One of my biggest frustrations in life used to be reading about a great new beauty product in a magazine, and then find that I couldn't get hold of it in a shop near me. Hqhair is my lifeline for these types of products, stocking my entire wishlist of products for Hair, Body and Face: Bliss, Stila, Bare Escentuals, Urban Decay, Benefit, Nars - you name it, they almost certainly stock it! This isn't a place for everyday shopping - it's the kind of place to pick up a special treat for yourself, as most of these products are not for those on a tight budget!
The initial impression of the site is good - it uses an easy on the eye white and green colour scheme, and the first page displays a selection of new and bestselling products to catch your eye. The layout of the site is divided into sections: Hair, Skincare, Make-up, Fragrance, Men, Bath Body & Home, Accessories, Tools and Electrical. This makes it really easy to navigate to find the product you want. Once you're in the section you want, you can look at everything a particular brand has to offer, which
is then further sub categorised into types of product. While this is great for just browsing, it would be good to have the option to filter by type of product if you were looking for, say, a lip gloss.
The hair section includes products from Kerastase, Redken, mop, Matrix, Bumble & Bumble, Aveda, Amercian Crew, Alterna, Tigi Bedhead, Fudge, GHD, Korres, Louise Galvin and many more. Anything that your hairdresser uses on your hair is likely to be here. Skincare section includes Dermalogica, Bliss, Burts Bees, Elemis, B. Kamins, L'Occticane, Philosophy and more, while the makeup section includes all my favourite brands: Bare Escentuals, Stila, Benefit, Nars, Urban Decay, Benefit, Blinc, Model Co, Philosophy, DuWop, Becca - this place is my Aladdin's cave! I've recently bought some great value Bliss sample gift sets, which offer a little sample of Bliss's best selling products at a fraction of the price. Great for working out if you like a product before forking out the big bucks!
Electricals includes GHD straighteners, curling tongs, hairdryers - anything electrical you use to make yourself look lovely will be here!
Tools includes any non-electric make-up tool - makeup brushes, hairbrushes, tweezers, eyelash curlers. They stock the Tweezerman Tweezer range (which is fab), and a massive range of high quality brushes from Nars, Benefit etc. The Nars Kabuki Artisan Botan Brush at £55 looks fab but sadly is way out of my price range!
Price wise, I don't tend to find that any of the products available here are at discounted prices - I think this used to be the case, but I've noticed prices creeping up to pretty much match what you'd pay instore. However, they also have an outlet store which you can access from the top menu and is one of the best parts of the site for me - offering lots of their regular brands at discount prices. They always have a few Stila products in the offering and this is where I picked up the great value Stila Scene 2 Lip set at bargain price of £20 for a lip glaze, lip gloss, lip glaze liner, and lip glaze pencil.
Once you've found a product you want (not too hard for me!), simply select the colour you want using the drop down menu (any sold out colours will be greyed out) and click Buy, which takes you to the checkout. I sadly have to admit that I have had problems ordering things from here in the past due to errors in the ordering process - trying to select the right country to be delivered and being unable to select the UK. Quite frustrating once you've found your must-have product! But these problems have always been fixed within about an hour and not been too much of an issue.
If you have a question, or are looking for a recommendation, you can ask the site's resident "experts" - Jane (for hair) and Jasmine (for makeup). You can use the site to send them a message and they will respond with an answer.
Shipping is £2.50 for the first item and then £0.55 for each additional item for 2-3 working days via Royal Mail which isn't too extortionate. Nearly all of my orders have arrived the next working day so that's a nice little bonus. You can return unwanted items within 7 days and returns are processed within 14 days. I've not had the need to return an item so can't comment on how well this service works, but the instructions are laid out clearly in the FAQ section and there is a customer support telephone line, which I always find reassuring for an online shop.
They also send through lots of offers which you receive by email - lots of free gift type offers when you spend over a certain amount (normally about £40, so very easily done here!) One tiny thing that has disappointed me lately is that they have stopped offering cashback rewards through cashback sites - when you're buying quite expensive make-up, it's nice to know that you're getting a little something back. One new site I've found that offers nearly all of the same brands as well as cashback is www.beautybay.com, which may soon become my beauty HQ!
Overall, despite some minor annoyances, I love this site. It makes getting hold of brands that can be difficult to find is not a problem and it's my first stop for any beauty gift ideas (I've spent quite a lot lately in the run up to Christmas!)
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Jan 2nd, 2009
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very helpful by (95%):
