Mistakes are expensive. The entrepreneur Cristina Fogazzi, better known as the Cynical Beautician (creator of the creams and beauty products company Veralab), must have thought of this when she discovered that the loyalty points of her loyal customers did not have the agreed value of 5 euro cents , but 50 cents .
An extra zero that she would have burdened the company for an unsustainable amount. But let’s take a step back.
Class ’74, originally from Sarezzo, in the province of Brescia, Cristina Fogazzi launches herself into the world of beauty with a blog that tries to help women with straightforward and no-nonsense advice. Virtual space that soon turns into a beauty center in 2010 and then, five years later, into an online shop,Veralab , a brand of products for face and body.
A growing success, especially on social networks, where Fogazzi has an extraordinary following. His beloved “Pheasants”, as he defines his followers, have contributed to the exponential growth of the all-pink brand, to the point that in a few years it has gone from a turnover of a few hundred thousand euros to a record of 50 million . planned for 2021 . Thus, two physical stores have also been added to the virtual store, in Milan and Rome.
Customers absolutely to be rewarded, with a loyalty program that uses what the Cynical Beautician has called the ” pheasant points “: points that are accumulated for each purchase, specifically a point for every 10 euro spent.
Points that then turn into discounts: each pheasant point is worth 5 cents, or so it should have been. But a mistake, no one knows who, turned those 5 cents into 50 cents .
So those 10 million points in possession of the Pheasant (as Fogazzi calls his customers) do not have a total value in terms of discount of 500 thousand euros, but of 5 million euros .
When the mistake was discovered, the Veralab team pushed the discount to 10 cents , an unannounced decrease that was noticed by customers on their buying profiles, sparking controversy.
And the explanations of the Cynical Beautician arrived, in an email that begins like this: “Hello, for the first time in 7 years of honorable career I send a newsletter without the gifs and without Ryan Gosling, so the question is, alas, terribly serious. “.
He then continues with the clarifications: “As you may have seen in your personal area of the site the enhancement of pheasant points has changed. So, all of a sudden, without anyone saying anything. This thing is so absurd and badly handled that you probably got rightly angry and thought we were somehow ” being smart ” and then “sucking” on being smart. I’m here to explain how it went and how they added an error to an error to an error ”.
“The pheasant points in your possession – he explains – are about 10 million . Points were to be valued at 5 cents (€ 0.05). In this way, by simulating you used them, all the company would have had 500 thousand euros of discounts paid (to be added to the other discounts). Someone at some point lost a zero and the valuation was made at 0.50 cents. This transformed the discounts into 5 million euros and after a week of calculations we saw that our finances would not have stood the blow ”.
“We have decided to: obviously leave the value of the points already converted into money unchanged; bring the value to 10 cents(more is not possible); write a newsletter and explain everything to you. The topic seemed delicate to me and throwing my and my team’s mistakes on social media did not seem decisive for anything. At the very least, the jackals would have arrived who don’t even know what pheasant points are but to insult everything is fine ”, specifies the Cynical Beautician.
“The operation had to be done at the end of the Festival – says Fogazzi – and with customer assistance ready to answer you. Probably the horoscope told us bad because on Friday afternoon at 5 o’clock everything was put online. We made a mistake, we are a young company, we make mistakes, but we are neither cheaters nor used to giving head in front of our responsibilities. And if on the one hand I am aware of making a terrible figure, on the other I cannot put it financiallymy company on its knees . I apologize. I sincerely hope that nothing like this will ever happen again ”.
An open question also on Instagram, where it is followed by 928 thousand followers: “here it was too much money and between the image and securing the company I chose the latter”, she said in a series of stories.
Then she concludes: “Those responsible will be punished
No. I am responsible too “.
