All About LUCY: our most Frequently Asked Questions

September 29, 2021

LUCY Lovers, it’s time. 

Time for us to answer some non-makeup related questions! 

Since the opening of our first store in the Plaza, we’ve had a lot of you writing in to ask us about makeup, and a few of you wanting to know about how we started: where our ideas came from, why we opened up a makeup store in Malta, how we went about expanding our stores to reach every makeup lover on the island and beyond - you name it, we’ve been asked it! 

We’re always striving for transparency with our LUCY lovers, so here’s our complete guide to how, where, what, and why LUCY was made. 

What’s LUCY?

LUCY is our makeup marvel: a 100% guided-by-you makeup store that counts some of the most impressive brands underneath its offerings. Created by our dreamer-in-chief, Claire Abela, LUCY started as the idea of putting some of the cult makeup brands in one place, under one roof, for quick and easy comparison and shopping (plus, we got to benefit directly: you can’t sell a product without trying a product first!)

We started out as a one-stall shop in Sliema, at the Plaza, and the results were so promising that we quickly expanded into Baystreet, Qormi, the Point, and Valletta, as well as the first ever makeup vending machine in Gozo - but we’ve got more plans in the making, so keep an eye out for those! 

What’s LUCY’s aim?

Makeup has a long history as a social connector, as something that people use to make themselves both feel better and feel like part of a group. We wanted to bring that elegant, be-yourself fun into a physical space, and make sure that nobody, young or old, felt like they couldn’t join in! From the flowers draping from our walls to the makeup stations discreetly set up around the different brands, we want everyone who enters LUCY to feel comfortable being their true and authentic selves. 

How does LUCY work to bring their brand goals to life?

We love watching our LUCY lovers experiment but there’s so many of them that it’s hard to keep track of them all in real time. The solution? Several monitored social media accounts so that our LUCY lovers never have to worry about getting into contact with us, and highly trained staff to help both beginning and expert makeup artists on their first journey into colour. 

What was expanding like? Did you enjoy the process?

Expanding a business is always nerve-wracking - on the one hand, business must be booming if you’re already thinking of expanding, but on the other hand, the risk-reward factor is also a lot higher. So many things can go wrong, and you can’t anticipate all of the changes from one day to the next.

With our first expansion, we had to deal with working through the pandemic and all of our stores closing at the same time. At that point, we didn’t have our LUCY website: only a few social media pages, which we started using to coordinate deliveries and orders and communicate with our clients - but that was unsustainable for the long-run. Fortunately, Switch contacted us at just the right time to set up our website!

What about now? What’s next for LUCY?

LUCY is a constantly changing, expanding, growing brand, and we’re always looking for where our next opportunity is going to take us. For now, our focus is on expanding our 53-brand line-up even further, increasing our monthly visitor count from 20k, and pushing into international shipping. After that? Who knows! 

Wait -- international shipping?

There’s a lot of places around the world where accessing affordable and good-quality makeup is really difficult! With Malta being such a central location - easy to access from both the Middle East and Europe - opening up our offerings to an international audience was just the next step. To make it even easier on our clients, though, we made sure to partner up with DHL so that your deliveries make it to you in record time, and safe and sound!

Psst, we’ve already had some deliveries going out to the United States, the Middle East, and Europe, so if you’re a LUCY Lover from abroad, take this as your sign to hop onto our website and haul!

If there’s anything you think we’re missing, please write in and let us know: we’re always happy to listen to our LUCY lovers. 

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