Hey everyone! Today I'd like to tell you about a Florida, USA-based indie nail polish company, Cult Nails. I recently picked up the Casual Elegance Collection during the preorder sale (more on that in a bit) as well one of their permanent polishes, and I'd love to share my thoughts on the ordering experience and products with you.
The polishes weren't tightly secured in the box, but they were all heavily mummified in some sort of soft paper wrapping and surrounded by cotton balls. As an interesting touch, the wrappings on the bottles were held closed by a sticker displaying the name of the polish inside.
All in all, I felt confident the polishes were packaged well for long distance travel. The mummy wrappings aren't the fanciest packaging I've seen from an indie brand, but they get the product to its destination safely, which is even more important in my view.
Selection: Cult Nails has a rotating selection of nail polishes in a variety of colors and finishes, as well as a base coat, matte top coat, and quick dry top coat. If you look up a Cult Nails color online, there seems to be a pretty good chance it was a limited edition shade that's no longer available. At this time, the brand seems to have a pretty small permanent core collection. The majority of their colors seem to be launched as limited edition preorder bundle collections at a discounted price; once the preorder cap is hit, the collection goes on sale as individual, full-priced polishes until they run out of stock.
Samples: I'm not yet certain if samples or bonuses are included in all orders. My preorder came with an advertised bonus, which was a small sheet of vinyl nail stickers:
The nail vinyls are the little red things stapled to the upper left corner of the paper.
I'm also seeing that the current collection preorder set comes with a free stamping plate. I'm not certain if standard (non-preorder) packages come with bonuses or samples. To be fair, I can imagine it's very hard (not to mention expensive) to create nail polish samples.
Quality: I've only tried two of my four polishes so far, but that's enough for me to say that the quality seems to vary by color. The permanent color I ordered, Love at First Sight, is pretty awesome. It applied beautifully, and if I was careful with it, it was opaque and perfect in just one coat. With my usual Seche base and top coats, it lasted a few days on me before chipping, which is right on par with most of the polishes I own. I had tip wear by the day after application, but again, this is pretty normal for me.
Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble with Intriguing, which is one of the polishes in the Casual Elegance Collection (sadly I can't link to it because it's sold out). I applied it twice to get swatch photos taken, and both times it went a little streaky. Using very thin layers helped but didn't solve the issue. In all honesty, I haven't done a longevity test on it yet because I wasn't happy with either application. It truly felt as though the polish was fighting me the whole way.
Because I'm a terrible person (and because Seattle has been stingy with the sunshine lately), I'm going to show you a swatch of Intriguing because unfortunately it's the only one I've been able to swatch so far. I'll try to get swatches up of the others in the collection before they sell out, and I will definitely get up swatches of the permanent color I ordered.
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Swatch of LE "Intriguing" by Cult Nails. This is two coats of polish. Photo taken outside on a bright day. Unfortunately the duochrome is much more apparent in the bottle than on the nails.
Cost: The individual polishes are $12, which is on the higher end of average for indie polish in my experience. However, it looks like Cult Nails gives you more product per bottle than other comparably priced indie polishes.
If you're interested in buying at least two or three bottles, chances are you can find a way to get a discount. For example, my preorder price on the three-piece Casual Elegance Collection was $24 (that is, $8/bottle), plus I used an affiliate link from Temptalia which gave $12 off $24 for first-time customers. When I added in a full-priced bottle, it brought my order total up to $24 for four bottles (that is, $6/bottle) plus free shipping because my total was over $20.
Customer Service: I didn't have any issues with my order, so I have no personal experience with the brand's customer service.
TAT/Shipping: The TAT, or at least the communication around the TAT, was strange and honestly kind of off-putting. Let me give you a summary of the shipping experience:
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March 21: I placed my preorder and received an email saying the expected ship date was April 2. No problems here - preorders by their very nature won't have a quick TAT, and I was happy to have an expected ship date right up front.
March 24: I received an email with subject "Your Cult Nails order has been updated". When I opened the email, it said my order status had changed to shipped. Woohoo, right? It even had a tracking number. I was blown away at the idea that the brand had shipped over a week before the expected ship date, so I felt really lucky.
March 25 - 27: I checked the tracking number frequently (like you do) and was bummed to see absolutely no changes.
March 28: I received an email saying my order was scheduled for shipment on March 28. Wait, what? It gave me the same tracking number. The tracking page still hadn't updated.
March 29 - 30: No change on the tracking page. WTF.
March 31: The tracking page finally updated, hurrah! Entries for "Acceptance" and "Dispatched to Sort Facility" appeared.
April 2: The package finally left Florida.
April 4: I received the package.
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Ultimately, my package shipped two days before the expected ship date. A shorter-than-expected TAT is usually cause for celebration in the indie world, but by the time my package actually shipped, I had received so many damn "Your package has shipped!" emails from the brand that I was feeling frustrated rather than excited.
In the brand's defense, it's my understanding that shipping services will send a shipping confirmation email to customers as soon as the brand owner prints a shipping label. I don't believe the brand was intentionally or maliciously trying to get my hopes up about the package shipping. It just ended up being a really annoying experience for me.
Personal Thoughts: On the whole, I feel a little let down by this brand. I've read a ton of great reviews about the brand's stellar formula, longevity, and general awesomeness. From what I've tried so far, in reality, they're about on par with my other polishes which cost half the price, both in terms of performance and color selection. I'm glad I tried them out, but I'm especially glad I got the bottles for 50% off. Everyone's priorities are different, but personally, I wouldn't want to pay $12 for a bottle of polish unless it really blew me away.
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