YouSaid · the spoken record

Rea Ann Silva

lines on the record: 86
first: 2022-12-19
most recent: 2022-12-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“20. Mm hmm. Yeah, no, I'm 60 and I have my father's passed away. My mother is 86. I'm watching her and how vibrant she is. But, you know, the reality of our mortality definitely is in my mind, you know. And I think like, what do I want for my future? How much... Do I want to do that I'm not doing now? The problem for me guys is that I love this business. You know, I'm still enjoying this. There's never a day for me that I'm like, oh, I gotta go to work. No, I like I get up every morning like, you know, ready to play this game. Like I want to win.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's both. And by the way, I've been with, I have a wonderful man in my life. His name is Rory Nix, and he's been, we've been together for almost 28 years now, but we're not married. We have our son together. But luck is, what did they say about luck? It's preparation, meeting timing or something. Basically saying there's no such thing as luck. It's all Movement and preparation. Not to sound too woozy, woozy, but I went through a lot of things in my life that were kind of unfair. And I just hustled and worked hard. I didn't dwell on it too much. I just. Just worked hard, and I feel like it kind of comes full circle, you know? So I attribute a lot to the grind.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm on a couple, right? And Eric Dickerson, who I still think was, you know, I still remember fondly as a great running back. And no knock on those guys, but like you kind of like left him the dust. You really built a massive career on your own and how much of this do you attribute to just the grind and how hard you worked? And if any percentage would you attribute to luck, just the luck of the circumstances of meeting Catherine and And, you know, some other breaks you got. Do you think it's really about the grind in the work? Decent there was luck”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But bad boy, are they wearing it again now? I don't know. You know, I will say this. I think probably in the next three to five years, just because of my age and also my own. Personal desires, things that I want for my life. Maybe I'll take on like a minority investor. And then by that time, I'll be able to have a better idea of what the future looks like if I would do a full transaction or, you know, do I do one of my kids want a part of it? I really don't know yet.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm just now really starting to think about it, guy. I don't know. Like, would I love for this company to end up being an Estay Lauder? I mean, from a legacy perspective, of course, but then I also now understand how brutal the business is. And, you know, I would really need to have one or both of my kids really in it, right, to keep it a family business like that. So, you know, I don't know if that's going to happen. I don't consider my company a big company right now. Like maybe we're midsize. I don't think we're a big company, but.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I still own it 100%. I have no investors. And, you know, that's an interesting question. Listen, this year, this next year, 2023, is going to be a 20-year anniversary for Beauty Blender. And nobody is more surprised at that number than I am because when I went into this business, if you recall, it was like passive income so I could pay for private school, send my kids to college. take a vacation because I was working so hard. Like I just needed some extra money.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell me about where sort of what your ambitions for PD Blender is. I mean, do you see this as an Este Lauder? I mean, do you see this as a, because you own, you still own all or most of this company, right? I don't think you took on outside investment or maybe you have some.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me ask you about, you know, obviously you've got several other products now. You've got Foundation and you do other makeup and cleansers and you make accessories and other things. But I imagine that the blender is still the core of your business.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was not all bad. It's not to say there weren't aspects that were really super challenging. There absolutely was. But it also set us up for more conversation, more explaining, more trying to kind of undo that narrative, if you will. And so also set me up to be able to create other products. So that's why now, I mean, I have a full line of complexion products that we sell at Sephora. You know, we're doing really well. I mean, it was challenging. I'm not going to say it was horrible. It was challenging. My whole team was stressed out. It was so not what we were prepared for. But luckily, I can say, I mean, we survived it. It's all good.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Control, you know, a lot of spin on our whole launch. But at the end of the day, we sold out of 22 shades. It's like, it's a crazy thing. In the entertainment industry, they say good press, bad press. It accomplishes the same thing. It's kind of true because even though that was like the worst thing that could have happened at the time, I mean, I invested, you know, over $2 million into this launch. You know, it was. Probably the worst thing that could have happened, but the best thing at the same time because everybody knew we launched”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, you know, there was a beginning and an end. There was a very light front end of the shade range, and then there was a very dark end of the dark shade range. But in the middle, there was this, what they would call like a sea of beige, right? And they thought that I