Bobbi Brown Cosmetics: Bobbi Brown (2018)

Bobbi Brown started out as a makeup artist in New York City, but hated the gaudy color palette of the 1980s. She eventually shook up the industry by introducing "nude makeup" with neutral colors and a natural tone. In 1995, Estée Lauder acquired Bobbi Brown Cosmetics and Bobbi remained there for 22 years, until she realized the brand was no longer the one she had built. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

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• 2:14Guy Raz?

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• 2:58Guy Raz?

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• 3:40Guy Raz?

  Value estimate based on $50 per visit rate to purchase additional visits or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the card that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day.

• 4:23Guy Raz?

  And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talked to on this show, because the best ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port-fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary.

• 5:07Guy Raz?

  Visit mobili fuels.com for details. Hey, everyone. Just a quick heads up that we've got a bonus episode coming your way this week. It's a really fascinating conversation I had about what it takes to innovate with three former guests of the show: Pau Kadakia of ClassPass, Perry Chen of Kickstarter, and Tristan Walker of Walker & Company. We recorded it live at our virtual How I Built the Summit back in May, so look for it in your podcast queue this Thursday, July 22. And today's show is from our archives. It's a conversation with yet another amazing innovator, Bobby Brown of Bobby Brown Cosmetics. It first ran back in 2018. Enjoy.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  I used to hire and interview every person that walked in that brand. And then I didn't anymore. And all of a sudden, there were people working on my brand that I never met before and that I might not have hired. And it was a struggle. And I tried to let go of the details. But then I realized the details were what makes the company so special. And so I kept thinking I could fix it. If we could just do this, if I could get this, it could be better. And it didn't get better.

• 6:31Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:42Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how a makeup artist named Bobby Brown built a billion-dollar line of cosmetics by doing one simple thing: making women look like they weren't wearing any makeup.

• 7:01Guy Raz?

  When I was a kid, back in the 1980s, my older sister had a collection of those porcelain Mardi Gras masks on her bedroom wall. And they had these colorful faces painted with blue eyeshadow and deep rouge streaks across the cheeks and the reddest lips that no human could possibly be born with. And the thing about those masks is, they looked like models you'd see on the cover of fashion magazines. Models who didn't hide their makeup, makeup that was loud and brash, and the look was anything but natural. And this is the world that Bobby Brown kind of broke into as a young makeup artist in

• 7:43Guy Raz?

  the fashion industry. She loved everything about makeup, except, you know, the way it actually made people look. And so she was searching for a way to use it so that models looked like they weren't really wearing it at all. So, you know, lipstick that was the color of actual lips, or blush that didn't make you look like you were blushing, or eyeshadow that matched your skin tone. Now, this doesn't seem particularly revolutionary today, but back in the 1980s, when Bobby Brown started to mash together off-the-shelf cosmetics to come up with a new look, she was trying something totally different. She was trying to convince women that makeup

• 8:24Guy Raz?

  could be, well, almost invisible. And some of her fellow makeup artists told her she'd have zero luck trying to sell that natural look. But of course, today, Bobby Brown Cosmetics is a brand that's been estimated to generate Right, over a billion dollars of revenue a year, a year. And Bobby never thought of herself as a businesswoman. She didn't set out to design a whole new line of cosmetics. But even as a little girl in suburban Chicago, she remembers how much she loved watching her mom get ready to go out for the evening.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  My mother was the most glamorous, stunning woman. She looked like a young Jackie Kennedy. And I used to watch her put her makeup on with her false eyelashes, her eyeliner. She was skinny as could be. She'd be standing there with a cigarette hanging off of the counter. And I would just be sitting there watching her. And she, I watched everything. I watched her take her brown pencil, which now we know is lead, and fill in her eyebrows. And with a toothpick, put on false eyelashes and bronze her on her cheeks and a pale lip on and go out, you know, with my dad Wednesday nights and Saturday nights.

• 9:39Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  And I was in awe. You know, I could never, ever, ever be that glamorous. And I was, you know, the shortest, always. And, you know, not the skinniest. But I was really lucky because the other side of that, I had my grandmother and my Aunt Dallas, who were more like me, really simple, wearing comfortable shoes, you know, people comfortable in their skin. And at the same time, by the way, the girls, the models that were really popular were Cheryl Teagues.

• 10:13Guy Raz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  And all these, you know, blonde Barbie doll looking girls, which I was not one of them. I, you know, had thick eyebrows and dark hair and, you know, I wasn't that. And then the thing that changed my life was going to see the movie Love Story.

• 10:31Guy Raz?

  Oh, yes, with, with.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Ally McGraw. And I'll never forget, I was somehow in middle, I must have been in seventh grade. And I remember sitting there and looking at this girl. With dark shiny hair parted down the middle, no apparent makeup. And literally, for the first time in my life, I said, I could be pretty too. She changed my life.

• 10:53Guy Raz?

  Ally McGraw in Love Story changed your life.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Changed my self-esteem and my, you know, my confidence in figuring out who I am.

