We recently connected with Eley Gonzalez Ayala and have shared our conversation below.
Eley, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?
Making it Corporate America. My industry is the beauty industry and yes, it’s extremely profitable but you cannot box Art. There are many beauty brands {some might say too many}, all these corporations trying to get a piece of the ‘pie’ but what they still don’t realize is that force feeding Artists to get behind what they are selling turns constrictive and then becomes stale. Nowadays everyone feels like an Artist which means they want something new every second and that’s impossible to follow, and when the sells pitch gets repetitive people change the channel. There’s too many rules, expectations are way too high with very low perquisite.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m in the industry of making people feel good because they look good. Makeup Artistry was a serendipitous moment for me. I knew I wanted to be an Artist, my studies are in Visual Arts and Communications, and photography was my first love. Because of photography I discovered fashion and then makeup and it took over. I was finishing junior high, I was young, but there was something magical about enhancing and sometimes transforming faces and I never stopped. I was self taught but on my journey I met people that became mentors and because of them a spark for sharing my knowledge ignited. I worked in retail with several makeup brands and there the door to become a makeup educator opened. It filled me we such honor and pride to teach others what I had discovered and with that also help launch the careers of many aspiring Artists like myself. It’s been over 25 years now and I still have the same love for the art of makeup as I had when I started, I believe that regardless if I’m doing makeup on someone that is celebrating their birthday, a wedding, walking a red carpet or a model to pose for a magazine shoot, they are all human and deserve the same attention and respect and that energy is reflected in their special event, their most important day or that photograph. What separates me from most is that with me it will always be about the art and not about me. That also makes it hard to get noticed when experience now can only take you so far, and who follows and sees you and how many is a bit more relevant. I’ve stayed true to myself, but with any art form, you have to evolve and what my clients get from me is always that adventurous side that knows will make it’s subject the priority. I’ve done many faces in my journey, some famous, some celebrating their lives, some others being immortalized in film or the pages of a magazine, I’ve also shared with many other creatives and my favorite part of it all is that the journey goes on, I even dare to say, it’s restarting.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Change can be difficult, sometimes even scary but there’s a moment in life that it becomes the only option. I experienced two lay offs back to back, Education became less important for most corporate brands, and then the pandemic hit. I wasn’t scared, I was terrified, I’ve been working since I was a teenager and now I had to use all the skills I had learned in a completely different way, I had to use them on myself. I had to focus on thriving without the support of any big brand but myself. I’m very grateful for the people I’ve met, the relationships I’ve made and the skills I had honed for so long.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Do not box yourself in any aspect, like style, brand and specially clients. You have to be receptive to all possibilities because profit is the same regardless of who it comes from. And more than growing clientele maintaining it is more important and for that my strategy is very simple, consistency.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.eleygonzalezayala.com
- Instagram: eleygonzalez
- Linkedin: eleygonzalez
Image Credits
Emmanuel Sanchez Monsalve, Luis Belleza, Dane Darden, Victoria Bonvicini, Schiffer Fashion, Lilian Summer, Marija Terra Grantham, Yalimar Feliciano, Emily Shriner, Gabi Fulton, Gyvania, Alicia Medina, Ally Jacalone