didn't really support diversity. So I will tell you that we got like a whole hell storm of really, really angry and terrible responses to that one photo that that vlog put out. So we had to do a lot of”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I created a line of foundations. By this time, my company had grown. I had an internal PR. I had gone. Super amazing creative agency that created a lot of beautiful assets and ready to go. It's like going to be, this is so exciting. And so I go to New York and I do press with all of these editors. And now, you know, it's not just editors of magazines anymore. Now you're talking to editors of blogs and they're all wanting to get everything first, right? The editors and the bloggers. So there's this competition for them to be the first one to have something. And so one of the bloggers that we agreed to do this with, they refotographed my shade range With a flash photography. And the bottles that I used in my original packaging were frosted. So when they took this picture, it looked like all of the colors were the same color.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Well, I know that when you launched different shades and very consciously wanted to do this to represent all skin tones, You got criticized by some people who said actually it's not broad enough and it doesn't cover the entire spectrum of skin tones. Tell me about how you. Know, I'm sure that was not a, that was a tough pill to swallow for you. Tell me about what happened.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're never going to hear it. Like in any industry, we all try to hold hands as partners. But, you know, there was definite fear from companies because Beauty Blender had been so widely successful. They recognized that I had created a foundation or a net to really make an impact in complexion, like quickly, right? Because if I, you know, my whole thing was if I could get every person that uses a beauty blender to just try my foundation one time, I would, you know, be killing the game. So there was definite fear. There were, you know, there were makeup friends of mine, founder friends saying, oh, just stay in your sponge space. You don't want to be out here in this makeup world. It's hell. And to their point, like, I don't know if maybe you don't know about Shadegate guy, but when I launched.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's amazing. You got into the cosmetics business in 2018. You guys launch a line of foundation called Bounce. Did you have any, I don't know, was there any... I don't know, pushback or anyone from the makeup industry sort of like, well, wait, you're getting into that business, like we've been supporting your thing, and now you're kind of coming into our territory. Did you hear any of that at all?”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Speaking of product development, as this product really began to take off and really began to become a significant business, I think to date, like what, 60 million BD blenders have been sold, something like that.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a couple things. So the fact that beauty blender is rooted in the pro-community is a very important foundation for my business because the consumers, the editors, and everybody listens to the pros, right? So when pros only use Beauty Blender, then that's an important message about the knockoffs. Secondly, The way that I soothe myself about knockoffs is that I remember this fact that, you know, Coke needed Pepsi, Xerox needed IBM. Beauty blender needs knockoffs in order to prove why we are the category creator and the best. I mean, there's still, even in my biggest retailers now, there's brands within those retailers that have beauty blender type sponges. But all that does for us is give us a target to market our superiority. Too. Do you know what I mean? Like, if they didn't exist, we couldn't talk about why we're the best.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So all right, so you managed to get this into Sephora and Alt, I think around 2012. Obviously, the groundwork had been laid. Makeup artists had been using it. It was in magazines like Allure. So people, regular consumers, kind of were looking at this product. What's amazing to me, though, is that I know there were knockoffs, right? There were, and there are. But how did you maintain, I mean, why were you not ever, why did you never feel threatened by knockoff? Or maybe did you ever feel threatened by knockoffs?”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were people that would be interested. They're like, I just don't know. I don't know. People are going to spend $20 for a sponge. And I try to explain to them, they spend $20 for a brush. They spend $100 for a brush. It's that disposable mentality that we've been taught about makeup spenders that makes you feel like it's not a worthy tool, but it's the most recognized tool, but the least developed one because it's been marketed as a disposable product So I thought why can't I make a cleaner and clean your sponge, keep it longer, it would justify the price point because you're not throwing it away. So I created the world's first sponge cleaner. You know, when retailers like Sephora came calling, it would also justify the price point because they're prestige retailers. I mean, that's kind of how that happens.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Free. Yeah. Because if you think about sponges, they come in the compact already in the price that you pay for the product. And that was funny because, you know, I tried to get financing early on and everybody looked at me like I was crazy.