• 11:03Guy Raz?

  So when you, so when it was time for you to leave home and go to college, what did you, what did you study?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Well, I went to, you know, with a lot of my friends, there were probably a dozen of us that went freshman year of college to University of Arizona in Tucson. And I was so bored in school, you know, because you would sit in, you know, it's a huge university. And you'd sit in these big giant halls with 500, 1,000 people and see this little teeny professor at the, you know, lecture us with, you know, an overhead projector. And I certainly, it was not the way that I was meant to learn. So, you know, I went through the motions and the end of the year, I came home and I told my mom I wanted to drop out of school.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  And my mother says, you can't. And I said, but why, mom? It's so boring. I don't want to go to college. She says, I never graduated college. And she says, you have to. I said, but mom, I have no clue what I want to do. And my mother said, I remember the two chairs we were sitting at. I was sitting cross-legged as I always do. And she said, okay, forget what you want to do with your life. If today was your birthday, you could do anything you want, what would you want to do? And I had no idea. And I remember, as I always do, quickly saying, the first thing that popped into my head was, I want to go to Marshall Fields and play with makeup.

• 12:27Guy Raz?

  The big Marshall Fields in downtown Chicago?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Yep, actually in the suburbs, because that's where I live. But I wanted to go to the store and play with makeup. So my mom said, why don't you, you know, why don't you study makeup? And I said, yes.

• 12:40Guy Raz?

  Just then, right then?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Just then, why don't you study makeup? And I said, mom, I don't want to go to beauty school. And she said, no, I'm sure there's a college somewhere where you could study makeup. So I actually, my dad's friend told me about this school in Boston called Emerson that will let me study makeup.

• 13:01Guy Raz?

  This is the summer after your first year of college?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Right. It was literally two weeks before I was supposed to go back to Arizona. And my car was actually, you know, packed when I made the decision to go to Emerson. So it was like days before. I flew up with my dad, went to Emerson, and I asked if they had a makeup program. And they said, no, but we have something called an interdisciplinary program, and you can create your own major. And sure, you can study makeup.

• 13:30Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  I said, I'm in. I'm going. And honestly, when I got to Emerson, I found myself, because it was a school full of kids like me. Creative, fiery, entrepreneurial, and you're creating films, and you're creating, you know, all different art projects. And I remember even doing films, and you know, they pair you with someone, and instead of doing things the normal way, which is like, oh, what kind of films should we do? I remember thinking about what kind of makeup I wanted to do and writing the film around the makeup.

• 14:01Guy Raz?

  Hmm. What was it about makeup that you liked or that spoke to you?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't even just the makeup. It was everything that goes along with it. So I've always been someone that knew how to use makeup differently than other people did. And doing theatrical makeup, making someone look old or like a character, was amazing for me, because in order to do makeup for a play, for a film, you have to read the script, you have to talk to the director, you have to create what the person is going to look like. Did they have a hard life? How do you make them look tired? How do you make them look old? I'd have to go figure it out and understand it, and then make the girls look like that.

• 14:45Guy Raz?

  So when you, when you finished at Emerson, did you, was your intention to do theater makeup?

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Yes. So I graduated Emerson in 79, and a month before I graduated, I was in my bedroom, reading Mademoiselle magazine, and there was an article about a freelance makeup artist in New York named Bonnie Mallor. And I never heard of a freelance makeup artist. And she was doing all the fashion shows and doing makeup work for Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis. And I wrote to her, and I said, can I come to New York and assist? She never wrote me back.

• 15:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah, oh, no.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  But, no, no, but.

• 15:29Guy Raz?

  Really excited for this, yes?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  No, no, no. She didn't write me back, but I looked her up in the phone book. And I called her. On her answering machine, she said, hi, it's Bonnie. If I am not getting back to you, I'm probably on location. Call my agent, Brian Bantry, 212, blah, blah, blah. So I go to New York for a visit, and I call Brian Bantry. And he said, come on up and talk to me. And he explained to me how the freelance works. And I started just figuring it out. So I, you know, I moved to New York, and I didn't know anyone. You know, I had Brian Bantry, I had a meeting with him. And he started, you know, slowly calling me to be an assistant to some of his people. He didn't represent me, but he let me be an assistant.

• 16:16Guy Raz?

  So you, you get to New York, and you decide that you want to be a makeup artist. And this was going to be your life. Like, so how did you, how did you start to get jobs?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Well, I actually thought I would do fashion on the side until I broke into TV. So one of the things I did, there was another makeup artist, her name was Bobby, and she was the makeup artist for Saturday Night Live. I assisted her a few times. So, you know, that was cool. And I remember doing a couple of times, you know, the makeup artist on the evening news couldn't make it. I would do that. So I, you know, it was, I started a freelance career. The only way I paid my rent at that time was my dad gave me $500 a month to pay my rent.

• 17:04Guy Raz?

  And was, like, at this time in your life, did you feel like there were expectations that you weren't fulfilling? I don't know. I mean, you know, you came from this sort of middle-class home in Chicago, and your dad was a lawyer. And so were you ever thinking like, oh, man, you know, like, my parents have these expectations of me, and I need to... I don't know. I mean, were you ever thinking like that, or worried about that?

• 17:29Speaker 01

  No. Can I tell you why? One, I have this really weird gift. And, you know, you don't know it's a gift until you're, you know, of a certain age and look back. I am so naive. So I never think something's not going to work out, and I never did. So I was not worried. You know, yes, I was always anxious about how I was going to pay the rent, or if I had enough money for this. And I remember calling my dad one day, and I said, "Dad, I just can't stick to this budget." I had a credit card with a limit. I think I had $250 a month limit. And I kept, you know, incurring all these fees. And I said, "Dad, I can't stick to this." And he said, "All right, stop for a minute. Put it down." I said, "Okay." He said, "Stop trying to stick to a budget, or create a budget.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Why don't you figure out how you're going to make more money?" I said, "Hmm, okay." And I remember telling myself, Monday morning, you get up, and you fill your daybook with appointments. So I go-see's, as they call it. So I went, I started making appointments. And as long as I... Monday was my day to fill it, and then I had the whole week to go see people. So I started calling magazines, and I'd look on the masthead, and I would see the booking agent. I booked with them. "Hi, I'm Bobby Brown. I'm a freelance makeup artist. I'd love to come in and show you my book." I had a, you know...

• 18:48Guy Raz?

  A book of, like, faces that you'd...

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Of faces that I've done.

• 18:51Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yes. And, you know, you start to make relationships. You come back and see people. And I did that for a while.

• 18:58Guy Raz?

  So here's my question. I mean, what does it... Like, how were you good, like, a better makeup artist than someone else? What is it that you were able to offer?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Well, all right. So let's go back to the '70s and the '80s. The makeup back then was the epitome of unnatural. Foundation was pink. It stopped at the jawline. It was contour. Eyes were... Eyeshadow was yellow and purple and blue. It was all of those things. I was always doing... More of a, now it's called a Bobby face and now it's called nude makeup. But back then, it was just, I always made people look healthier. I wanted people to not look like they were wearing makeup. And I even had one very, very famous makeup artist, you know, who I asked his opinion on stuff,

• 19:51Speaker 01

  said, "You will never work because people don't want to look like that." And I don't want to look like that. People want to look made up and, you know, I just couldn't do it. So even when I was doing makeup on TV, I had these really simple things I looked for. I wanted to make the foundation to actually be the color of the skin.

• 20:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  And I had to mix and blend because most makeup on the market was bad. And, you know, having a giant kit, I had everything. So I would kind of, you know, smush a lot of it together. And people started taking pictures of it. It looked really good.

• 20:28Guy Raz?

  So you are getting steady work. You're doing more and more magazines. What was the first really big gig that you can remember getting? Like with a major fashion model?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Probably two of my hugest aha, like back then, was when I had a six or eight-page spread in American Vogue with one model, Tatiana Petites. And it was literally full face, full bleed, full face, a makeup story, only on, you know, different looks, different makeup. That was like, put me on the map. And then the next map was a cover of Vogue with Naomi Campbell.

• 21:09Guy Raz?

  Wow, when was that?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Now we're into, I think, 88 or 89, when she was just starting to be a huge, huge model.

• 21:17Guy Raz?

  Huge deal.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:18Guy Raz?

  So, you know, you are doing makeup and that's your life, that's your career.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Yes. I was at the top of my game. And by the way, you do magazine work and editorial, it's fantastic. You, no matter how big it is, you still get $150 a day.

• 21:32Guy Raz?

  Oh, so you really don't make a whole lot of money?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  No, but when you do advertising and catalog, like catalog at the time was paying between $2.50 and $5. Five hundred a day, and that's when you do makeup on a bunch of models for a Saks Fifth Avenue or a Macy's.

• 21:48Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  And then if it's a commercial, you got a couple thousand. But everything you do, you meet people and you, you know, you tend to move in packs. If a hairdresser gets booked for something, they book you. And then, you know, then you start doing advertising and that's, you know, could be up to 5,000 a day. And by the way, while I did those things, I also had a very, very serious relationship. I got engaged, I moved out of the city, I had friends, I had a normal life. I started having kids at the same time. And I chose that. I chose that. I wanted to be, I wanted to go through that tunnel, put my hair in a ponytail, put my sneakers on,

• 22:32Speaker 01

  be in the park with my dog, you know. I'd rather be home with my husband and my baby than, you know, stay. I couldn't understand why they wanted me to stay at a fashion shoot until 10 o'clock at night, just because they took a long time deciding things. I'm like, no, I'm out of here at 6.

• 22:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So in 1990, I guess that was around the time when you started to kind of experiment with your own makeup.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:59Guy Raz?

  Well, how, how did that even begin? How did that even happen?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  So I was pregnant with my first baby and I was on a photo shoot for Mademoiselle magazine. No, it was Self Magazine and it was called Makeup Shopping at Alternative Places with Makeup Artist Bobby Brown. And I, they took me to different places. And one of the places downtown, I guess I took them, that I took the crew to was Keels Pharmacy. And Keels at the time was this independently owned, cool place. I brought everyone down there. We were shooting there and while they were shooting, I was talking to the chemist that was there. And he had a little, a couple lipsticks.

• 23:39Guy Raz?

  And this is before Keels became what is like private equity money or whatever?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Yes, before it was bought by L'Oréal.

• 23:45Guy Raz?

  It was just one shop.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  One shop, family owned.

• 23:48Guy Raz?

  And did it look like a pharmacy?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:49Guy Raz?

  Okay, everyone was wearing white and it was.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 23:51Guy Raz?

  And there was a. Chemist on site.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  There was a chemist on site and he had these lipsticks and I remember touching them. And I said, wow, these are really nice. He said, oh, yeah, I make those. And I said, you make them? And he says, yeah. I said, oh, I would love to be able to make a lipstick. He said, I'll make it for you. I said, I said, all right, I said, what I want, you can't buy. I said, I want something that doesn't smell. I want it to be creamy, but not greasy. I want it to look like lip color. I can't find a lipstick that looks like lip color. And he's like, what do you mean? I said, well, and I pulled out my taupe eye pencil and my pinky blush. And I said, look, when you put this together, if you put a little bit of balm on it and blot it on your lips. He's like, all right, give me those things. And he went home and he sent it to me.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  And I said, oh, my God, I love this. I said, I bet I could sell this. And he said, all right, why don't you sell it for $15? He said, I'll make it. You sell it. You'll get $7.50. I'll get $7.50. I thought, OK, that's a deal. So I had a lipstick that I called brown because I thought it was brown based, not because of my name. And then I thought, everyone's going to love that. And then I said, you know what? Not everyone has the same color lips. And I started studying people's lip color. And then I sat down and I thought about all the different lip colors. And then I said, you know, some people don't like lip color lipstick. They like red, orange. Someone likes a good beige, a pink.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  But I said, you don't need 15 different pinks in your makeup kit. Let me make the ideal pink. Let me make the ideal orange. So I sat down and I thought of 10 different colors. I worked with a chemist. He made these colors. And I thought, all right, let's put a number, 1 to 10, but let me name them. And I wasn't going to name them the way lipsticks are named, you know, cherries in the snow. And I'm like, why don't we call them beige, pink, orange, red? So, you know, raisin, I named them what they look like.

• 25:55Guy Raz?

  So you were doing like more understated shades?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yes, understated. Than what was on the market?

• 26:00Guy Raz?

  What was on the market?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Wearable, by the way, the word wearable. People could put them on and actually look good. How's that for a concept?

• 26:07Guy Raz?

  So you would take like, I'm just trying to, to get the right color to, what was the name of this chemist, by the way?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Steven.

• 26:14Guy Raz?

  Steven. So to get, to get Steven the right color, you would take like, I don't know, paint or, or different makeups and just like rub it together in like a Petri dish or something?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I would, you know, I would, I would either mail it to him, or I would say, do this, and yeah, you know, back and forth, back and forth. He made them for me, and I did everything else.

• 26:33Guy Raz?

  And you said, yeah, make like, how many, like five, 10 sticks?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  I think, you know, he probably made 100 of each color.

• 26:40Guy Raz?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, so no, once we agreed that we would be partners, there was nothing in writing, it was just, wow, this could be interesting. It wasn't anything more than that.

• 26:50Guy Raz?

  And he had like a fabrication plant, or the ability to like make moldings of?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did. I don't, I think he did it in his home, you know, it wasn't, it was his side thing because he was a chemist.

• 27:00Guy Raz?

  And what were you going to sell each stick of lipstick for, again?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  $15.

• 27:04Guy Raz?

  15 bucks?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yes, 15 bucks. And when I first started, my plan was to sell them to models, to editors, and then one day I was having lunch with a girlfriend who was the beauty editor of Glamour magazine at the time, and she said, so what's going on? You know, we'd both had young babies, and I, talking about the kids, and I said, you know, I'm doing, let me show you this thing. She goes, oh, my god, that's so cool. She said, can I write about it?

• 27:29Guy Raz?

  And you had kind of a reputation in the industry because you were a makeup artist.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:35Guy Raz?

  You get this article in Glamour, and what happens?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  People started calling up and ordering lipsticks.

• 27:41Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, it wasn't like, oh, my god, I'm going to be rich, oh, my god, I could pay my mortgage this month. It was just, you know, steady things coming in, and we got a bunch of offers, you know, people wanted to purchase lipsticks. So I don't even think, you know, we sold. 400 of them. I mean, we sold a bunch of them.

• 28:02Guy Raz?

  This is not called Bobby Brown at this point, right?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Yes, it was.

• 28:05Guy Raz?

