Kiehl's Products Like Bars of Gold

Tonight I opened the tube of Kiehl's Pineapple Papaya Facial Scrub I bought while in NY two weeks ago for work. Well let me tell you it took me straight back to the stress and ultimate high of purchasing Kiehl's products at the L'Oreal corporate shop a couple of years ago. Let's just say I had a friend who worked there, and let's also just say that she hooked me and others up with the ability to buy Kiehl's products at discounted prices around and after the holidays. I am still scared to fully disclose the nature of my connection.



Why so petrified? One of the women who worked in that store was a complete stickler for the rule that the corporate store was/is for employees only. Walking in there was akin to standing outside Mars with ZA so many moons ago trying desperately to seem like we didn't want to get in when in reality we were standing on newspaper dispensers to get noticed and ultimately chosen to go inside (I'm petrified, but I still really want it to happen! = I want to buy the Kiehl's products with a company discount, but I really don't want to get busted doing it, risking humiliation and - egad - the inability to buy.)

So I got to thinking about a brand and all that it does to build its reputation and get us to be such loyalists that there are now certain Kiehl's products I put on the same pedestal as bars of gold - the PP facial scrub I just mentioned, the musk perfume and the creamy eye treatment with avocado. Is it because I was able to buy it at a discount for a limited time frame that I now covet it so, or is it because that woman was such an impasse I now consider it a point against her to have purchased any of the aforementioned products? Either way, it's genius.