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sephora, honestly, I went after Sephora because it was going to be the only way to really justify the costs for me. And because Beauty Blender was an expensive product based on cost of goods and, you know, me, probably not negotiating the best deals because I didn't know any better. It made it a very expensive product. I needed to have more people buying it.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go to the smaller boutiques where you can control the messaging and you can do education too because when you have a product like Beauty Blender that no one's ever seen before, you're talking about sustainability, cleaning it. It's a high dev tool. Like those are all like things that are way over the heads of consumers. If things become too complicated, then they walk away and get what they know. They don't try something new. So marketing and selling initially in a controlled environment where you have the opportunity to sit and talk with each customer and explain why and what and the ins and outs of the product was the way we grew the business.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Came to me, Ulta Beauty came to me. Ulta Beauty came after Sephora. But I started in small private boutiques Boutique Beauty Stores. So the pro stores, like friends, namies and Nigel's that I was selling at. I asked them, like, who is your favorite sales rep? I think I need a sales rep. And so they gave me the name of this woman, Laura Garlitos, who still works with me today too. Her and I met, and we decided that the strategy we need to take is to not go to big stores because you have supply issues, right? Right.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want you to be able to see it in a sea of black across the room, you know, when you walk into the store. I think the fact that it's an egg shape is so different, people are going to look at it and wonder what the hell is this thing? And I want it to be pink. I want them to pick it up and actually ask. What is this”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I remember getting this the last box was a note when I opened it up and said, hey, I think they wrote, I think we've made it. I think this, you're going to love this material. Don't look at the color. Just use it and tell us what you think. And I opened up the box and it was the beauty blender pink that we all see today. It was this beautiful neon bright pink color. And I mean, I just remember opening up the box and being so hopeful and optimistic and thinking like this might be it. And when I went back to the company and I was so excited, I said, we did. We found the material. This is perfect.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my god, that story is so funny to me. So during this time when I was trying to get the special material that was hydrophilic and expanded a certain amount and got soft enough for all of the things I wanted it to do, the company that I was working with, the foamer, would send me different variations of substrates to try. And every time that a new formulation was sent to me, they would diet a certain color so that I wouldn't confuse them. So when we talked, they could say, hey, remember the blue one, remember the green one, remember the yellow one, remember the purple one.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I kept selling beauty blenders to pros. Some people would say don't sell anything, wait, but I just kept selling. So cosmetic companies, they had... They had started to notice beauty blender, you know, backstage at Fashion Week. They'd started to notice Beauty Blender. But none of the big companies had like swooped in and really thought that there was any real revenue generating business there. So I didn't have any competition from them. So I just kept selling. Beauty blender, and it kept growing within the pro community. And then when consumers were walking into places like Sephora and asking for them, that's, you know, that kind of was like the game changer.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that was my conflict. And so the ear cleaner people wouldn't sell me their patent. And so I just was never able to get one. And I'll tell you, like I was saying, I was able to create real brand recognition during this time where we were patent pending.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there was a conflict. There was a conflict. There was a patent owned by a company that, and this is the craziest thing, and this is why I fought so long and hard about it. But there was a medical ear cleaner that was like, if you can envision almost like a Q-tip, only bigger. It was like it had a little handle. And then on top of the stick where the Q-tip would be was a foam teardrop sponge.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So we have these pro stores that we create POs from the studios for and the studios then pay for all of our supplies, right? I had created very strong relationships with three or four of the main pro stores in the United States because by this time I was a very active makeup artist working all over the place. They were my first clients, my first customers. And people were asking if they carried the product because I would give them out to makeup artists. So in a way, it was the pro-community with my marketing. I would be feeding them sponges. They would be using them and they would want more. And then that's just really how it happened. I had to have a place to sell them. I didn't have a website. I mean, even to this day, my digital, my e-commerce business is the smaller part of my business.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On off hours, you know, from three different entities when you talk about the foaming and the fabricator and then Kathy, like all three of them were very much just being philanthropic. I don't know. I look at a guy, I look and I think I'm the luckiest person in the world.