  It was. It was called Bobby Brown.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  I didn't know what else to call it.

• 28:08Guy Raz?

  You just put your name on the side.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Yes, and that was really cool. And then I meet the lady at Bergdorf, and that's when things actually needed to change.

• 28:18Guy Raz?

  You meet who at Bergdorf?

• 28:20Speaker 01

  I ended up going to a party in the city with some friends and friends that actually, eventually, were going to be our partners in the company. And I met her friend Allison, and I said, "Thanks for inviting me. I'm Bobby." She said, "Nice to meet you." And I said, "What do you do?" And she said, "I'm the cosmetics buyer at Bergdorf Goodman."

• 28:42Guy Raz?

  Wow, oh, that's nice.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Well, I never even shopped at Bergdorf Goodman back then. And I said, "Wow, I'm doing this line of lipsticks. You know, perhaps you want to look at them." And she said, "Love to. Let me bring them in."

• 28:55Guy Raz?

  So what happened? You went, you brought your lipsticks to show her, then a couple days later?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  She brought them in. I mean, I had no press release. I had nothing. She called me back, and she said, "They're really interested. We'd love to take them."

• 29:11Speaker 01

  And that's when I realized I had really changed the way we were doing things. And, you know, I had to find a different way to scale up than the chemist, because that was the only way he knew. So I parted ways with the chemist, and I had to find a lab to recreate the lipsticks the way I wanted. And we needed to find someone to do it. I remember making all these calls, but then one day, I was in an elevator, and I said hi to the girl in the elevator, and she said hi. I think we were on the 11th floor, so we had a few minutes.

• 29:47Guy Raz?

  Elevator in your apartment building?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  In my apartment building in New York City. And I said, "Hi." She said, "Hi." And I said, "What do you do?" She said, "Oh, I work at a cosmetics lab in Queens." And I said, "Oh, do you have a card?" And I had my lipsticks recreated there, and they made my lipsticks. I met her in the elevator.

• 30:16Guy Raz?

  Coming up, more chance meetings for Bobby Brown and how they helped her grow the company, and then eventually, how that company got away from her. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 30:37Guy Raz?

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• 31:19Guy Raz?

  The agents bring speed and scale, and people bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities. It's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on.

• 32:04Guy Raz?

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• 32:49Guy Raz?

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• 33:33Guy Raz?

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• 34:16Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's the early 1990s, and Bobby Brown has come up with 10 new shades of lipstick. She's got a new cosmetics lab to make them and a department store that wants to sell them, Bergdorf Goodman. But in order to get things going, she needs an infusion of cash.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  We pretty much emptied our bank account, which was, I remember 5,000, my husband remembers 10,000. I trust him more than I remember my memory. And we actually partnered with these friends of ours, who one girl was in PR and the husband was in the cosmetics industry. So the four of us partnered together.

• 35:00Guy Raz?

  What were their names?

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Their names were Roz and Ken Landis.

• 35:03Guy Raz?

  And why did you decide that you wanted to partner with other people?

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Because my husband and I did not have the expertise. We had no idea. We were 31-year-old kids with a new baby. He was in law school. He was a real estate developer. I was a makeup artist. I knew how to make these lipsticks. I knew what it should be. And we were friends, this couple that we were friends with, he had been in the cosmetics industry, and she was in PR. So it was a magical pairing. That's how we started the brand.

• 35:40Guy Raz?

  And Bobby Brown is born as a product at Bergdorf Goodman?

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:44Guy Raz?

  And how does it do when it debuts there?

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Well, we thought we would sell 100 lipsticks the first month, which, that was the thought, and we did 100 the first day.

• 35:53Guy Raz?

  And were you in the store?

• 35:55Speaker 01

  We were.

• 35:56Guy Raz?

  On Fifth Avenue, right?

• 35:57Speaker 01

  On Fifth Avenue. And there was no room in the cosmetics department, so they put us on a table outside of the cosmetics department, where I think they had handbags. And so, it wasn't for any other reason, but people thought it was a brilliant genius idea that we marketed ourself apart from the noise of the cosmetics floor.

• 36:18Guy Raz?

  So you could finance it with whatever cash you had, between the four of you, and then you would sell product, and then you would get paid by Bergdorf Goodman. When did it go to the next store?

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Well, we were at Bergdorf, well, we added pencils and then we added eyeshadow. Like, we did everything, not like strategic, but as they came up.

• 36:40Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  And we added them. And we were pretty much with the same lab for most of the time. And then Bergdorf, you know, one day, we were doing so well at Bergdorf Goodman. They said, you know, we're a sister company of Neiman Marcus. They would love to try you in four stores. So we opened up four stores in Neiman's.

• 36:58Guy Raz?

  And a store is like a counter, right?

• 37:00Speaker 01

  A counter, yes. They call them doors, actually. So we opened four doors, four stores, started adding, you know, products. And I would visit the stores and do personal appearances, usually with my husband and my baby or babies, you know, in tow, because we always, you know, I never liked to be apart from them.

