3INA – A BOLD NEW APPROACH TO BEAUTY

If you’ve never heard of 3INA then you will be hearing a lot more of this unique brand, turning the beauty industry on its head and delivering beauty at affordable prices without compromising on quality.

Pronounced MINA (M is turned on the side to be a 3), the brand is new. So new that it opened its first store in the heart of one of the world’s beauty mecca’s at Covent Garden in London. Sitting amongst some of the best brands in the world, the brand announced its arrival with a beautiful store showcasing a colourful line of beauty products in February this year. This was followed by stores in Milan, Athens and Malta over the last six months and landed in Australia late last month in Melbourne, the first store outside Europe.

Located at Melbourne Central, 3INA brings something a bit different to Australia. The store is a myriad of colours showcasing the plethora of products that every beauty lover could ever want (or even didn’t know they wanted). Founders, Pablo Rivera and Mark Eve were out here to celebrate the launch of the store and were excited to bring a different type of beauty experience to those in Australia. In the time I spent with them talking about the brand you could tell the passion that these two had for 3INA and how much work has gone into making this the experience that they want for customers.

3INA (pronounced MINA) aims to bring a fresh and disruptive approach to beauty. Inspired by the concept of fast fashion, Pablo and Mark’s aim was to bring fast beauty to the world, turning the traditional way of beauty upside down. Taking products from inception to market in just four months rather than the product development cycles at other brands, without cutting any corners means that they are always bringing new products and colours to the market. Their approach is underpinned by the brand’s mantra of bringing quality products at affordable prices. They are very proud of the quality

of the products and during the development process they were intent on keeping a high level of quality and keeping products paraben free and without testing on animals.

There are six different categories of products – lips, eyes, face, skincare, nails and tools with over 450 products. The 3INA store is wall to wall colour and you would be hard pressed to not find a shade of whatever you’re looking for. In the nail category alone there are at least 90 shades of nail polish meaning you could literally buy all the colours of the rainbow.

The focus that Pablo and Mark have has been constant over the last three years since they started the 3INA. Interestingly they explained that every small detail of the brand has been something they have worked hard on. One of the key questions they asked when they started was “cosmetics is all about colour, yet why is the colour not on show?” They were told many times that they wouldn’t be able to put the colour of the product on the packaging but they didn’t take no for an answer and you can see their dedication to colour which hits you when you first walk into the store. Other examples showcasing their attention to detail include the carefully designed product casing which was designed with specific round corners (in Italy just btw) and the shelving in the stores that are built to exactly match products.

The branding and marketing has also had a midas touch with famed photographer Mario Testino’s agency working with 3INA to produce their campaign. All the models are from instagram, recruiting real people to be involved and bringing out another mantra where the brand is focused on how people are feeling when they use products from 3INA.

Images by Karon Photography