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So in the beginning when I first decided that this should, you know, I wanted to try to make this a business, I had invited another makeup artist to work with me. I eventually bought her out. But we had both, I think we both invested like $75,000 And when you're working all the time, you don't have time to spend money. So, you know, and there was no internet. I couldn't be on my phone buying things. So I am asked and saved some money to buy a house and I mortgaged my house. And that's how I did it. I'm still working with the same fabricator and manufacturer from the very beginning. Like they've grown with me in this business. And, you know, they took a chance on me. It was really.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh god, no, it was a couple years. Yeah. It almost felt like it was going to take forever at one point because, you know, when you're making something that has never been made before. And you don't have a huge investor behind you throwing money at labs and manufacturing companies. You're relying on the goodness and the kindness of people that believe in your idea to make the time to help you make that idea happen. And it's not happening in that nine to five space. You know what I mean? They have to do it in their off time. So I remember. Going to set because I was still working. I was still very, very active in my makeup career. And they would, my friends, the other makeup artists would be like, what are you doing here? Aren't you starting a company? I'm like, girl, I still got to work”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She was probably looking to exit the business anyway, and then I come along and there's something here that interests her and it can be hers. And there's a part and a heart to Kathy where she's a mentor. And I think that she saw me as a young makeup artist with an idea, single mother, just wanting to help. I don't think that she had any kind of preconceived Collateralization of it because she literally worked for me guy for years without a dime. It was very much a labor of love for both of us”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so timing is so important, right? So again, unbeknownst to me, Victoria Vogue was suffering at the time and she had gone back to her bosses. Apparently this is what she told me. She had gone back to her bosses and they wanted nothing to do with my project. If you want to work on it, you can work on it, but you need to work on it on your time. You can't work on it on our time. And it'll be your project. We want nothing to do with it. Which was such a blessing to me because I was not tied to Victoria Vogue, however I was able to work with Catherine, who had all of this knowledge about sponges and tools. So we then continued to discuss the development of beauty blender on her free time.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, so I, you know, I went into detail about why the shape and what I was doing and the show I was working on in high definition. Unbeknownst to me, the company had charged her for finding to find innovation. So she was looking for innovation within this space already. But she didn't imagine, like, because I never told her it's a 3D round ergonomic egg-shaped sponge. So when she saw Beauty Blender, she recognized like this is something really different.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I was like, okay, so I got a little, like, I don't know, like, do it yourself NDA or something like that. And I had an NDA and she was like, oh, well, this is going to have to go back to our legal department. I don't know if they're going to sign it, but I'll get back to you So we hung up, and then she got back to me, you know, I don't know, it was probably a couple days later, and she goes, you know, I was thinking about what you said. And I've shared your NDA and they signed it. So why don't you share your idea with me now? And when I did, she said, Oh my God, that's like the palm slap to my forehead. Why didn't we think of this? And I said, because you're not makeup artists.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know, and she was trying to basically get off the phone with me, and I said to her, I said, Well, okay, but wait a minute, who designs your makeup sponges? And she stopped for a second and she said, well, we have product engineers. And I said, so you never had a makeup artist help you design a tool to apply makeup for your companies? And she said, well, now actually we never have. And I said, okay, so then maybe you want to listen to me. Maybe you want to hear my idea. And she just kind of was like, I guess I was being pushy. And she was like, okay, what's your idea? And I said, oh, okay, so I have an NDA because I did, like, my friend was like, Rant, you have to, you have to definitely have them sign this NDA. Because otherwise...”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Any tool that supported your beauty routine. I called 411 and asked for the phone number to Victoria Vogue. Then I cold called them and asked to speak to somebody in their product development department. And they said, Well, okay, but who are you? And I said, my name is Rianne, and I'm a makeup artist. And I have an idea. And they were like, I could hear the sigh. Meet the end of the phone. And they said, hold, please. And then this lady came on and I need someone to help me get this made. And she said, well, that's great, honey. We hold over 400 patents. I'm sure whatever you have designed already is covered in our patents. So I don't know that we could help you much.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Victoria Vogue was a company that manufactured and distributed beauty implements. So that meant they created sponges for cosmetic companies, but the sponges that they created would fit into the compacts, like think of a powder compact and you have a little thin spong in there.