- Benefit is known for its eyebrow products.
- It sells one of its Precisely, My Brow pencils every two seconds.
- We got a peek behind the scenes to learn how the brand makes them.
Following is a transcript of the video.
Narrator: Benefit Cosmetics is one of the top beauty brands for eyebrow products. It's Precisely, My Brow pencil is one of its best-selling products. On average, it sells one brow pencil every two seconds. Talk about popular! To learn a bit more about what makes this brow pencil such a favorite, we got a look behind the scenes of how it's made at Benefit's Tokyo factory. The process begins with a variety of pigments. White, black, yellow, and red pigments go into the pencil. Those pigments are combined with ingredients such as stearic acid, which helps to thicken the mixture and prevent the pencil from smearing on your brow. From there, wax and oils are added to bind all the ingredients together. Benefit's brow pencil requires a variety of waxes and oils, including fruit wax, beeswax, and coconut oil. Once everything is combined, the mixture is poured into a large rolling machine. The machine triple-rolls the formula, turning it into the consistency of pencil shavings. The loose mixture is then compressed into a log shape, which will become the pencil's core. More than 20,000 pieces of pencil core will come from this compressed mixture. A machine cuts it ultra fine, making each core exactly the same. Once the pencils are made, there are two tests each one has to go through before it gets packaged and shipped: the shade test and the durability test, which are two of the most important aspects of what makes Benefit's brow pencils so unique.
Deanna Tharp: So, what makes the Precisely, My Brow pencil different from any other brow pencil, I would say the shade range. We suit every hair color, every skin tone. The other thing I love about it is that it is a very durable pencil for as tiny as it is. You can put quite a bit of pressure, and that thing won't break.
Narrator: The shade test makes sure each pencil is the exact color it's supposed to be. To do this, the pencils are meticulously swatched and compared. Benefit's pencils also go through a durability test. The core is tested to make sure it can endure up to 25 times its own weight without breaking. Next, the pencils are hand-filled with the core. Each pencil is x-rayed to make sure its quality and its packaging are perfect. The Precisely, My Brow pencils are then hand-packed and sent to stores in over 55 countries all over the world.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This video was originally published in September 2019.
