed a huge assembly line in my living room and everyone became an expert at the task they were assigned. This was month 5 of the business and I was still working out of my small apartment in Koreatown with what seemed to be an endless sea of eyeliner, boxes, and stickers. It was a complete mess! Afterward, I had to drive everything to my shipping facility because I didn’t want to lose a single day due to shipping. Needless to say, I have a newfound appreciation of the work that goes into just assembling a product. I’m just so glad we can forecast our demand at least a few months out now.
Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?
For Glamnetic, it was a gradual build-up of events and necessary actions that happened at the right time that made us successful. Before launch, I had several friends try the liner and lashes and made modifications accordingly. I was excited about the concept but what solidified it for me was other people’s feedback about how amazed they were and the many “I am finally able to apply lashes because of Glamnetic”. Out of the gate, we did $1K a day in sales for having only my small audience of followers on Instagram. I DMed every single customer who followed us to sell them on the product and was able to get $20K in sales the first month, then the next month Dolls Kill reached out and asked to sell on their website which gave us more credibility and exposure. Since we are self-funded, we funneled all profits towards paid marketing and influencers and was able to drive more traffic to our site and double our growth every month. In today’s climate, you need to be incredible at the content and creative. That was my strong point so we were able to spend very little to obtain high-quality content since I shot everything myself. If you’re not great at it, I highly recommend teaching yourself design enough to be able to give accurate instructions for someone on Upwork to complete. It’s all about the ideas you have and how you can catch people’s attention with your product. If you can do that well, you can scale to any size.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Yes! I had no prior experience in running a business. In fact, I never had a real 9–5 job! My business partner Kevin Gould has been a huge help in all things related to infrastructure. He has an extensive beauty, business, and entertainment background so he is great with bringing in key relationships to help the business grow and also takes care of operations like inventory management, finances, taxes, insurance, etc for Glamnetic. He also invested capital along with me and his business sense has helped me organize my thoughts better! He’s also my moral support! You need someone that is always in your corner.
The beauty industry today has access to technology that was inconceivable only a short time ago. Can you tell us about the “cutting edge” (pardon the pun) technologies that you are working with or introducing? How do you think that will help people?
We took a common ingredient, iron oxide, which is commonly found in all colored cosmetics and FDA approved, and added it into an eyeliner to make it magnetic and magnetized to eyelashes. This new methodology of the lash application completely takes out messy lash glue from the equation. What’s even more exciting is we were able to make the liners hold almost as strong as glue, yet be gentle on the eyelashes and easy to remove, as well as paraben-free and prop 65 compliant. It glides on super smooth, ultra-black, with minimal waiting time before magnetizing lashes, and you can even take your magnetic lashes off and remagnetize them again for a hold as strong as the first application! The eyeliner took a long time to perfect but it’s something I’m extremely proud of now. For the lashes, I developed the world’s first 6 magnet lash and first colored magnetic lashes for magnetic liner. The 6 magnets allow for maximum trimmability and hold so users can trim the band down to fit any eye width. Historically, this lack of trimmability has been a huge issue with magnetic lashes. I was able to develop full, fluffy styles and am able to match any style that traditional lash falsies have which opens up an entirely new world of possibilities for someone that is normally unskilled at applying lash glue. As a result of this, we are shifting many girls who don’t know how to wear lashes and girls who wear glue typically, into our products and many customers literally buy every single style we have!
Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the “beauty-tech” industry?
The ability to have customers try on beauty products virtually. We have taken advantage of this and built a custom filter that will soon launch on the Instagram page (and will be implemented on our site) that lets customers try our 9 most popular lash styles along with a cute optional heart halo! Secondly, the data technology tools that Continually allow customized experiences for our users. Thirdly, due to personalization, it allows us to have a greater connection with our audience and make their needs feel understood.
Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest?
I think the speed in which everything is happening doesn’t allow time for consumers or other brands to catch up. It’s a constant process of finding out about something, and not digesting it fully until something else comes out. This is counterproductive and actually can disengage consumers, especially the older audience. Secondly, I think the beauty of beauty is its simplicity and personal experience with it. You have an emotional experience with your product. Too much tech can lead one to disengage with the reason they wanted to pick up the product in the first place. Thirdly, since the technology is new, it can often be wrong. You can’t program in emotion and taste unfortunately or perfectly get the foundation shade to accurately represent the product if you’re in the wrong lighting. When we become too dependent on our experience through technology, our actual experience with the product as compared to in-person could be ruined. I think to fix these issues, we need to focus on key technologies that have for sure been tested and developed thoroughly and will for sure lead to a direct positive experience for the user. Poll users often get feedback in making sure the technology is enhanced instead of hindered their experiences.
You are an expert about beauty. Can you share 5 ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Our slogan Be Magnetic, Be Glamnetic means that when you feel beautiful on the outside, it ripples inward to affect your confidence. Nothing boosts confidence more than lashes because of how it gives you an extra eye lift and an illusion of bigger eyes. However, most people can’t apply them so hence you need Glamnetic! 😉
Beauty also starts from the inside but first, you have to feel good about yourself. Start with exercising at least 2–3 times a week whether it’s yoga or strength training, you’ll have the serotonin to feel beautiful!
Eat healthily. Again if you feel healthy, you’ll feel beautiful. Drink green juices and salads!
Do something good for someone else. Whether it’s giving advice, a compliment, or a favor, when you help someone feel good, you’ll feel good and beautiful from within.
Feed your brain by learning! When you know you’re smart, you feel more confident, and therefore more beautiful. Keep learning and gaining knowledge by being curious and consuming astute content.
If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
To inspire people to put their excuses aside and just do it. Learn to do everything yourself instead of asking others to do it. It’s the only way I grew as a person and I save a tremendous amount of money by relying only on myself. It’s tempting to outsource every little thing, even raising money, but you’ll thank yourself in the long run if you take the time to just do the homework yourself. If you want it enough, you will put your excuses aside, sit down, and take the time to do it.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
When I lost my excuses, I found my results. Many people don’t make things happen due to all the excuses they tell themselves. I was one of those people before, but when I changed my mind from overthinking mode to “do mode” which translated itself in the form actionable items and to-do lists that I had to complete as fast as possible (ZERO procrastinating), my life changed.
How can our readers follow you online?
You can follow our Instagram or Facebook @Glamnetic or me on Instagram @themodernartista. FYI I have a lot of artwork from my artist days on my personal!
The Future Of Beauty: “Magnetized Eyelashes” With Ann McFerran of Glamnetic was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.