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, I used to travel all over the world with my clients and I used to collect sponges from every country, every city, because I was actually looking for a manufacturer to help me with this idea. But in doing that collection, I also started paying attention to the back of the packages, like where it's made, who distributes it. So there was this one company called Victoria Vogue. Victoria Vogue.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I dared to dream on occasion like, wow, what if this could be a consumer product but way too complicated for them to understand? Like it's so far in makeup artistry, I don't think anybody would, you know, why would they trade this out with whatever they're doing now? Like I just, I knew that my niche. And my little slice of, like I said, passive income would come from the professional community that understood what I was doing.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I had already started, before Beauty Blender even was an idea, I had already started to think about how long am I going to do this? How long am I going to be able to do this? How long am I going to keep this schedule? And how am I going to keep making money? So I had started to think about alternative kind of like ways to create passive income. At the same time, I was cutting these wedge sponges and trying to figure out how How can I make this a business? Because I think that there are going to be so many other makeup artists behind me in this experiment that I'm on on this TV show that are going to need these tools because, you know, the future was like the buzz on all the sets is like everything's going High death, and you need a red camera, and you need this, and you need that, and everything's going to be different.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I'm wondering is even before you were going to talk about this in a minute, how you figured out how to make them, but before that happened, when did you, I mean, you're cutting out sponges in certain shapes, and at what point did you say, you know, I should turn this into a business? I mean, you had a makeup business, you were an artist. When did you say to yourself, I should see if I can like turn this into a product?”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's where the creation of Beauty Blender came in. So yes, I was sitting on set with my two or three other makeup artists working for me and we were cutting sponges as we were sitting on the sidelines of the set during takes and we would just cut them for the next day because you couldn't use them over and over again. And so one of the things that I thought about was the material. And I realized that the material that was hydrophilic, meaning it absorbed water and got softer and fluffier with the absorption of water, I started realizing that those materials actually gave a better makeup result.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So basically, you were taking just like rectangular sponges and cutting them into like an oval rounded shape. But it wasn't just the shape that mattered, it was also the absorption, the ability to absorb liquid.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It allowed me to not have to apply more makeup on the actors, but rather kind of just redistribute the makeup that already was there, which if you can imagine, take after take, scene after scene, you don't have time to recreate a whole look. So you're adding makeup throughout the day and trying to keep these makeup levels looking natural in high def especially is very difficult. So it just made, you know. It made the whole job so much easier for everybody.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm the worst one. I can see continuity. I can say that's a different makeup artist this day. That was a different day. That was a different hand. This is not good Did they not see the continuity? Like, it's bad With a sponge, when you wet it, like I said, it's now pushing the makeup onto your skin. Adding more to it to get more coverage. So that was the lesson that I learned in that class. And I went back that next week to my show. And I started experimenting with it, and it worked. And I was like, oh my God, this is amazing.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, I went to this one seminar with this really prolific makeup artist who's still working today. Her name is Kelsey Fry. And the thing that she said that stuck in my head was that she would wet her sponge. Like, I know it sounds crazy, everybody, and everybody always says to me, why are you wetting your sponge when you're using this makeup? Because it's going to dilute. It's going to. She said, but trust me when I tell you, this works. And by the way, it's not like a drippy sponge like you wet the sponge, you wring it out, and you tell dry it. But what ends up happening is then the sponge starts to repel the makeup. So it's then pushing the makeup onto the face as opposed to grabbing the makeup and trying to suck it in. So I don't know. Is that like physics or something? I don't know.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can look good to your eye, but when you go in on a close up and, you know, you're in a theater and a face is like, you know, 300 feet by, I don't know how many feet, you see those lines of demarcation. Like you try to work as perfectly as you can. So you cut those edges off the wedge to kind of ensure the fact that there's going to be a softer line of demarcation. So, you know, Beauty Blender is a wedge that I trimmed into a teardrop, the sponge itself has no edges. We round the sponge. And listen, I didn't create cutting sponges into round shapes. Every makeup artist before me historically has had to cut sponges. But it's just something that happened for me.”
2022-12-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT