Indie clean beauty brand LAMIK Beauty continues expansion backed by GlossPitch competition win
Last week, GlossWire announced this year’s winner of the annual GlossPitch competition and honored Kim Roxie of LAMIK Beauty with the distinction. As detailed on their website, GlossWire is a beauty technology company and premium shopping app platform marketplace that was founded in Seattle in 2021 that curates over 10,000 products from over 300 brands representing twenty-five countries across the world.
The GlossWire GlossPitch competition is hoested three times a year and is open to any GlossWire platform brand to apply. As explained by Kimberly Carney, GlossWire CEO, the competitions are held “to bring exposure to the beauty brands and give them an opportunity to win cash prizes and mentorships from our industry expert judges and advisory board.”
About the competition
In this most recent GlossPitch competition, over 150 entries were received for judging. GlossWire’s advisory board and panel of industry expert judges utilizing several different criteria to select the winner.
As Carney explained, this criteria included: the information about the problem or pain point the submitted product is working to solve, as well as the product’s offered solution to the problem; the target market for the product; the brand’s business model, including the growth and scalability of the product; the brand’s current leadership team; and finally, the brand’s future plans, including their plans to reinvest and use the prize money to further expand brand growth.
Meet winner Kim Roxie of LAMIK Beauty
CosmeticsDesign also had the opportunity to sit down and speak with winner Kim Roxie of LAMIK Beauty to learn more about the company’s brand story, their submission to the GlossPitch contest, and the brand’s future plans having received this distinction.
As detailed on the LAMIK Beauty website, Roxie founded LAMIK Beauty in 2004 out of a local makeup shop in Houston, Texas. Her mother’s love of makeup was a profound inspiration for the brand, and she was the company’s first investor. When Roxie’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011, the diagnosis drove Roxie to examine the ingredients in the makeup she used every day and found some of those ingredients included known carcinogens.
When her mother passed in 2014, Roxie’s focus shifted to her current mission to provide women of color with clean and safe makeup options which were well received by the community, eventually leading to the brand’s eCommerce launch in 2020. This task was not without its difficulties, Roxie explained, as “we had to overcome the challenge of startup capital.” To do so, she “did a reward-based crowdfunding campaign on IFundWomen, and we raised our startup capital through future customers.”
Much of the brand’s success, as shared by Roxie, can be attributed to the fact that “our products are different. They are inclusive in shade range while staying paraben free, talc free, vegan, and cruelty free,” she explained, adding that “most products in our category that are free of those ingredients don't have enough pigment to show up on deeper skin tones, but we do.”
In addition to offering women of color clean beauty products, LAMIK Beauty options are also environmentally sustainable, utilizing mostly paper packaging and refillable components to better appeal to consumer demand.
The future of LAMIK Beauty
When asked how it felt to win the GlossPitch competition, Roxie shared that it’s an incredible feeling, especially since she had applied to the competition last year without success. However, she explained, this time around “I dusted myself off, and tried again, and won!”
“GlossPitch always has great judges,” she added. “They ask provoking questions and give great feedback,” which contributed to this year’s winning submission.
With the $10,000 prize winnings, Roxie plans to “build up our team and expand our distribution,” adding that the brand has more growth on the horizon. Currently, LAMIK Beauty products are available on a variety of eCommerce websites including HSN, Ulta, and JCPenney, with additional plans for further expansion in the coming year.
Roxie’s personal story and expansive growth are inspiring for indie brands providing women of color with clean beauty options that best fit their needs, and it will be interesting to see how the GlossPitch win will influence further brand growth in the coming year and beyond.