While the highly competitive plant-based beauty space is now more mainstream, there wasn’t a lot of competition in 2008 when Shirley Pinkson and her co-founders at W3LL People (now owned by E.L.F. Beauty) started their performance-driven, plant-based, clean beauty brand. We had the opportunity to sit down with Shirley post-acquisition to talk about the brand’s developments (and her next steps at E.L.F. Beauty).

The company was a collaboration of three best friends who went to school together and started the brand from scratch.. Shirley combined her decades of experience in makeup and retail together with her co-founders who brought expertise in branding and science.

While they originally thought they would build the brand in prestige retail spaces with the likes of Fred Segal (their first account), it didn’t take long before they were approached by Target and have now pivoted towards greater accessibility and awareness.

In this episode Shirley also discusses:

The hard work of marketing in the those early days which included flyers on cars, stickers, and buttons, and standing outside on the sidewalk in front of their Austin studio
The massive growth of the clean beauty space
Why they took five years to launch a mascara

You’ll also find out about the “very fast love affair” between W3LL People and E.L.F. Beauty.. To learn more about the brand you can visit their website.

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