6 Top Beauty & Fashion Entrepreneurs On The Moment Their Brands First Took Off—And the Hiccups They Faced Along the Way

When you pick up a tube of lipstick, a makeup sponge or even grab a designer handbag, you don’t always know much about the person, or the story, behind the brand.

We don’t see the years of financial hardships, operationalâ€"and mentalâ€"roadblocks, countless noes heard and sacrifices made before their dreams were realized. So why not lean in and learn more about how these companies and their revolutionary founders and CEOsâ€"all women!â€"found the path to success.

From a recent college grad to a single mom and breast cancer survivor to an MIT alum who’s giving bacteria a good name, here are six women entrepreneurs in beauty and fashion you should know.

Cashmere Nicole | Founder & CEO, Beauty Bakerie

Cashmere Nicole (Carillo) follows the motto “Better Not Bitter.” The CEO and founder of Beauty Bakerie became a mom at 16 years old and lived on food stamps while raising her daughter, working and attending school. Determined to make a better life for herself and her family she started a cosmetics brand in her kitchen. Then, because life is never hard enough, she was diagnosed with breast cancer at 27, undergoing a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. But that didn’t stop her from realizing her dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Her desire for long-lasting lipsticks that would allow makeup lovers to enjoy life and skip worrying about touchups inspired her brand, which started with Lip Whips, smudge-free lip colors in formulas that are vegan, nontoxic and cruelty-free.

Beauty Bakerie has expanded to include base products in a wide shade range for all skin tones. The bakery-inspired products come in pretty, creative packaging with names like Eyelash Icing Mascara, Cake Mix Foundation and Flour Setting Powder.

Beyoncé took notice when Nicole started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to expand, helping Nicole secure a $3 million investment from Unilever. Now the brand is sold at Ulta beauty stores in more than 130 countries, Riley Rose, which is Forever 21’s foray into beauty, and at Boots stores in Europe.

Every purchase also supports Sugar Homes, a project that provides funds for the Hopeworth Children’s Foundation, a female-led orphanage based in Uganda.

Jasmina Aganovic | President, Mother Dirt

Consumer goods entrepreneur and product developer Jasmina Aganovic wants you to put bacteria on your skin. Really! An MIT grad with a degree in chemical and biological engineering, Aganovic has worked with beauty brands Fresh and Living Proof and launched Bona Clara, her own direct-sales brand of skincare products.

You’ve probably heard that probiotics are good bacteria for your gut. The same idea goes for your skin. Aganovic’s research helped her identify skin biomes, or in layman’s terms, the naturally occurring microbes that live on your skin.

Enter: Mother Dirt, a line of plant-based products that are free from fragrance, sulfates, parabens, phthalates and preservatives that are friendly to your skin biome. The brand’s AO + Mist is “the only product on the market that contains live bacteriaâ€"good bacteria that once lived on our skin, but was removed by modern chemistry and lifestyles.” It’s named for AOB, ammonia-oxidizing bacteria, which are found everywhere there is life, including your skin.

The mist is a probiotic spray that contains a strain of safe live-cultured AOB which feeds on the ammonia in your sweat and turns out “beneficial byproducts” of nitrite and nitric oxide, the latter of which is an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory.

Do the products work? Aganovic, of course, can speak from experience. “I’ve been able to cut down a lot on makeup,” she told Parade.com. “I always used to wear foundation fully on my skin but now I just wear concealer under my eyes and eye makeup and that’s pretty much it.”

As a pioneer in the field, Aganovic is more concerned about the science being understood and accepted. In an interview with The Tai Life, she shared, “The idea of putting bacteria back on the skin is so radically opposed to so much of what we have been taught. So, the competition is likely most of the personal care industry. However, we don’t look at it that way. I would say consumer education around the issue is probably our biggest challenge. For us it’s been key to find channels that mitigate or facilitate that.”

On how women can persevere, she says, “Surround yourself with people who energize and support you. Seek out information and tools. Learn, keep trying. Even when it doesn’t feel like you are making progress, you are. Never underestimate the power of time.”

In a time when fast fashion reigns supreme, up-and-coming designer Payton James is creating beautiful accessories made to last. She launched her inaugural collection this spring, just two years after graduating from O’More College of Design.

“Nobody really knows what they’re going to do after college or how to get in the door,” she says.

Before finding her niche, she printed out fabric and hand-sewed resumes, mailing them to the companies she wanted to work for. One company in Nashville was impressed and hired her for contract work and from there, her passion for designing handbags grew.

With no prior business experience, she created a presentation for investors who were excited to see what would come nextâ€"although, maybe it runs in the family; her father is an entrepreneur and always encouraged James to do something she was passionate about.

“I wanted to create handbags that will live with you forever because of the timeless design and high quality,” James says of her collection.

The Nashville-based designer now crafts handbags made of Italian leather and raffia sourced from Madagascar. Each piece in her line, which includes wallets in simple silhouettes in neutral colors plus a few bright shades like lemon and lavender, is assembled by artisans around the world.

There have been some hiccups along the way. Once, the imported Italian leather used for her handbags got stuck in customs for about a month. “That was kind of a big challenge of learning time management but luckily we were able to overcome that and get everything together,” she says.

Her advice to other young women wanting to start their own business? “Take every experience,” she says. “I worked at J. Crew and Madewell for a while. Even those kinds of experiences help me today, [to] merchandise items, stuff like that. Take every experience that you can and use it in your day to day. You don’t know when you’re going to need that in the future.”

