Beautyblender founder Rea Ann Silva discusses early investor pushback to selling a reusable cosmetic sponge for twenty dollars.
Insight
Dampening a makeup sponge causes it to repel foundation onto the skin
“You wet the sponge, you wring it out, and you towel dry it. But what ends up happening is then the sponge starts to repel the makeup. So it's then pushing the makeup onto the face as opposed to grabbing the makeup and trying to suck it in.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
E-commerce remains the smaller part of Beautyblender's overall business
“I mean, even, even to this day, my digital, my e-commerce business is the smaller part of my business.”
Assertion Open · timeframe Dec 2022
Beautyblender's patent was blocked by an existing medical ear cleaner patent
“There was a patent owned by a company that, and this is the craziest thing, and this is why I fought so long and hard about it, but There was a medical ear cleaner that was like, if you can envision, like, almost like a Q-tip, only bigger. It was like, it had …”
Insight
Category creators need knockoffs to prove their product's superiority
“The way that I soothe myself about knockoffs is that I remember this fact that, you know, Coke needed Pepsi. Xerox needed IBM. Beauty Blender needs knockoffs in order to prove why we are the category creator and the best.”
Disclosure
Silva still owns 100% of Beautyblender and took no outside investment
“No, I still own it a hundred percent. I have no investors.”
Assertion Supported
Classic Hollywood makeup relied on pink undertones that excluded darker skin
“The makeups that were designed by men back in the day, and the heavier makeups, when you go back and you look at black and white, silver screen makeup, all the way to like, say, the seventies or eighties, right, when you're talking about Bobby Brown, those mak…”