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Samantha & Nicola Chapman
Interview Phadria Prendergast
Pixiwoo are the pair of sisters also known as Samantha and Nicola Chapman who brought an entirely new concept to that of YouTube make-up tutorials. The duo also founded the infamous Real Techniques makeup brush brand. WOTC caught up with them both to discuss where it all began, being beauty pioneers and the future of the industry.
Phadria: Where did you both begin your journey in the beauty industry?
Samantha: Our aunt, my mum’s sister, was a makeup artist, so we grew up with beauty in the family. When I was about 14, she let me go and assist her on some jobs, and I think Nic probably thought that was interesting as well, so that’s how we got into it. It was really a family business.
Nicola: We both went on to study BTEC National Diploma in Media. Makeup was not really a thing.
P: You mentioned that it was a family business. Is that something that you think your own children will continue?
S: I hope not! (laughs) If I’m honest, I hope not. Both my kids don’t seem that interested in it. Because we’ve been doing the social media side of it for the last 10 years, my kids haven’t actually witnessed the makeup artistry side of it; they’ve witnessed the social media side of it. And social media, when you’re actually in it, isn’t that pretty
So, I think my kids have probably witnessed, firstly, how hard we work and how much of the time we’re away from them - and that’s part of having a brand - but also, just the side of it which is anxiety-inducing and the side of it where you’re being trolled and people are interested in your family. So, I think, maybe not the best aspects of it, and actually I’m quite happy about that, because I don’t really want my kids to get into social media.
Nicole: I also think the kids are doing the opposite; they’re veering away from it. They want to not have an identity and not be known. You know, you obviously get the odd kids that’re like ‘I want to be a YouTuber’ or whatnot, but a lot of kids just want to disappear off the radar and not be trackable. I think there’s been more of a movement towards that.
P: So, how did both of you build a brand, outside of the business with Real Techniques?
S: You know what? It was a happy accident when that happened. We were in the right place at the right time with social media at the very, very beginning. So, when the brand – its owned by a parent company – decided to make Real Techniques, they were looking around for people on social media that had credibility in the makeup world, as well as a social following.
N: This was before there were many people, so, they were actually really, really before their time, in a way, because they were the first people to partner with social media talent.
S: So, they found Nic and I and we said, ‘oh yeah, we’ll be happy to do that’. We were lucky because the products were great and we worked with them to make sure that was the case, but they were lucky because Nic and I are both grafters and we’re not big complainers. So, we did a lot of traveling, lots of meetings and we worked relentlessly for a really long time.
I feel like sometimes that’s missed in social media; that to get to a point where things are successful, there’s tonnes of hard work. You don’t always see that route. You know, this was a brand that started from zero, absolute zero.
N: They had no advertising budget or anything. They pulled on social media purely through Sam and I.
S: And it was a punt really. We took a punt getting involved with a brand, because we didn’t know that it would be successful. It was just a case of the belief in ourselves that we could work with these people and these products that we were creating, to bring an affordable but really excellent product to the market that people would get behind.
P: You mentioned that your children have mostly seen the social media side of it within the 10 years. So, how did you transition from that period, where it wasn’t really a social media generation, to it now being so heavily social media focused?
N: Well, we were both working in makeup, both working for brands, and then Sam got pregnant with her second child, so she couldn’t physically do the makeup so much anymore, because of the kits. So, she says ‘I’m doing this thing on YouTube; do you want to join in?’ It was definitely her making the effort to do something that no one else was doing at the time.
I would say we were the first actual qualified makeup artists that ventured off the counters and off being paid to go and do makeup, to do it on themselves and educate from home. We were kind of, I wouldn’t say innovators, but the first people that were really makeup artists that were giving advice online, and now everyone does it. At the time, people were like ‘you’re nuts! Why are you doing that?’ People that we were working with, they just couldn’t get their heads around it.
For us, we were like, for one; we’re sisters and it brings us closer together, because we didn’t always see eye to eye and it was a real passion for both of us and it really forged an amazing relationship between us too. We’ve always had each other’s back, being sisters, but it was just another step of ‘we have something in common, we both love makeup’ and actually we realised how much we do have in common. So, it was way before anyone else was doing it, and I would say, for the first 3-4 years, we were still the only ones doing it online – would you say Sam?
S: Yeah, I think for a real long time, 3 years maybe, we were the only ones doing it with any kind of…
N: ...Credential.
S: And also, not that we knew that we would make it into a business, I don’t think we did for the first year and a half or so. Once we’d realised there were legs in it, we went into it wholeheartedly and really worked day and night in order to make it happen. I think it’s (social media) a very different prospect, now than it was then.
N: It wasn’t an overnight success.
S: For sure, and it was unknown, and nobody knew where it was going. Like, there were a few people online, there were a few people watching; you couldn’t have really guessed that it would turn into the monster that it’s become, as such.
In a way, coming from the background that we did in makeup really stood us in good stead, because a lot of our friends were not on social media but were supporting us on shoots, in professional situations with celebrities and whatnot, and using our brushes. So, we managed to get the kudos and credibility from being backstage as well as on the screen, and I think that really helped to make it such a success in the early days.
N: One of the main struggles Sam and I struggled with during the journey was the fact that we were the only makeup artists online. It was a real struggle because you felt like, ‘are we going against what we’ve always been trained to do with our friends’ by, almost, spilling the secrets. So, we had to still be a makeup artist and still relevant in that field, but then a social media talent in the other. It was something that took us a really long time to get our heads ‘round. But we were very lucky that we had the support of all our friends… And now most of our friends are on there! They’re all doing the same as us
S: Everyone’s doing social media now, because it’s a given. If you have a normal job off camera, it’s still part of having a normal job off camera now. If you’re a photographer, you need to have a following because people are booking people based on how their following is now. It’s become such a major part of just doing a job, even off social media it’s so weird.
