By Home Business Magazine
In 2004, Marci Star — a fresh out of college business major — moved to Los Angeles, California for a music career, but had an affinity for makeup. Broke, hungry, and touring with her band, she did makeup applications on the side for cash to survive. Marci began professional makeup applications on stars in the music industry. As the clients walked away with beautifully finished faces, they requested touch-up items to-go. Marci thought, “I could keep giving away these other brands, but what if I had my own to sell?”
Marci met with a chemist who had a great lab and had worked in major brands’ labs previously. He helped her build the Starlooks Lip Gloss Line. Marci sold many as touch-up items, and they grew in popularity, which helped develop more skus — lipstick next, etc. Four years later came the birth of Starlooks PRO Cosmetics.
Starlooks is a new, family-owned, PRO Makeup Line of over 1500 unique items/colors, with the quality of department store brands, but with the performance and variety of a film industry line. Marci needed to invent a vehicle to promote the line, so she created Starbox — a subscription service delivering 3 – 4 full-size SL items to a customer’s doorstep every month.
Marci has preferred to maintain business within family. Starlooks hasn’t taken on investment, and marketing is paid for in makeup sales and revenue. Starlooks is prominent in social media, and the company does most of its advertising through Beauty YouTube Gurus! Marci believes: “There’s no better marketing than word of mouth — real feedback from real, talented artists and stars that have trusted followings.” Starlooks began packing and shipping products out of the family garage, and it’s now grown to a warehouse.
Starlooks customers are worldwide — those who love art, makeup, and are inspired by creating and enhancing beauty. Starbox has grown to a subscription count just under 5k in less than one year.
Marci is grateful for the rare, quick growth Starlooks has seen in so little time. In her words, “I do have a great line, that’s great quality! People like it a lot! They are the ones that show me every day my line is worth something, as long as they keep wanting it, and it makes them feel beautiful.” Visit http://starlooks.com/. HBM
