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They are bound to make some mistakes along the way.
Photographed by The Vorhees
“We wound up changing the packaging again so that it looked closer to the original design.”
Price sold her brand, reportedly valued at $27 million at the time, to L’Oreal in 2014.
“I was terrified that Tatcha would come crashing down in an instant,” she says.
Photographed by The Vorhees
“Yet I’d see other founders thriving in all the ways I felt I wasn’t.
How did they make it look so easy?
In 2019, Tsai sold her line to Unilever for an estimated $500 million.
ButUrban Decayfailed to immediately take off.
That is not how it works.
Not giving those back-of-house functions enough attention in the beginning hurt the brand as it was growing.
Once we got that on track, we started flying!”
Urban Decay sold to L’Oreal for an estimated $300 to $400 million in 2012.
(The hair-care company was about five years old.)
But the disruption inspired Frieda to vertically integrate, skipping the middleman to get products directly to its retailers.
The brand sold to Kao for $450 million in 2002.
Or in the case of Briogeos Nancy Twine,whoyou don’t know.
She had a background in finance but not in the beauty industry.
I really extended myself [as the] be-all operator ofBriogeoprobably for too long.
Still, she managed to land her brand in Sephora, building up a team along the way.
In 2019, Briogeo brought on a minority investor.
In 2021, the brand expanded to Ulta shelves.
She used the makeup to cover her own skin condition and showcase what the product could do.
Photographed by The Vorhees
L’Oreal acquired the makeup brand for a whopping $1.2 billion in 2016.
“What ends up happening is you are consistently in the space of under-capitalizing the company.”
She’s since been working with a CEO coach and is drumming up more investors for the growing company.
“We shouldn’t be settling for less as women.
They could, but they discovered in hindsight that it wasnt optimal for their business.
“I think the mistake that we made was not hiring senior talents earlier on,” says Lee.
“When we did start hiring director-level talent, it was night and day for us.
Photographed by The Vorhees
