What's New at TKB Trading

SF Chronicle, 10/08/06.

In 2000, two men in their then-twenties decided to transform the stodgy old household soaps and detergent business. Today, their business (Method Home) has been recognized as the seventh fastest growing private company in America by Inc. Magazine. Their current revenue is about $45 million a year.

What they did: they took a look at the detergent aisles in the grocery store...

SF Chronicle, 06/04/06. Taylor Pham, a local Vietnamese-American woman worked as a makeup artist specializing in wedding makeup. Then she got the idea to create her own line.

Her line is called Thi (pronounced "tea") and may be viewed at www.thicosmetics.com. It includes shadows, blush, lipstick, gloss and brushes. While the color palette is limited, the packaging and formulation are designed to...

Read an article this weekend by Christina Valhouli of The New York Times. Here are the hilights that grabbed me:

• Urban Decay now has a line (called Surreal Skin Mineral Makeup)
• Neutrogena and Physician's Formula also now have mineral makeup lines
• MAC is reissuing its Mineralize line
• Prestige mineral makeup brands now account for 4% of the cosmetics market in the US, which is double from when it first...

I started TKB Trading, LLC the same year as EBAY. Ahhh, those were the days!

Back then, Paypal didn't exist and many websites didn't take credit cards (you had to mail a check in with your order). Customer expectations were low. It didn't matter so much if your photographs were hard to see, your content was in pink-colored script or if your shopping experience lacked such functionalities as wish...

The recent issue of the trade magazine Art Materials Retailer (easily found online at www.artmaterialsretailer.com) has an article about the benefit of having pets in your shop to make your customers more relaxed and eager to visit your shop. Additionally, they believe that having pets in the shop can relax and entertain the staff as well!

We couldn't agree more! While TKB Trading doesn't really...

The air cleaner that we use here at TKB Trading, LLC is the Friedrich C-90B Electrostatic Air Cleaner, which runs about $450 - $500.

This is an expensive air cleaner for "consumer level" (as opposed to even more spendy "industrial level") products. It is also somewhat bulky and not particularly attractive. But we really like it because it seems to be quite effective at keeping the air in our studio...

The colored micas that we sell can be used "as-is" as eyeshadow.

However, you can save money and actually improve the adhesion and feel of the colored mica by extending it with a filler. The cheapest filler that we sell is Kaolin Clay. At $6 per pound (as of this post), that makes it a super-inexpensive filler. It also adds adhesion to the colored mica.

Other fillers which we recommend include:...

Lip products are essentially a blend of oil and wax. To that, we add color.

The 3 kinds of color products used in lipstick includes: dyes, pigments and mica.

When you think "dyes", think "food dye", because it is essentially the same thing. The good thing about dyes is that they are very intense and they actually stain the lips, making the color last longer. The down side is that most dyes are...

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Making Salt Crystal Potpourri is a simple process. The trickiest part is the coloring of the crystals. You have 3 choices for colorings: Liquid Based, Glycerin Based or Mica Powders. The liquid based colorings will dry the best, glycerin will be a nice translucent coloring and Mica gives you...