The story behind HMU Collective

How It Started

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HMU Collective didn’t come from a boardroom or a business plan. It came from frustration.

The founder, Amy, spent 18 years building digital platforms for broadcasters and streaming services before retraining as a hair and makeup artist. She knew how good products worked. She knew how broken ones felt. And when she found herself on the other side of the industry, scrambling for work during the post-strike slowdown, she experienced both.

Finding paid work as a new artist was chaos. WhatsApp groups, Instagram posts that vanished in an hour, CVs sent into the void. And when something promising did appear, someone faster had already replied.

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Then came the final straw. A platform charging artists to sit on a directory and delivering nothing in return. Weak product. Broken experience. And ironically, exactly the kind of thing Amy had spent nearly two decades building properly for other industries.

So she built something better.

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What It’s For

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The hair and makeup industry has run on chaos and exploitation for too long. Artists work for free, wait 60 days to get paid, and are told their skills aren’t worth a rate card. Opportunities go to whoever happens to be in the right WhatsApp group at the right time.

HMU Collective exists to change that.

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A searchable portfolio directory where paid work is the only kind listed. A toolkit that gives artists the financial and legal protection they were never taught. A community built on honesty, not hustle culture.

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For artists who are done surviving and ready to thrive.

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Where It’s Going

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This platform is always evolving. New tools, new features, and a growing community of artists who believe the industry can work better than it currently does.

If you want to be part of that, you’re in the right place.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​