Sometimes, a bright idea can be turned into a breakthrough business with a run-in with the right person.
There is a person named Bobbi Brown and a person named Gail Federici.
In 1991, it was a rendezvous with a man of science. She asked the chemist if he could make her dream lipstick. I thought people would like to buy this, because he did. Brown came up with ten shades of lipstick that women could wear to work because she was tired of stinky, greasy, dry lipsticks. The first day of the line's sale, Brown expected to sell 100, but she sold 100. Estée Lauder paid $74.5 million for Brown's company in 1995.
Gail Federici met John Frieda in 1990. I asked John if he would be interested in doing a line for frizzy hair. There was not a single product for my hair type at the time. We started with Frizz-Ease and then came up with products that women needed. John Frieda was sold for $450 million in 2002. 2.1 units of Frizz-Ease are sold per minute in the U.S.
Federici and Brown were talking about their careers and answering questions from beauty fans on the live stream. Brown has been a fan of Color Wow for a long time, and the two entrepreneurs have a relationship that blossomed from there. Federici and Brown realized they had started their third entrepreneurial act in their 60s. Federici and Brown launched their own lines of salon-quality products for color-treated hair and makeup, respectively.
Brown and Federici are very present on IG Live, a testament to how much has changed since their first act. Their engagement with the platform is indicative of what it takes to stay relevant. The beauty industry is $532 billion and has been created by social media. Federici and Brown have learned a lot from their less online ventures. We talked to the beauty moguls about how their business has changed over time.
It was rewarding to make something that touched so many people.
It was still important to know if your brand was connecting to people back in the 1990s.
Federici says that it was always their goal to problem-solve at John Frieda. It is fun cracking problems. I worked for another hair-care company that was very good, but we never got letters from people saying how great the products were. We had a huge room full of credenzas with file folders with all of the letters that people sent us. One woman made a copper mold of a Frizz-Ease bottle so we could make chocolate Frizz-Ease bottles. The mayor of a small city in the Midwest wrote three-page poems. It was rewarding to make something that touched so many people. That was what really motivated us.
Federici had a different marketing strategy back then. Print, TV, advertising and PR were the options we had. Those were the ways that we could communicate with the consumer. We would do a big shoot every year to create everything we needed for the campaign. Maybe it took us a few months, but that was it.
Brown had a different marketing strategy. Having a platform was still important to her success. She says she looked up everything in the Yellow Pages because she couldn't find anything on the internet. You told people about it. PR and marketing is what it's called. I was fortunate to become the beauty editor of The Today Show. I have a platform to tell people how I see makeup.
We were terrible, and I turned gray.
Brown and Federici branched out into other ventures after the sale of their companies.
Brown left the company in 2016 after more than two decades of control of her brand. Between Jones Road and opening The George in New Jersey, Brown launched the supplement collection Evolution for Walmart and undertook other endeavors.
When Bobbi Brown left, he had no idea what he was going to do. My husband is a very talented developer and he said he had this property. I don't know what to do with it. Why don't we open a small boutique hotel?
Federici's post-John Frieda phase had nothing to do with hair, though it did stem from an ad campaign for Frieda products.
Federici hired the videographer who had won numerous MTV Music Video Awards to film her twin daughters in an ad for John Frieda's Sheer Blonde line a few years after they modeled for a successful Young Magazine shoot. The song in the ad was off the charts, and the sales were off the charts. People would sing the song to the girls.
After selling John Freida, Federici decided to give the music industry a try. John Frieda's brother owned a large building in London that housed music lawyers and producers. Federici says that they started a mini music business there and signed some artists. I turned gray because we were terrible. I was making mistakes. They signed Taio Cruz, but let him go before he released his mega-hits.
Act III: The entrepreneurial inside me woke up again.
Brown and Federici have circled back to their entrepreneurial beginnings now that they have more knowledge and new social-media marketing strategies.
Jones Road was founded by Brown in 2020. The Hippie Stick, a butter-soft moisturizer for the face, body and hair, and the Miracle Balm, a shimmery skin tint available in four shades, are two of the versatile favorites in the line. Quality and simplicity are key in Brown's attention to detail.
Brown had a lot of experience when she was working on Jones Road. She says that she woke up again and that she is anentrepreneur. I could do things differently. Everything I've learned is there. I know how we do things, but it's not the same as before. Launching Jones Road has been great for me because it has been in my head for a long time.
Social media allows for an open dialogue between brands and consumers, allowing questions to be raised and answered in real time. Brown says that this direct communication helped when the Miracle Balm came out, as many people weren't getting the results they wanted because they weren't using the product correctly.
Some people were having trouble with it because they weren't getting enough color. I know that a makeup artist has to break the seal. When I realized that people were rubbing their hand on top, I was like, "No, no, we have to break the seal." It has become a thing. All of the people that post are breaking the seal.
Federici returned to hair-care after her time in the music industry, even though she hadn't planned on it. Federici started with a problem to solve. She noticed that people didn't cover the gray roots. They said the products on the market were terrible, and that they were fake.
Federici thought it was crazy that there wasn't any people like. A long time ago, I did a shoot with a hairdresser who put a blonde wig on a model. He put some brown eyeshadow at the root to make it look a little more natural, but it didn't reflect like natural hair, so the problem was number one. The dust in the air could be seen when we hit it with the wind. I wondered if there was a way to make powder reflective and not look dull. It would be very easy to use if you had so many pigments in it.
The first in a line of salon-quality products for color-treated hair was born from that idea. Federici wanted to make sure the powder stayed on the hair, and that the root cover up was just right, because it took three years to develop. After Federici's sister went swimming, the gray hair was still covered by the product. She needed to wash it off.
Federici has a lot of experience in the hair-care industry, but her company has had to change their approach to marketing because of the times. Federici says that the world of John Frieda is now in Color Wow. You have a lot of things, including: TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest. Every day you have to create content. You have to tell stories. And then Facebook with the new operating system. When you create ads for them, you also create content for the actual feed, which informs the consumer and creates awareness.
Federici continues, "And you have the people who are influential." All of these platforms and people. It was simpler before. You have to have a website of your own. Five years ago, we made our website a priority. This past year, the Lord saved us. I don't know what would have happened to the business if we hadn't made it a very serious focus. The digital side of our business allowed us to meet our goal, even though we had a third of our business in the trade.
In the last 30 years, the world of business and how it intersects with technology and marketing has changed a lot. It is clear that the willingness to adapt to changing circumstances is a must-have attribute for entrepreneurs who aspire to achieve the extraordinary levels of success that Brown and Federici have had over the course of their careers. The sheer passion these two women share, their enthusiasm for problem-solving, and for connecting with the people who love and support their products is more important than anything else. There is a certain degree of determination, a belief in their brands that leads to a refusal to give up.
Brown says that if you don't try, you'll never know. I don't believe in failure because it's just a message that if something didn't work out, do it differently.
Social media makes it easier to try. Brown and Federici were able to launch their careers through chance meetings that took place online. The beauty industry has changed, but its heart and soul remain the same: the people who take part in it. The beauty lovers who want to share their passion for their favorite brands or products with the world are the problem-solvers.
