Buying Nail Polish Online in Canada. Why Is It So Difficult!?

You’ve stepped away from the fumes and drawers over flowing with sparkles and cremes.

You’ve heard of the new collections and you must have them. But each spa/salon only carries 1 or 2 of the lines you are after. You don’t have time to drive around looking for that one specific brand.

Plus starting your car almost always chips a nail.

After going from website to website, you are continually denied shipping because you have a Postal Code instead of a Zip Code.

We hear your cry.

Why is it so tough to purchase nail polish online in Canada?

Reason #1  It’s a lot of work. I mean A LOT of work.

Merchandising for internet sales is time consuming, and it’s made even more difficult when the distributors of the  brands don’t provide digital information. It’s a daunting task for online beauty retailers to take on.

A single spreadsheet with order codes and names of polishes is often what we have to work with. This means finding or making the images, writing descriptions of the colors and dragging out what ever info we can get from the reps about upcoming lines.

It’s a lot of work for a single, small item.

Reason #2 It changes constantly.

New releases, discontinued colors and limited editions. The products are always changing. All that time that is spent finding the info and then a color/collection/line can be discontinued in a matter of weeks.

Reason #3 There are hundreds of colors.

At the time of this post we carry 1114 individual colors across 7 nail polish brands. That does not count base and top coats, strengtheners or other fun paraphernalia. Think of all of the combinations! So pretty.

What it also means is that is isn’t feasible to carry multiples of every single color in house. So we work with several different distributors, each with their own way of doing things.

Pause for me imagining a glorious warehouse with thousands of glittering nail polish bottles…

Distributors don’t even take on more than 2 polish lines because of the detail work that is involved.

Reason #4 Existing in cyberspace

Since we are one of the only online accounts for those distributors, their systems are built to work with brick and mortar retail stores. Those stores purchase what the distributors currently have in stock. If it’s not there, they don’t sell it.

It would be very difficult to update a site everyday with several different distributor’s stock levels. Real time stats would be fluctuating constantly.

We always try and have the most up to date list possible, but sometimes they are simply out of a polish that they carry. In those cases we have to wait for their order to come in.

With OPI it’s almost never a problem. But those harder -to-find-but-stunning-ones like China Glaze, Zoya and Spa Ritual, are ordered less frequently by the distributors as fewer people sell them.

This means sometimes there can be a wait, most of the time there isn’t. On the upside it means you own that polish and it will come to you as soon as it’s available. You don’t have to go looking for it. It’s yours already.

This is particularly true of really popular colors (I’m looking at you Essie Mint Candy Apple).

Reason #5 Color Accuracy

Screen settings effect everything. Sometimes you just can’t know what a color looks like simply from a computer image.  This is where polish blogs are endlessly useful. There are some ladies out there who work tirelessly swatching colors, sometimes even before they are even released! Great photos and explanations of how they wear are out there.

My two favorites? All Laquered Up and Scrangie. They are by far the best polish resources I’ve found. They will also introduce you to brands you may not have heard of before.

Why do we do it at Spa Boutique?

We love nail polish and know how hard it is to get here in Canada. We are a way for you lovelies to shop for colors and brands in one place and we do our absolute best to get you those colors.

We sell only professional lines and we get them from reputable distributors. We have beauty professionals on staff to help you with choice whenever possible. There are colors that come through all the time and some we’ve never actually seen in person, but we will do our best to provide guidance.

It’s an extremely complex item to sell online which is why there aren’t many that do it. Over time the process will smooth out as the smaller lines become bigger and more readily available.

For now we do everything we can to get you your nail polishes.

We would love to hear your thoughts on the topic of this blog! Feel free to leave your comments or questions below.  As always, just for being a follower of our blog, enter coupon code BLOG10 for 10% off your next purchase! Also, remember to follow us @spaboutique on Twitter, like our Facebook  page, and check out our boards on Pinterest! You could be the lucky winner of one of our many contests!

Tags: Canadian beauty retailer, nail polish, opi, Orly, SpaRitual, zoya

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