My trip to a CCO

If you read as many beauty blogs as I do, you may have heard of the famed "CCO" shops- it stands for Cosmetics Company Outlet. CCO's are owned by Estee Lauder, and they carry discounted makeup from all the brands Estee Lauder owns. At the CCO I went to, they carried (besides Estee Lauder, obviously) Flirt! (the Kohl's makeup line), Bobbi Brown, Clinique, Prescriptives, and MAC, the reason anyone really wants to go in the first place. They also had a good amount of Clinique skincare products, and skincare products from another brand I haven't heard of, American something. I didn't look closely at the perfume brands but I do remember seeing Tommy Hilfiger. The store was at an outlet mall in Aurora, IL. I was visiting one of my grandmas who lives pretty close to that area so my mom and I decided to go to the outlet mall and check it out. :) Sadly I forgot my camera at home that day so I didn't get any pictures of the store for you guys. If you go on Youtube though, some people have uploaded videos of what the stores look like. They had some stuff in boxes you could just grab off the shelf and buy, but things like eyeliners and lippies they only had out as testers, and you would have to bring them up to the counter to get them new in the box. Some of the gloss testers were gross, but it's nice that you know no one has touched the stuff you end up buying. The discount prices aren't huge, I would say most things were 20%-35% off the original price. The items they carry aren't brand new things. For example, the most recent MAC items they had were from the To The Beach collection, but they also had stuff from as far back as the Heatherette, Fafi, etc. collections. They had lots of discontinued items too! I decided to go ahead and buy my very first MAC products :) Right now I am out of town AGAIN for another family thing, but I will do swatches when I get home. I got a mineralized blush, a Superglass, a Lipglass, a liquid liner, a Slimshine lipstick, and a lipstain. The total of these items was a little less than $70 after tax. If you have a CCO near you and you like MAC or any of the other brands they carry, it is DEFINITELY worth your time to go, even if you have to drive a while. Here is a link to which outlet malls have a CCO store. The same outlet mall also had a Lancome Company Store. They had Juicy Tubes and this amazingly cool discontinued product I'll show you later for 55% off, so I got three items for about $20. I also went to CVS yesterday and grabbed a couple clearance lippies from Revlon that were 75% off. They were less than $3 each. If you haven't heard by now, CVS is having their beauty clearance sale. You can find out some great information about it over at Noveau Cheap. At the one I stopped at, I don't think they had finished marking prices, but I did see a LOT of Revlon stuff on sale. So here was my total haul for the week, and everything was purchased at a discount price! If there is anything else I can think to add about the CCO I will, and if there is something you'd like to know that I didn't mention, please feel free to ask and I'll do my best to try and remember :P