• 37:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  And they always came. And I would travel to these markets and I would be on their local TV. I'd be in their newspapers. So it was a full-on, you know, press thing.

• 37:29Guy Raz?

  Were there, did you ever get a vibe from people like, well, who are you?

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Um, certainly, you know, and especially in Dallas, you know, where they would look at me like, she's the plain Jane type, you know, because in Dallas, the makeup, the hair, the jewelry.

• 37:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  You know, it took a while to, you know.

• 37:44Guy Raz?

  And that's Neiman Marcus territory.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  That's Neiman's. That's the fancy stuff, you know. It took a while to be beloved by those women. But also, at the same time, I was becoming a known beauty expert on The Today Show.

• 37:57Guy Raz?

  Ah.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Which was really an major launch in the brand and the business. So the story behind The Today Show was that I wrote my first book.

• 38:09Guy Raz?

  About cosmetics, about makeup?

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I happened to be in Florida doing a personal appearance for one of my makeup products and also for my first book. And I'll never forget, it was in, you know, the Inner Circle, which were the fancy ladies at Neiman Marcus. I finished my speech and I said, any questions? And this little redheaded lady, you know, grandma type, raised her hand and I went back. You know, remember, I put my hand on her shoulder. She was so cute. And she said, yes, I have trouble keeping my lipstick on. How do I do it? And I said, well, and I gave her the answer. And she looked at me and she says, thank you. She said, are you Jewish? And I said, yes, I am. And she said, I've seen you on the Today Show. I've been on once. I said, thank you.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  And she said, as a Jewish, this is off microphone, she said, she said, you've done so much. Is there anything else you want to do? I said, I don't know. I said, I don't know, maybe I'd love to be a regular on the Today Show. She said, honey, Jeff Zucker is my grandson.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Jeff Zucker was the executive producer of the Today Show at the time.

• 39:14Guy Raz?

  Oh, my God.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  And it was a Friday. Monday, I was on the Today Show. I was in my dressing room. You know, my PR team at the time was beyond excited, doing how to put your makeup on something. Probably Katie was interviewing me. Jeff came up and he said, Grammy, you know, wanted me to have you on. I said, that's awesome. And he said, I hear you want to be a regular. I said, I'd love to be a regular. He says, OK, you're a regular. I said, when, when can I come back? He said, how about next month? I said, OK, once a month. He said, OK, fine. I was on the Today Show for about 12 years, 15 years. And honestly, being a beauty expert on the Today Show probably put me on the map.

• 39:57Guy Raz?

  And you did this, at least at the beginning, for free?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Oh, I know. They never, they never paid me a nickel. And I never, ever pushed my brand. They would say Bobby Brown from Bobby Brown Cosmetics. It was an amazing thing because it established me as a beauty expert, not just someone who makes makeup. It was really my expertise. So it separated me, the person, from the brand, which was good, but it also really helped the brand.

• 40:25Guy Raz?

  You, in, in 1995, five years after you first make those 10 lipsticks, you get an offer.

• 40:34Guy Raz?

  I guess you, pretty early on, you guys are approached by big, the big cosmetic companies who wanted to buy your brand. And you, I guess you rejected a couple of offers at the beginning, right?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:47Guy Raz?

  Who, by the way, who were they? Who offered you?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Let's see. There was a lot of talks with Shishado.

• 40:51Guy Raz?

  Oh, yeah. The Japanese company?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yes. A lot of meetings, a lot of talks. No official offer, but a lot of meetings. And then there was a Dallas-based company that tried to buy us, a finance company that basically finally said, if you won't sell to us, we're just going to knock you off with another makeup artist, which they did, which is fine. I'm never afraid of that.

• 41:14Guy Raz?

  Oh, they created a knockoff brand?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, they, well, it was a different brand, but yes, a makeup artist, you know, a well-known makeup artist that created products.

• 41:24Guy Raz?

  Is it still out there on the market?

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, Laura Mercier, you know, was a competitor. I mean, we were very, we were always very different, and that was fine. And

• 41:33Guy Raz?

  They wanted to kind of buy you out and have you as a

• 41:35Speaker 01

  They did. They wanted to buy us. We weren't for sale. We didn't think they were the right people to buy us. And we weren't for sale when, you know, we got the call from Estee Lauder either.

• 41:45Guy Raz?

  This is five years after you launch it. Estee Lauder calls you, and you take the call?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I kind of think it was four years, but yeah.

• 41:52Guy Raz?

  Four years?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  It was four years. So I got a call from Frederick Fekai, who, you know, had a salon and was a well-known hairdresser. And he said, you know, Leonard Lauder would like an introduction to you. Can I do that? And I said, sure, sure. So we were invited at dinner at Leonard Lauder's home. My partner, Roz, and I were invited one night to his home. And him and his wife at the time, Evelyn, we had a beautiful dinner and, you know, fell madly in love, you know, with him, with her. And he basically said, you know, I'm really interested in buying your company. You've done, he said, what he said to me, he says, you've done such an incredible job.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  You are beating us in the stores. And we were beating Estee Lauder and Neiman Marcus at the time. You are beating us. We can't beat you. So we thought we would buy you.

