I was thrilled to find out that I was invited to the launch party for Sunday Riley’s new foundation. While I don’t consider myself anywhere near a “beauty influencer” or even a makeup expert, I do consider myself a makeup enthusiast. So, getting a first glimpse at this new product and the accompanying pop up shop was seriously a treat… or so I thought.

Again, I’m still not an expert, but I have done my fair share of event planning and am involved in my university’s entertainment board. I’d say I at least have the basic skill set to recognize complete and utter chaos. While Instagram users (including myself because I’m for sure guilty of this) will show you the artsy pictures they snapped at the venue, they’ll fail to explain how annoying this launch really was.

Firstly, either the venue was too small or the guest list was too large. I’m going to opt for a mixture of both. There was basically no room to walk amongst the venue, which was a small shop on Mulberry Street in Soho, NYC. Part of their promotion strategy, like many makeup brands, was to raise publicity through Instagram photos. While there were plenty of adorable photo-ops (giant rubber ducky, pink slide, see-saw, confetti shower) they were practically inaccessible as the lines were either 20 minutes long or nonexistent (not in a good way, more so in the giant-mob-of-Insta-gurus type of way).

That’s just where the trouble began. The company ran out of their giveaways almost as soon as the doors opened. This left women grabbling over the few that remained. It was a madhouse with pushing, shouting, and acrylic nails clawing to grab mini versions of products. Not only was this totally dangerous, but it certainly left an unsavory impression on me about what type of fan base was drawn to Sunday Riley products. Plus, after waiting in line for over 20 minutes to have my skin swatched, the company ran out of my foundation shade. I was promised a restock in a few minutes, which was extended to more minutes and so on and so forth until I was rather fed up with the lack of communication. Moreover, the only drinks available were alcoholic, but there were snacks available. If you were thirsty and underage or don’t drink? Too bad.

Workers were carrying boxes of glass over their heads and over the heads of party-goers. I kept imagining what would happen if one of these boxes came crashing down. Yikes. Even worse, there was a whole section of the store that was either poorly designed or was just unfinished. When I walked through to find something to make my trip to SoHo worth it, I found bubblewrap on walls and other confused party-goers attempting to make sense of the strange hallway.

Eventually, I made the decision to leave, but was left with an understanding: Sunday Riley is an immature company attempting to overstep the limitations of their brand. While I love supporting new up-and-coming brands, I have little respect for brands who can’t plan a simple launch party without what seemed to be extreme chaos and sort of put their guests in mild danger over products that most won’t even get the chance to test out.

As a business minded individual, marketing tactics and effectiveness speak volumes about a company’s core values and quality. If a company cannot even manage to put together an effective marketing campaign, how can I trust them to provide products that will be truly healthy for my skin? For many, this may seem inconsequential, but for those of us who value customer service and professionalism, this a major point of contingency.

I heard from friends that when the pop-up shop launched soon after, it was a decent way to kill an hour and get some pictures. However, a slow pop-up shop in comparison to a main event launch party shows that Sunday Riley is still too young to attempt to move up to the big leagues. One word: disappointed.