Rea Ann Silva | Founder & Creator, Beautyblender

Rea Ann Silva was a celebrity makeup artist looking for a tool to improve her craft when she created the makeup sponge we all know and love today.

Silva was the department lead on CBS’s Girlfriends, with Tracee Ellis Ross. The series was one of the first shows shot in high definition, so Silva knew the makeup had to look good, and not like it was caked on. She began cutting up special-effects makeup sponges until they were the perfect shape to do touch-ups on set, instead of having to lug around an airbrush kit.

As a working single mom of two, she took baby steps needed to see her company flourish. She started by cold-calling sponge manufacturers until she found one that was interested in creating her product. It was no easy feat; she shared with Popsugar that she struggled to pay rent and that her car was repossessed before seeing her dream take off.

Since the company’s debut just over a decade ago, there are now multiple sizes and colors of beautyblender, plus sponge cleansers, cases and other makeup tools. The brand is now sold in over 46 countries around the world and 17 sponges are sold every minute.

Last summer, beautyblender released its first makeup product: a matte, lightweight and buildable foundation called Bounce, available in 32 shades. It was important to create a wide range of shades to Silva, who is of Mexican, Portuguese and Irish descent, and has worked with celebrities of all skin tones.

She told Forbes last year, “…when you work with celebrities you have to know how to match all kinds of skin colors from alabasters to the deepest, and there wasn’t any brand for a long time creating that kind of color range. For me as a Latina woman and also a makeup artist and having biracial children, I realized how difficult it was to find close colors because there is an infinite amount of skin tonesâ€"all you can do is get to as close to as many as you can. I ended up with 32 colors that are the most universal.”

Her advice to other women, she shared with Popsugar, is to follow through, take things one step at a time, and “embrace, not fear, the challenges.” She also points out that even with the advances in technology today, it’s important to value relationships and be someone that people want to be around.

Katrina Lake | Founder & CEO, Stitch Fix

Katrina Lake founded Stitch Fix in 2011 with the thought that, as a busy woman who loves fashion, she didn’t always have the time to peruse new arrivals on all her favorite websites, or even shop the mall on the weekend. Now her company helps busy people all over the U.S. keep their closets fresh.

Stitch Fix is an online shopping and styling service that starts with a style profile you fill out with size and style preferences. A stylist then handpicks outfits from shoes to clothing to accessories. The outfits are boxed up and shipped so you can try them on in the comfort of your home, mail back what you don’t want (with free shipping) and only pay for what you keep.

Lake previously managed the blogger platform at fashion e-commerce company Polyvore and she holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard University. Still, she shared with Glamour, venture capitalists in Silicon Valley couldn’t relate and weren’t jumping at the chance to invest in a women’s personal shopping company. “A lot of Silicon Valley investors are a very homogenous group of white men,” she recalls.

But, after those initial financial challenges, there was huge growth within the first few years. Now sales are up in the nine figures and while department stores and other brick-and-mortar shops are struggling, Stitch Fix continues to expand.

Lake has made a number of impressive lists, including Forbes Wealthiest Self-Made Women List in 2016 and Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list in the same year. When the company went public in November 2017, she became the youngest female founder to take a company public at age 34. In an interview with Forbes, Lake spoke on the fact that she unintentionally made a statement by holding her son in her arms while ringing the Nasdaq Opening Bell. She later realized that she became one of few examples of women “at that level.”

That may be part of the reason why she became a mentor for All Raise’s Female Founders Office Hours, an initiative which gives women access to startup founders and executives. And Stitch Fix continues to offer more options for more people. At first offering only women’s clothing, the company has expanded to include men’s, kid’s and maternity clothing, and in 2017, the company launched its plus-size division and began carrying more high-end designer brands.

Organic cosmetics brands often offer the ethical values we look for, but lack the glamour associated with major cosmetics brands. Former model and fashion designer Megan Douglas merged the two in The Organic Skin Co., a New Zealand-based company that creates only cruelty-free, vegan, organic skincare and makeup.

It was a trip to India that changed things for Douglas, who had a successful career in fashion. There she was reminded of the natural and holistic beauty routines she grew up with. She was inspired to get a degree in naturopathy and create The Organic Skin Co. so the next generation of women in her family could have natural makeup products to choose from.

That focus on family and relationships is one way her brand stands out from others. For starters, her sister-in-law Lisette is CEO of the company. The brand also works closely with village communities in India where many of the organic ingredients are sourced from the farms, which then revives farming land and helps the communities prosper.

Another way Douglas has elevated herself from other natural beauty brands is by using “supercritical extracts,” a type of herbal extraction that results in pure, super-potent extracts that are up to 50 times stronger than conventional varieties. These are found in the brand’s delicious-sounding skincare products like Holy Basil Cleanser, Almond Seed Exfoliant and Rosehip and Orange Moisturizer.

As for cosmetics, the website’s homepage shows models in bold, edgy makeup that you wouldn’t normally associate with an organic line. But Douglas made sure to include everything from primer to lipstick to cream eyeshadow, plus a customizable palette that can be filled with four to eight different products.

And as a proud tree hugger, Douglas also maintains a friendly relationship with the earth. Product packaging is made from recyclable ingredients and the company has partnered with Eden Reforestation Projects, pledging to plant a tree for every product purchased.