• 42:47Guy Raz?

  And you were open to hearing, hearing offers?

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Well, when Leonard said to me, you know, that we can help you grow your business and you could do what you really love, which is be creative and work on shoots, work, you know, on the brand, but not have to worry about the details, and we could help expand your business, and you can have complete autonomy, you know, which means I could do what I wanted with the company and still be in charge.

• 43:12Guy Raz?

  And they were, they were offering 100%. They were going to buy 100%.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  100%, 100%.

• 43:18Guy Raz?

  And I guess we'll just burst the bubble here. You did sell to them, which we'll get to.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  We did. And no one's ever gotten the number right. And I'm not good at numbers and I can't even tell you what it is. But it was like more than I could ever have imagined.

• 43:31Guy Raz?

  It was a lot of cash.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:32Guy Raz?

  Now, you had to, of course, split it with your partners and then pay your taxes. But you were left with a more cash than you'd ever had in your life.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:39Guy Raz?

  All right. Just pause for a sec. Looking back on that decision in 1995 to sell to Estee Lauder for whatever price they offered you, some people say 74 million, let's say 50 million, whatever it was.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  More.

• 43:51Guy Raz?

  More, 100 million, who cares?

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Something, yeah.

• 43:53Guy Raz?

  Was it the right decision to make?

• 43:54Speaker 01

  100%.

• 43:56Guy Raz?

  It was the right decision to make?

• 43:57Speaker 01

  100%.

• 43:58Guy Raz?

  You couldn't have scaled Bobby Brown to what it is today without that investment?

• 44:02Speaker 01

  I don't know, but I didn't want to.

• 44:05Guy Raz?

  Because?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Because I just wanted to have a fulfilling life with my family, my friends, and my kids.

• 44:13Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  I, I, there's no question. I have no regrets.

• 44:16Guy Raz?

  Becoming a billionaire wasn't, wasn't that, that wasn't like a, yeah.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  No, no, millionaire is fine.

• 44:21Guy Raz?

  Millionaire's great.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  You don't need to be a billionaire.

• 44:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right, so Leonard Lauter writes you a big check. And Estee Lauter now owns Bobby Brown. What does that mean? Does that mean that you then become an employee of Estee Lauter?

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, an employee, yep.

• 44:35Guy Raz?

  They paid you a salary. You were an employee with a 401K and all that stuff.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 44:39Guy Raz?

  And at the beginning, was it-- did you like it?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  I loved it. It was fantastic. I loved it for, you know, out of the 22 years, I probably loved it for 15.

• 44:51Guy Raz?

  And so the idea was, once Estee Lauter was running the business side, you didn't have to worry about going to banks for financing. You didn't have to worry about supply chain. You didn't have to worry about payroll, or accounting, or not filing a letter with the Office of Tax and Revenue. And you didn't want to do any of that stuff.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Oh, I had no interest. I didn't like the big corporate meetings. And I would sit there in some meetings, and I know I used to drive people crazy because I didn't do things the corporate way. And I'm sure people either looked at me as brilliant, or really difficult, or, you know, whatever. You know, the thing is, unfortunately, men could be brilliant when women are considered difficult.

• 45:33Guy Raz?

  I can't imagine that would have been an easy transition.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  It wasn't easy, and I'm sure it was harder for, you know, our partners at the time. They didn't stay very long. You know, we had a little bit of a tough relationship, you know, for a while. Because, you know, you start a company with friends, and, you know, things happen, and things get tough. And it was a tough time. There was a bunch of years where things-- there was a struggle between, you know, Roz and I, and then the four of us. And, you know, after, you know, we sold the company, they moved Roz off the brand.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And she ended up working for the company for a while, and then she left, and--

• 46:24Guy Raz?

  It strained your friendship.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Oh, really strained it.

• 46:28Guy Raz?

  Do you think that it's a good idea, in general, to avoid going to business with friends?

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Yes. It's not a good idea.

• 46:35Guy Raz?

  Okay, all right.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  100%. And, you know, we were not friends for many years after we sold the company. And we just recently got back together the past couple of years. So, you know, life is interesting.

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• 48:20Guy Raz?

  You walked away from Estee Lauder in 2016. Walked away, maybe is not the right term. I don't know.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  I don't even know what the right term is. It was, it was a joint decision.

• 48:29Guy Raz?

  And was that hard? I mean, your name, your company, you built it.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:35Guy Raz?

  And, and that's it, you're out.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Well, like probably two to five years, five years was a struggle.

• 48:41Guy Raz?

  The last five years?

• 48:42Speaker 01

  The last five years was a struggle.

• 48:44Guy Raz?

