Young entrepreneur understands that beauty is big business

MANILA, Philippines - For someone who is smart, driven and gorgeous, vanity is almost a virtue but for this woman, beauty must have a purpose and substance. 

At a very young age, Steffi Blair Ong learned the importance and advantages of being beautiful and attractive. This 23-year old entrepreneur learned how to use make-up at the age of 11. Funny though, she did not use the cosmetics her mother gave her on herself but applied them on friends and classmates to make them look nice as well.

 “I am the youngest of three siblings. I’m quite artistic  and   I like to draw that’s why I can easily connect with a tattoo. I have been trained by my mom since I was 11 years old to do an aesthetic tattoo,” she recalls.

Blair is the third and youngest child of Susan Co Ong, an award-winning aesthetic tattoo artist who put the country in the map of aesthetic make-up industry. Since the start, Blair was   with her mother’s side, observing and assisting her in running their Prettylooks Aest business, a beauty center   that offers eyebrow tattoo and aesthetic make-up with almost 30 years of experience.

 “Prettylooks was started by my mom 29 years ago. We started out as a salon and then upgraded it to a facial clinic. Since my mom is a pharmacist, she can formulate products and medicines. The products that she uses in our clinic are all Prettylooks label. So she made everything herself,”Blair says.

At the age of 12, Blair performed her first official eyebrow tattoo on a friend of their client and got two thumbs up both from her Mom and the client. From then on, she was certain she would be doing the same thing her mother is doing which has been the family’s bread and butter for almost 30 years.

In college, she   took up nursing to get a medical background and complement the tandem of her mom who is a licensed pharmacist and stepdad who is a surgical doctor.

“I took up nursing to really have a medical background and to be able to manage this kind of business. I took it up as a pre-med course but I’m still considering taking up medicine but if I don’t have time, I’ll just hire one in the future,” Blair says.

But since she herself performs permanent make up like eyebrow tattoos, lips and eyeliners, she needed more than a medical background but a steady hand, keen eyes and instinct for perfection. She enrolled at her mother’s classes on aesthetic make-up and was trained by their doctors and her mom herself, going though hours of rigorous training and actually applying everything she learned on at least 1000 different faces.

 ‘’Most of the time, the simple things are the ones that matter. And as far as being beautiful is concerned, it can easily be achieved by simply correcting the imbalance on your face and harmonizing your eyebrows. Yes, just your eyebrows! (in most cases at least),’’ Blair says.

Getting the eyebrows, lips or eyeliners tattooed permanently or semi-permanently only takes about 30 to 45 minutes and it’s never painful since it’s not invasive.

“We have three signature services which we are really proud of, first is the aesthetic make up which include all permanent aesthetic make up like eyeliners, lip tattoo, eyebrow tattoo and also the new one, called eyebrow reborn.”

Since Blair is a young blood in this business and is perceived to be more personable given her attractiveness and jolly attitude, Blair does the client-care relationship and the marketing side of their business.

What really separate their clinic and their services from   other beauty clinics are their   skills .

 “Most of the clinics now are dependent on machines. We do not want to bank on machines and make use of deceptive advertising, utilizing gorgeous actresses on our campaigns. If you check our ads, brochures and other materials, we use real patients as models,”Blair says.

Blair says they are not concerned or worried about the competition in this big industry, all they want to do is to focus on their services and find ways on how they can be the best at what they do.