How To Start and Grow Your Beauty Business – Tips from Ginger King

Ginger King is a cosmetic chemist who’s been in the beauty industry for over 25 years. She has a consulting company, Grace Kingdom Beauty, that helps you develop your very own beauty brand from concept to launch. Ginger’s specialty is clean beauty, and she recently launched her own beauty brand called Fan Love Beauty as part of the case study. 

Ramon had a chance to chat with Ginger and she shared her beauty business insights, which can definitely be used across many business verticals. 

Business Inspiration

Fan Love Beauty was inspired by Daymond John of Shark Tank. On March 1st, 2019, Ginger was with him at a speaking engagement when he took out a lip balm. Ginger said, “Daymond, if it’s something that’s close to you that’s in your pocket, on your lips, it has to be mine.”

Daymond always said health should be your #1 goal. A healthy person can have thousands of dreams, but a sick person can only have one. Lip balm is critical because no matter your gender or age, everybody uses lip balm and could easily be ingested, even without trying to. If you look at all the ingredients on the market, a lot of them are petrolatum. 

Ginger explains that petrolatum has some issues. Petrochemicals belong to the gas station, not on your lips. There are ingredients like Lanolin, that’s from the wool. It’s animal by-product, and long-term use can cause allergies. You might be thinking, “Well, I use 100% natural.” If you really look at 100% natural, 90% of the lip balms’ content’s are beeswax. And where do you get the beeswax from? You get beeswax from the beehives where they live. And that’s not really cruelty-free. This is why Ginger doesn’t have beeswax in her products and why they are vegan. 

The Importance of Lip Balm

Ginger also gives us a quick education on how our lips work: She explains that even if you don’t take care of your skin, you should still take care of your lips. Your lips don’t contain oil glands or sweat glands. This means that the lips don’t have any natural motorization from the oils that your skin produces, so your lips need a little help. Ginger’s lip balms include sea asparagus, which is clinically proven to boost hydration by up to 6000% over 28 days. 

Inspiration

Ginger was influenced very early in life. She came to America when she was 16 and was reading Estee Lauder’s biography. She decided she wanted to be just like her one day. Ginger also wanted to become a makeup artist, but because she’s Asian, there were certain cultural pressures imposed on her by family. So she studied chemistry and became a cosmetic chemist.

And Ginger really does understand just about all areas of the beauty industry, having worked as a makeup artist and selling products as well. This knowledge played a role in how she developed her products, and she always keeps the consumer benefits in mind. Not only from the scientific approach but how the consumer is going to benefit from it.

Advice on Starting Your Own Beauty Brand

Start with an end in mind.

Ginger suggests starting with an end in mind. “Usually when I do consulting, the first question I ask, besides why are you doing this, because ‘why’ is the motivational force to push you forward no matter what kind of frustration you may have, you need to know your why. You also need to know where you’re going to be selling your product. I know everybody wants to start selling on their website, but if you are even considering selling your products in Sephora or Target, you need to have your pricing strategy right as well.”

Unique Selling Proposition

You need to have your unique selling proposition. A cream is commonly found on the market, so how is your cream different? When people think about your cream, they need to know what’s so special about it. When people think about Ginger’s lip balm, she wants them to think about the unique sea asparagus, that it’s natural and vegan. 

We are grateful for Ginger’s insight and advice, and can’t wait to chat with her again! If you enjoyed this interview, check out others just like it here. 

 

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