Margo Gianos is a 13-year-old entrepreneur in Oklahoma City who came up with ideas for starting her own business before she was even out of elementary school.
“I was always interested in making money,” says Gianos. “When I was eight, I started a pet fashion business making cat collars, and I did stuff like beads on pipe cleaners.” Her mother Irene, a successful blogger and businesswoman in her own right, encouraged Gianos to live out her dreams. Gianos combined her love for beauty and business and launched Honestly Margo, her own line of lip balms.
“A lot of lip balms out there say they are all natural, but they aren’t,” Gianos says. “On one popular brand, it even tells you to call poison control if swallowed!” Gianos experimented with products from local health food stores, using oils and beeswax and other natural items to finally perfect a balm she was happy with. Her all-natural lip balm contains only four ingredients that help treat people with psoriasis, dermatitis and eczema.
The first flavor was pumpkin cheesecake, and she sold 50 tubes to kids at her school in one week. She kept selling out of her lip balm and she had to make more. “Margo asked me, ‘Well, what should we name it?’ says Gianos’ mother Irene. “I asked her, ‘Do we want to keep it small or do you want to be the next big empire?’”
The family hired a professional graphic designer and began serious branding and marketing. Gianos’ father helped her secure her federal tax ID number and business licenses, and Honestly Margo was born. “The first stores we were in were from referrals,” Irene says. Today, Honestly Margo lip balms are sold in 44 stores in nine states. Honestly Margo offers six different flavors — Pumpkin Cheesecake, Very Berry, Fruit Colada, Caramel Apple, Lemon and plain.
Honestly Margo isn’t in daily production, but when orders come in, they come in big. Each batch yields 300 to 400 tubes of lip balm. Gianos and her parents, as well as her brother and her grandparents, all pitch in to manufacture the lip balm, put stickers on the tubes and shrink wrap the orders. “We are deciding if we need a manufacturer or not,” says Gianos. “It depends on the demand.” Visit www.honestlymargo.com.
