#177: Lip Bar – All Natural Happy Place

This is how you go from not wanting to be unhappy to working your passion to Shark Tank to Lipstick Empire. Way to go, Melissa Butler.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is … well, it’s us. But we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

[No Bull RV Ad]

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here along with Stephen Semple. And today you may say, gosh, they sound a little different. And maybe I hear birds or-

Stephen Semple:

We have no idea what these mics are picking up.

Dave Young:

We don’t know what you’re going to hear, but we’re sitting outdoors. We’re sitting on the north patio of the dining hall in the tower at Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas. And for the first time in, I don’t know if we’ve done this before or we’ve recorded a podcast face-to-face in the same room.

Stephen Semple:

I don’t think we have.

Dave Young:

We’re always on some either Zoom or Riverside FM or some magical internet based thing.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, no, I don’t think we’ve done in person. I don’t think so.

Dave Young:

Well, welcome to my world here. We’re at Wizard Academy. I’m the vice chancellor, by the way, and also one of Stephen’s business partners with Wizard of Ads. And you’re here to teach a class this week.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

Which is exciting.

Stephen Semple:

Very exciting.

Dave Young:

I don’t know if people are going to hear this long after the fact.

Stephen Semple:

Yes. But we’re going to do it again.

Dave Young:

We’re glad that you’re here and excited about the class.

Stephen Semple:

Yes, yes. It’s going to be very exciting. How to market professional services, so it’s going to be awesome.

Dave Young:

It’s going to be fun. I didn’t even ask you as I started the countdown, what the topic is.

Stephen Semple:

I know. Because we’re used to the countdown thing being on the screen.

Dave Young:

My countdown was, I’m just going to hit the go button and see if this is sticking to the tape. I think it is.

Stephen Semple:

We’re going to lean into a category you know really well. Lipstick.

Dave Young:

Lipstick? Is there a particular brand?

Stephen Semple:

Yes. Lip Bar.

Dave Young:

Lip Bar? I’m a total blank.

Stephen Semple:

Well, they’ve done pretty well. Lipstick’s a huge market. Lipstick itself is a $9 billion business.

Dave Young:

Trust me, we wash a lot of it off of wine glasses here.

Stephen Semple:

But Lip Bar was founded by Melissa Butler, and today they’re in like 500 stores, Target and things along that line. They’re a private company, so I had a really hard time finding actual sales figures for them. But when you’re in 500 stores and growing, you’re making things happen.

Dave Young:

Mm-hmm.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

500 stores.

Stephen Semple:

But what was really cool about learning this story is Melissa Butler started making her own lipstick in her apartment.

Dave Young:

Really?

Stephen Semple:

That’s how this all started.

Dave Young:

I’m trying to think of how, if I set out … First of all, I’m not going to, but if I set out to make lipstick, what would I even …. like what’s on my shopping list?

Stephen Semple:

Oh, you’re melting waxes and you’re getting color agents and you’re pouring it into tins and you’re having to cure the tins and then you’re having to get it out of the tins and into the packaging. It’s quite a process.

Dave Young:

Do I have to go kill a whale?

Stephen Semple:

I don’t believe so.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

I don’t believe so.

Dave Young:

Because that’d be awkward.

Stephen Semple:

So what started Melissa on this is she’s a woman of color, and what she noticed was it was hard to find lipsticks in these really bold colors that would work well for women in color.

Dave Young:

With a darker complexion?

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

And so this is what-

Dave Young:

Some contrast.

Stephen Semple:

That’s right.

Dave Young:

Yeah, I like that.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

So this is kind of the path that she went down and when you take a look at the stuff from Lip Bar, the colors are wild and crazy and lots of fun.

Dave Young:

Oh, awesome.

Stephen Semple:

Now, when Melissa was growing up, she grew up in her single mom household. Her mom was a crane operator and worked at a steel factory. So it’s not like they had this big fashion background. And her mom worked a lot and she grew up in a really rough neighborhood in Detroit, but she managed to get into a competitive high school. One of those university prep schools, Cass Tech, especially at the time, this really amazing school in the middle of this blight is almost how it’s described.

And she knew she wanted to go to a black university. So she went to Alabama State for a little while, and then Florida AM and she did a business program, because business had interested her. Because while in high school she worked in a cousin’s clothing shop. She basically learned business from him. And really what she learned was a higher education is about getting into business and getting into business is about making money. That’s kind of the path she was on.

Dave Young:

Sure. We can talk about that for a minute.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. She does business finance and her dream is to work on Wall Street. But one of the things that she did that was interesting before hitting Wall Street is she had a chance to go to China for a little bit.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

So here’s this young lady who grew up in a rough black neighborhood, only attended black universities, suddenly in China. And she was like, “It was this unbelievable culture shock.”

Dave Young:

It’s a whole new world. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

A whole new world. She’s fairly tall. She’s this tall black woman in China. People are literally coming up to her and touching her face.

Dave Young:

Oh yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Right?

Dave Young:

I believe it.

Stephen Semple:

Life-changing experience. She returns and she’s working at Barclays Bank on Wall Street as an analyst. And here’s the thing she noticed. No one was happy. All of her co-workers were unhappy. And she said, “If I stay in this environment where nobody’s happy, I’m going to be unhappy.”

Dave Young:

Isn’t that the truth?

Stephen Semple:

And frankly, the pit was not that great and it was exhausting. And so she wanted to find other things to keep herself busy. And she had this soap that she really liked at Whole Foods that she would buy, and it was a $6 soap. And she’s talking to her mom about the soap, and mom’s just busting her chops over $6 for a bar of soap. Are you nuts? Are you crazy? So she decided to start making her own soap, and it became a hobby. And natural soap has this curing process [inaudible 00:07:03] either takes time or putting in the oven.

Dave Young:

And I’ve heard a lot of people making soap.

Stephen Semple:

Making soap. Yeah.

Dave Young:

Yeah. That’s a thing. But lipstick?

Stephen Semple:

Right. And of course it was all natural ingredients. And what she started doing was putting all sorts of things into the soap. She was inspired by Lush. She wanted to get into the soap business. So she started with the soap bar and all the soaps would be named after a drink. And one day she’s speaking to a supplier. … Here’s the crazy part in this story. One day she’s speaking to a supplier about pigments. And the supplier says to her, “Do you want lipstick pigments or soap pigments?”

Dave Young:

Oh … Well.

Stephen Semple:

And she literally went, “Wait.”

Dave Young:

You have lipstick pigments?

Stephen Semple:

She never thought about lipstick. And in that moment she instantly pivoted. Done with soap. I’m doing lipstick. All simply because the supplier said, “What type of pigments do you want?”

Dave Young:

Wow. Okay.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Isn’t that crazy? Because lipstick was one of the few things that she wore. And again, she found she loved purple and it was super hard to find. She decided, I’m going to do this lipstick stuff. But the first thing she needed to do is find lipstick molds.

And I guess they’re really, really hard to find or tied up by all the big companies, but she was able to find a couple of used ones from the laboratory that was going out of business.

Dave Young:

Oh, nice.

Stephen Semple:

But they were still like $1,500 bucks a piece for these molds. So here she is working 60-hours a week at Barclays. She comes home, she works till like 3:30 in the morning on the lipstick business. Gets up at 7:00 heads off to work. But she wants to create these wild and crazy colors, a