Another year, another IMATS.
IMATS Toronto 2015 was held this past weekend at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Hundreds, if not thousands, of makeup fanatics came from cities away to participate in this two-day long event, which included renowned keynote speakers, amazing makeup demonstrations, and everyone's favorite part, incredible makeup sales and deals!
I managed to walk away with quite a few things, some from a preorder I did with a booth, and everything else from wandering around the show with lists in hand.
My husband, best friend, and I were technically the first people there. We were there before most vendors and before all the attendees. However, we were told to wait where the actual show was taking place, and not at registration, so by the time we were told to wait elsewhere, there were around fifteen people ahead of us. Boo :( But I'll take fifteen people over the hundreds that showed up closer to 9:00.
Here's my haul!
I'll be going more in depth about most of these products in separate posts, as doing it all in one would be a long read.
Now, about the booths...
I will say that this year's IMATS was generally better than last year's, but with some disappointments. I'll start with the bigger booths.
MAC Pro was quite underwhelming. Last year, they had brought much of their entire stock, and lineups were massive, whereas this year they stuck mainly to pro products, and a selection of shadows, lipsticks, and brushes. The only foundation they had for purchase was Face and Body, and while they had a display of the new Studio Waterweight SPF30 Foundation, they had only brought them for display and customers couldn't purchase them. That was a bummer for me as I had wanted to purchase it there. They handed out cards and asked for your name as they would honour the 20% off discount at their physical location on all MAC products on the 26th and 27th. Because of the lack of stock, there was also a lack of lineup. I walked away with two lipsticks and a foundation.
I had done an order through Nigel's that I had picked up at their booth. They had forgotten to pack a product of mine, yet I had already paid for it, so I had to wait for the sales rep to find another one for me. The Nigel's line was long, but not as long as last year's. Lashes were incredibly cheap and I saw most ladies buying at least 20 pairs each. Ben Nye powders were $7 for the smaller size and $12 for the larger size. There were also tons of cases, Z Palettes, and some Anastasia items. I had preordered most of my Inglot products from Nigel's, along with a few other items.
Make Up For Ever had one of the largest lines and wait times in the show. At around 2pm, I waited for ninety minutes for my order, which was less than most clients. They had a smaller selection of artist shadows than I thought they would, around forty colours were available. People complained that the system MUFE had for packing and releasing orders was flawed. They had over 400 orders at one time, and yelled out ticket numbers for every order once it was ready. Because of the amount of people who had made orders, lots of numbers were called for people who didn't bother to wait in line, so many orders went unclaimed. Everything at the booth was 40% off, which was an amazing deal. I left with seven artist shadows, two cream blushes, and a skin equalizer.
I was NYX's first customer at the start of the show. Their display was nice, but not spacious at all. It was hard to get fingers into some displayers to grab products, and when I went, a lot of shades weren't available because they had doubled up on others. The harsh display lighting also made it difficult to look at colours as well. I had visited later in the day to grab the colours I had needed. The staff were also chatting amongst themselves a bit too much at the beginning, neglecting to help people, but once it got busy they got their act together and were super helpful. Near the afternoon, there was about a one hour wait time line to see the products, and an over one hour wait time line to pay for the products. They had three registers going at all times but it wasn't enough to deal with the crowd. They had doubled charged me for a brush I purchased but very apologetically refunded me. NYX had a 20% discount on their items.
Inglot was a huge disappointment for me. I had been in talks with them for months before IMATS trying to arrange a preorder, and the sales rep had told me their minimum discount for all items was to be at least 25-30% off. They had notified me that their owners would be calling me as soon as they ironed out their discount, as I had a very large order. I never received a call back, and in the next two months I had called two more times to follow up, and still no information. I did my preorder through Nigel's as they had given me an amazing quote for my products. When I saw the Inglot booth at IMATS, they were only offering 10% off the products and 20% for pro members. They had also charged me extra tax for some reason. I wasn't too happy with their booth.
My friend was the third customer at Morphe. She had managed to grab everything we wanted before the swarm came in. I'm not exaggerating, trust me. She and I had went to grab crêpes for lunch at the Crêpe de Licious stand in the show, and there was a gigantic lineup behind the cart. I asked the chefs what the lineup was for and they both pointed to Morphe. There was an over three hour wait to just LOOK at the Morphe booth, and a separate line to pay. Security guards had to cut the line short at one point because it was becoming a safety hazard. From what I saw the deals on brushes weren't stellar compared to their website or anything, but the sheer fact that they were available in Canada to purchase sent half the convention goers to their booth. As you can see in this photo, all the people on the entire right side are lined up for Morphe, along with the people in the foreground.
There were two nail booths this year: old pro Classique Nail Supply was back for this year, and the new Jessica Nail Supply was in attendance. Jessica Nail Supply didn't seem to have an amazing discount on anything. I feel like they didn't know what the show would be like so they didn't really offer a discount. Classique Nail Supply was stellar as usual. OPI polishes were 6/$30 (as opposed to 6/$40 at Jessica Nail Supply), China Glaze was 6/$18, and Essie was 6/$22. There was also boxes and boxes of $1 China Glaze and Essie discontinued shades. I picked up a ton of nail polishes and nail treatments.
Other booths I walked around and picked up little to no products were Benefit (35% off), Hakuhodo (no discount), NARS (no discount), Blur (Beauty Blenders for $20.80, among other discounts), Royal and Langnickel (brush sets from $25-$50, single brushes around 30% off), and Violet Voss (glitters in a bundle deal, and lashes for $10).
I had an amazing time at IMATS this year, and it definitely won't be my last.
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