Ely's Wimbledon - Urban Beauty Event

On Thursday 9th May, Ely’s Wimbledon department store held an event to celebrate the opening of their new Urban Beauty area. Since last year, they have made several (and welcome) changes to their beauty hall. Though small, they offer products from esteemed brands such as Bobbi Brown, Nars, La Mer, YSL, Hourglass, Clarins, Clinique, Jo Malone, Dior, Laura Mercier, Estee Lauder and more. The Urban Beauty event was to welcome MAC, Aveda and Gina Conway (hair and beauty salon) to the Ely’s family.

Gina Conway and Aveda originally existed in a separate boutique across the road from Ely’s but made the decision to collaborate with Ely’s. I am a loyal customer of both Ely’s and Gina Conway, therefore I was pleased to hear about the marriage of the two brands. It’s just a shame that Gina Conway has downsized considerably, as they used to be in a large building over 3 floors, and I used to love the ‘zen’ vibe. Now that they’re part of Ely’s, that sense of tranquility has somewhat reduced but I’m sure once I’m in the safe hands of the therapist, listening to the sound of whales, I will be at peace once again!

Wimbledon as an area, manages to retain it’s feeling of ‘home’ even with all it’s modernity and being in zone 3. In my opinion, Ely’s department store is at the heart of Wimbledon and is my local ‘to shop’ destination whenever I need bits and bobs. I rarely enter and leave without having purchased something! But really, there’s something for everyone and it’s a gem of a place. There’s a Caffe Nero, money exchange, and a very spacious and modern restaurant on the top floor.

When I first heard about the event (through Instagram, no doubt), it was a no-brainer and I knew I wanted to attend. On the day of, the weather was complete and utter pants and reminded me of a person with personality disorder, who didn’t know who they are or what they wanted to be; sunny one moment, raining the next, then sunny again. It almost (almost) put me off from attending but nothing really stops me from a beauty event, and especially with the promise of champagne and a goody bag “packed full of treats”…we will get onto that a bit later on.

What Worked?

The balloon display at the entrance, was very cheerful and made a nice contrast to the shitty weather.

The event itself was busy, and therefore there was a real buzzy vibe about the place.

Champagne is always welcome and it looked like there was a good selection of canapés, being passed around at regular intervals.

The pick & mix bag was a cute touch, and though I’m currently on a detox, I picked one up to enjoy once the detox is over.

What Didn’t?

Though the balloons were welcoming, there were absolutely no hosts to welcome customers in. Therefore it was far from welcoming. I’d understand if I had arrived nearer to closing time, but I entered at 5.30pm - which is the starting time of the event. Not a good start.

I thought someone would be standing at the door, handing out goody bags, but there was no information about it and I had to ask at least 4 staff members (3 people didn’t know anything), before the last person helped me by giving me a ticket to collect the goody bag on the 1st floor.

Upon receiving the goody bag ticket, I found out I had to wait until 6.30pm before I could collect it. This meant an hour for me, and 2 hours for those who had arrived at the suggested time of 4.30pm. I understand why they did this and to be honest, it’s a clever ploy to get people spending. It’s like saying, if you really want that goody bag Sandra, you have to wait 2 hours, and hopefully by that time and with the plying of alcohol, you’ll be drunk enough to spend lots of money!!

The queue for the goody bag was long, as you can expect, and I wouldn’t have minded this so much…except for the woman who was designated to that area, acting like the ticket police. Her job was to ensure everyone standing in line had a ticket, and this was repeatedly asked several times. By the time she had shouted “does everyone in this queue have a ticket? Without a ticket, you cannot grab a goody bag” for the 1,500,679th time, I wanted to grab some ear muffs and down 4 glasses of champagne. If only they had designated someone to the '“welcome” area, with this much enthusiasm and dedication………..

After all this, you’d think the goody bag would be worth the wait, especially as it was described as “packed full of treats”?! Nope. It was as deflating as the balloon, at the end of the night. The “packed” goody bag was pretty flat and felt light to the point where I had to open mine, to check it had products in it. It included the following, full sized Aveda shampoo, Dermologica Prisma Protect, Laura Mercier Body Butter travel size and that was it for the decent stuff. The bag was then “bulked up” with samples sizes of MAC Fix + and Strobe Cream, Nars Climax mascara, x2 mini nail stuff from Londora I suspect and a small mirror. It also had the local Wimbledon magazine, Londora nails menu, and a £20 gift voucher at Gina Conway for ‘first visit only’.

I made it look better than it was

MAC was the busiest part of Ely’s and that’s to be expected. However, though they had several staff members on the floor, it appeared none could deal with multi-tasking and serving more than one customer at a time. The girl who served me, though lovely, literally asked me 5 times for the name of the products I wanted as she kept walking away and forgetting. I’d understand if I asked for 10 products, but I only asked for 2 products in the same category. It seemed to me that she is a new MAC recruit.

There was only 1 till open at MAC, and the one person who happened to be serving was so slow, I almost thought time had stopped for a moment. She was trying to be chatty and nice to the customers in front of me, but this then distracted her from doing her actual job of serving. Not only this, she did not look at me once, apologise for the wait, or ask for someone else to help her by jumping onto the second till. I asked (what looked like the manager, who was just standing at the till doing nothing) if I could go to another till to pay, and she told me I had to pay at the MAC till. Convenient. It was only then she apologised for the wait and proceeded to help her colleague with packaging the items into the bag.

After some time had passed, the manager asked another person to jump onto the till but since she was new, she had to be walked through all the steps whilst I was being served. I don’t mind this, but again there was no apology for the wait and at the end of the transaction, I was simply just given the MAC bag by the new girl with no eye contact and no ‘thank you’. It’s scary how bad their customer service was. MAC has a terrible reputation for bad customer service, but they should have learnt by now, especially in an area like Wimbledon where they have to rely on regular customers for repeat business.

Though there was a DJ, he reminded me of an old-school DJ from when I was back in high school. The kind who turns on a playlist and just constantly talks over the music unnecessarily. I know it probably wasn't him per se, as he was likely to have received instructions from the Ely’s management team but honestly, it was a crap set. He kept making annoying announcements but the highlight was when he thanked the ‘partners’ and influencers for attending “there are too many to mention, but you know who you are”. Nice.

There were several men standing in a group, drinking champagne, who I imagine are part of the Ely’s group management or executive team. Personally I felt their presence to be quite jarring, because not only were they taking up unnecessary space, when space was already so limiting, I could imagine they were congratulating and patting oneselves on the back for a successful event, when really, it was far from.

Final Thoughts:

There were definitely more misses, than hits on the night, it’s a shame as it definitely had the potential to be much much better! It’s like the organiser had all these cool ideas, but then didn’t think it through or delegate sub-jobs to the right people. MAC… just need to get their shit together.

I felt like they could have sent all loyal customers an email, with a guaranteed goody bag as a ‘thanks’ for customer loyalty, or something along those lines. I think that would have been a nice touch, and a gesture of thanks for keeping their business running but no, they were too busy sucking up to Instagrammers at the event.

I will continue to shop at Ely’s, as it’s my local and I still love most (not all) of the staff who work on the beauty counter…La Mer, Bobbi Brown and Nars particularly, have really friendly girls! It still feels like my home store, I just hope they learn from their mistakes from this event. If anyone from the Ely’s group end up reading this blog, you’re welcome. Thank you, next.

Until next time xo

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Photo of the goody bag is my own. Thumbnail image is courtesy of the Ely’s Wimbledon Instragram page.