Beautycon London wasn’t great for me. I’d go again but I’d not recommend anything but the general tickets for anyone over 20. The extra hour is nice but the £70 for the upgrade just isn’t worth it.
Let’s start off with the thing that was not BC’s fault. I left my home early with the intention of getting to Oxford Street first for a present I needed to buy. Only the journey that should have taken me an hour took 3 and a half due to a fault on the line. I went straight to BC, arrived a few minutes late and had to stand in a queue to get in. At this point I was stressed, annoyed and tired from traveling on my feet for 3 and a half hours. Get in about 20 minutes late now grab my tote bag and head straight to Lime Crime. Short queue, cool. Maybe my luck’s changing. The girl I got served by was nice enough but clueless about the products. Then they sent another customer to the same counter. She was on her phone constantly, bumping into me and the whole thing went from okay to pretty uncomfortable. I grabbed a couple of things and left. Almost without one of them because she said they were out of stock already. Got out and realised there was also no little extra thing. Lime Crime usually does that at shows but not today.
I then did a really quick tour of the floor trying to work out what was where and what would get busy. I began noticing at this point that I was older than most of the customers and how most of the stands were really not pushing pro discounts. The hall was half empty and a lot of the stands were glitter and face gems stalls. I bagged a free brush and while in that queue checked out NYX’s prices. Not great discounts and all Christmas box sets. A lot of the ‘free items’ were take an image and follow us and/or give us your email to be in the chance of winning. After that I headed on over to Makeup Revolution stand and got in the queue to meet up the team. I was there for 45 minutes. The public was well and truly in by then. Massive queues everywhere.
The guys at the MUR stand made my day. Adam and Carmi recognised me and I got the biggest hugs from them.
I then went to the social ‘lounge’ for a bit of a break. Turns out it was just a cordoned off area with about 5 Metal tables covered with tablecloths and chairs. The snacks and drinks turned out to be bottles of soft drinks (soda) and packets of crisps (chips). That annoyed me too. I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular just wasn’t thinking it’d be that rubbish. At that point I just decided to quit while I was behind. I left after having less than 3 hours, visited one stand and still feeling tense. I didn’t feel it was with it to chase down an of the other freebies I was so disappointed.
The tote bag is quite frankly ugly. The contents are fairly reasonable, Lime Crime’s contribution is frankly crap. A single strand tester packet of thier hair dye. Some of the items were also duplicated. https://imgur.com/a/iCunl
I think if it hadn’t been for the struggle getting there the other niggles the fact the social lounge was so pathetic wouldn’t have been so bad. You also didn’t need a hauler or social wristband to listen to the talks. They took place in the main hall, you could just stand and listen. Those issues combined made it feel like a bit of a con or if I’m being generous badly and cheaply organised.