Consideration Is the Highest Form of Luxury

A Founder’s Reflection on Building Better Relationships Between People, Brands, and Technology

For a long time, I thought Triple Eight Creative was a beauty company with a lot of moving parts.

There was the beauty work, the events, the technology, the community, the hospitality conversations, the editorial side of the business, and all of the systems I kept building around the client experience. I knew they connected, but after NYC Tech Week, after the follow ups, the notes, and the conversations that continued long after the rooms cleared, I finally understood what was holding all of it together.

Triple Eight Creative exists to make people feel considered.

Consideration is the highest form of luxury because it tells someone they were thought about before they had to ask.

That has always been the foundation of my work, even before I had language for it.

When I was a retail artist, I remembered the smallest details about clients. I remembered the lipstick shade someone was nervous to try. I remembered the event they were getting ready for, the product that did not work the last time, and the part of themselves they were trying to feel more confident about.

Sometimes it was as simple as inviting someone back in to try the color they said they were too afraid to wear.

That was never just a sale to me. It was an invitation.

Later, when I co-founded Joli Beauty Bar, we made a decision that probably confused some people at first. We did not build the business around selling products. We used products we loved, products we trusted, and products we would recommend whether or not someone bought them from us.

I wanted people to feel safe in the chair. I wanted them to know the recommendation was about them, not a hidden sales goal.

That became part of what people called The Joli Experience.

Clients would come in, relax, talk, laugh, trust us, and sometimes not even look in the mirror until the end. Then we would turn the chair around.

That moment was everything.

Not because we had transformed someone into a different person, but because they got to see themselves through our eyes. They got to see what was already there with more clarity, more intention, and a little more permission to take up space.

That is the part of beauty I have always cared about.

Beauty is how we show up. It is how we prepare for the room, the milestone, the meeting, the trip, the date, or the version of ourselves we are trying to return to. It is not shallow when it is connected to how someone feels moving through their own life.

So when people ask what Triple Eight Creative does, the easy answer is beauty.

But beauty is the lens.

For a while, I thought my job was to get brands to see me so I could show them how to relate to their customers. What I learned after Tech Week is that many brands are not even looking closely enough at the problem.

They are building from the assumption that they already know what people want.

They are looking outward at trends, competitors, virality, content formats, growth hacks, and whatever the algorithm is rewarding that week. Meanwhile, the people closest to the customer often already know what needs to change.

Your employees know because they are having the conversations. They are answering the questions, hearing the hesitation, dealing with the frustrations, and noticing what customers keep asking for.

Your customers know because they are living the experience you designed for them.

And still, so many brands are building without either of them in the room.

That is how things become fragmented. A brand launches a new product, a new app, a new campaign, a new loyalty program, then wonders why people do not feel connected to it.

People can tell when something was built around them and when it was simply built near them.

The first question is not what can we add. The first question is whether we are considering the people already inside the experience.

That starts with your team.

When your team feels considered, they are better equipped to consider the customer. It changes how someone answers the phone, how they welcome someone into a space, how they make a recommendation, and whether technology feels useful or cold.

It changes whether a customer feels like a data point or a person.

That realization changed how I see what I am building.

Going into Tech Week, I thought I needed three events to show the full range of Triple Eight Creative. I thought I needed to explain every part of the company so people could understand how it worked.

What I learned is that the moving parts were never the point.

The point was the intention behind them.

Whether someone encounters us through beauty, hospitality, technology, education, or community, the question is always the same: did this make them feel more considered than they did before?

That is what changes an appointment into an experience. It is what changes a hotel stay into a memory. It is what turns a recommendation into trust. It is what makes someone return, not because they were sold something, but because they felt understood.

The brands that will matter most in the next era will not simply be the loudest or the most visible. They will be the brands that learn how to pay attention.

They will build with their teams instead of around them. They will listen to customers before deciding what customers need. They will understand that convenience is not always consideration, and personalization is not always intimacy.

The future of luxury is not more access. It is more thoughtfulness.

That is the standard I am holding myself to as I build.

I am building a company that helps people, brands, and technology relate to each other better. Beauty is simply where I learned how much that relationship matters.

— Chardé Smith-Anglin
Founder, Triple Eight Creative