P: As beauty pioneers, especially on the YouTube platform, and with so many people - who are starting channels and wanting to be on social media - thinking it’s an overnight success story or worrying that they’re not doing anything new, what advice would you give?
S: If it’s a route you want to go down, go down it and I recommend that you just crack on with it. Even if your first videos are absolutely terrible, just crack on with it. It takes a while to feel comfortable in front of the camera and nobody is watching you at the beginning anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
If you go back and watch any of our early videos, they’re all really crap! So, I would recommend just crack on with it and keep going until you’re good at it.
N: Yeah, I’ve had friends that were debating for years and years and years and they're like ‘I finally decided to do it’, and then they were like ‘oh, it wasn’t an overnight success’. And I’m like no, it takes really, really hard work.
I also think it’s really important to know what your passion is, because passion can get very diluted along the journey. Sam and I have always stuck to makeup and occasionally we’ll go into family, because your passions change. So, it is important to try and have a rough idea of where you want your path to go, so you’re not putting too much out there that you didn’t intend to.
Obviously, things do change as you get older; we’ve been on here 10 years. I didn’t have a family when I started, so my passions were very different. But I do tend to think about that if I do it, make sure that you’re keeping it still where it started from.
P: How long do you think it took to really cement yourselves in the industry?
N: I think, in the industry of makeup artists, we were already quite cemented, quite known. But, when you go on social media, there’re so many different industries you have to overcome. So, as makeup artists, we were already known, but then it was ‘okay, as social talent’, it’s a whole different knowledge that people need to know you.
Brands, you know, we used to always get products from brands anyway through doing makeup, they’d send you products. But then, it all becomes very different when they want to send you products to feature. It’s having hands in every single pie.
S: I think it took time for brands to realise it was a thing. The audience knew it was a thing, because they were watching. But I remember, obviously I had a lot of contacts with all the makeup brands anyway because we’d been makeup artists for years, so we were used to getting gratis, we were used to getting press samples for shoots. But it had never been done before that you got press samples to review online.
So, Nic and I used to do these days where we’d go into London and we’d go ‘round and we’d see every brand. And in the very beginning, we were having to explain to them exactly what we were doing and say, ‘this is what we’re doing; this is our audience; this is what we expect our audience to be’. So, it was almost like we had a business plan together in order to get free current products, because remember, we already had our makeup artist kits, that’s what we started with. But we needed current products in order to review them and say what we loved and what we didn’t and why.
I can remember us going to Estée Lauder head office and sit in the room and brand after brand would come in and we’d pitch the same thing to them going ‘this is going to be a thing; this is what we’re doing. So far, we’ve had these many views. It took a long time, put it that way.
N: You forget all those things that we’ve done. We used to have a whole day dedicated to going ‘round to all the brands and explaining to them what we were doing, and now, people forget us. They don’t even think about where it came from. We did work our absolute asses off to be in that position. It comes quite easy now for people, but there has to be a person that starts anything, doesn’t there?
P: What does the future of beauty look like for both of you? We’ve had this pandemic and so many things have now changed. What does the industry look like to you now and do you think people view the industry a lot differently than before?
S: I imagine that certainly for the rest of the year and probably into the early part of next year, everything’s going to be PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), for sure. This also affects testers and things like that. So, if you go into a store at the moment, every single product that you touch - not even trying it, if you just pick it up – that product then has to be left on the side so that it can be cleaned by the people that work there. So, it’s trying for brands, and I think that those that are online are definitely going to be winning the day right now.
N: I also think that, for consumers, they want to know what’s best for them. It’s very much me, me, me – and I don’t mean that in a rude way – but people are very much ‘what about me? What do I need?’ People that have the knowledge and the expertise will shine.
S: I think in terms of inclusivity, I expect the standard should be what MAC has always done, which is to do it, and to do it exceptionally and not to feel like you have to shout about it, because it should be that way in the first place.
MAC has always done it – Estée Lauder, yes, but I think MAC is the original inclusive brand. It’s the brand that’s just won a Lifetime Achievement Award from Vogue and it deserves the kudos, even though Fenty has come along and shouted about it – and rightly so, because what they’ve done is also amazing.
Where MAC missed out is that MAC didn’t shout about it, because they felt like it was a given, that that’s just how it should be. But Fenty came along and they said ‘actually, all of you brands that aren’t doing it, you should be doing it’. So, credit to both of those brands; they’re both absolute gamechangers in terms of that, and I expect that that, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement, should make a difference.
I know that Space NK have now removed all of their testers off counters. If those testers don’t show every single skin tone, then those testers should all be removed. They shouldn’t just be showing testers for skin tones that are light. Now all testers should be removed if you can’t show it all.
This is the problem with a lot of the brands; that they don’t have the space for all the testers, so they only put out the ones that sell the most. But if you don’t have them all out, how can you sell them all?
I think the future of beauty should look more inclusive; I would expect. Shouldn’t you, Nic?
N: Without a doubt. That’s probably another reason that Sam and I have stood out; we’ve always been inclusive. Even though we’re doing it on ourselves, we would always try to mention colours or brands that do a further stretch of colours, you know, it’s not a show about us.
S: Also, even though we do that, behind the scenes, we’ve never agreed anything without checking that inclusivity is part of that job, and if it’s ever been that it hasn’t been, it’s been called out. And I can’t tell you the amount of times that that’s happened. But I think it’s very important, and a lot of our friends in the beauty industry of all ethnicities, do the same thing; making sure that we are pushing that agenda.
