Detroit Native, Melissa Butler is the Founder and CEO of The Lip Bar, a lipstick line made of natural ingredients. As of 2018, her business was worth a half-a-million!
She said, “I started growing frustrated with the beauty industry altogether because first of all, why can’t I find a nude lipstick that looks good on me? Furthermore, why do the lipsticks only come in nudes, reds, and pinks? It became this quest of ‘I want to find products that are natural, but also look good on people who look like me.’ And it was literally impossible to find.” She spent her first four years out of college working on Wall Street as a financial analyst.
“The first year when you straight out of college, you get a good job, and you are just happy to be making money. So, for the first year I wasn’t affected by it, I was just happy to be there.” she recalled. “I’m just looking around me like, this can’t be me. I didn’t take out several thousands of dollars in student loans to be unhappy or to work to pay off these student loans. I think once you get a taste of money, you realize that money isn’t everything, and so I started looking at life from a different perspective.
Corporate America is built so that you’re no longer creative. You’re no longer expressive, and you’re no longer who you were before you started that job because you’re always trying to find some way to fit in.” She recalls going out with her girlfriends for cocktails in NYC and that was where the idea of “Lip Bar” came to life. “We went to Shark Tank basically knowing that we wouldn’t get an investment, because if you watch their show they basically only invest in stay-at-home moms or tech companies, but you have to remember that Shark Tank is like reality TV right now, so it’s literally the most exposure that you can get as a brand. And so we went on there for marketing.” And it worked!
After their appearance, there was over 30,000 hits on their website and 120,000 after the first week. The Lip Bar is now available on target.com and available in more than 450 stores nationwide. Melissa is also set to open her first store in Downtown Detroit along Parker’s Alley!
Culled from femalepreneurs Instagram Page