  But just because?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Just because, you know, it got so big. The company got so big, the corporation got so big. They bought so many other companies. It was growing. It was huge. I am not a follow the leader kind of person. I am the leader, okay? I can't help it. And if I see things not working where it makes sense to me and wasting energy and time, I don't like it. And I like to do it differently. So, you know, and I like to try new things and invent new things. So, yeah, it was always a struggle, always a struggle. And so then the last couple of years were really tough.

• 49:21Guy Raz?

  Like what happened?

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. There was just, you know, they started. I used to hire, approve and hire and interview every person that walked in that brand. And then I didn't anymore. And all of a sudden, there were people working on my brand that I never met before and that I might not have hired. And, you know, it was a struggle. And I tried to let go of the details, but then I realized the details were what makes the company so special. And so I kept thinking I could fix it. So I would walk in every day with an imaginary, you know, tape around my arms saying, okay, let me fix this, let me fix this, let me fix this. I couldn't. And, you know, the last year was really tough.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  I'm sure they were not happy with me. I was not happy with them. And it just was time for both of us to move on.

• 50:14Guy Raz?

  Was it tough in the sense like you dreaded going into the office in the morning?

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:19Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Not only dreaded going in in the morning, I was depleted and spent when I came home. So for two years, my Aunt Alice, who, you know, was 80 at the time, would say to me, it's time. My husband would say, are you ready? Like, my friends would say, come on, enough is enough already. And I kept saying, no, because I think if we could just do this, if I could get this, you know, it could be better. And it didn't get better.

• 50:48Guy Raz?

  Like, I'm imagining, I'm walking down some street in New York. I pass you and I know it's Bobby Brown. I'm like, oh, my God, Bobby Brown. I love your makeup. And you're on your way to work and you would say, oh, yeah, thank you so much. And I wouldn't know that you were miserable.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:03Guy Raz?

  Walking to your powerful job at Bobby Brown.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  No. Honestly, if you really asked me why I left, I needed to be the boss again.

• 51:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Like, when you're the boss, then you're okay. Something doesn't work, we could fix it. So, yes, when I left Bobby, it wasn't easy. The second it happened, where I went down the elevator and I knew that was that second it was done, I had a relief come over me. Like, I can't tell you. The first relief was, oh, my God, all these problems are lifted.

• 51:33Guy Raz?

  All right. So, here's the thing. We've had lots of founders in the company who sold. And then, you know, some were angry with the way it was run. And some have mixed feelings, some indifferent. It depends. But, you know, Ben and Jerry, for example, those guys, they'll knock Ben and Jerry's now and again in a good-natured way, but they will still, they're still the face of the brand, and they're happy to kind of be the brand. Not happy, but they are the brand ambassadors.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:02Guy Raz?

  So, did you ever think of doing that?

• 52:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:04Guy Raz?

  No.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  I had no interest.

• 52:06Guy Raz?

  You wouldn't just...

• 52:06Speaker 01

  It was offered to me.

• 52:07Guy Raz?

  Like, the Bobby Brown, I mean, the face of the, you had no interest in that?

• 52:11Speaker 01

  No interest. I don't care how much money they offered me.

• 52:14Guy Raz?

  Why? Why not?

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Because what I love, I'm an entrepreneur. I like to mold and shape and be in control of how things are.

• 52:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  And so, no. I have, no, I had no interest. You know, honestly, it's been a while. It took, I'm not going to say I walked out the door and it was fine. There was a lot of emotion the first month or two. There was a lot of emotion, you know, the first year. Now, it's, you know, a year and a half. I literally could look at what's happening there, and I unfollowed everything. So, I don't see anything. But when I do see it, it's like, there's nothing there because it's not the company I founded, and it's not the company that, it's not my company. It's their company. And, yes, I'm really proud of the products. I'm proud of everything I did. But, you know, the world has changed, and what they're, the direction they're going is fine, is what they want to do.

• 53:12Guy Raz?

  And by the way, were you prevented, are you prevented from your contract with Bobby Brown of starting a makeup line?

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 53:19Guy Raz?

  You can't, never do that for the rest of your life?

• 53:20Speaker 01

  No, no, that's not accurate, you know, but I, my name, I sold my name.

• 53:25Guy Raz?

  So you can't, you can't use the name Bobby Brown anymore?

• 53:28Speaker 01

  No, no, but I would never, you know, I wouldn't, I would never put, even if I could, I would not put my name on a product anymore because I have to be the face of that product. I don't want to be responsible for everything. I did that already.

• 53:42Guy Raz?

  So Bobby, with all this, the success that you've had in your career, how much of it do you think is because of your, your intelligence, your hard work, and how much of it because of luck?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  I think that my, my intelligence is mostly emotional intelligence, which is, you know, dealing with what's around me. I am incredibly lucky and, you know, fortuitous and grateful and all of those things. I'm not the only one that works hard. I am not the only one that seizes opportunities. I don't know why, you know, things I do are successful. Not everything I've done is successful, but I keep going. And I'm really good, what I'm really good at, and I hope there's other entrepreneurs out there that understand this, I am really good at hiring people that are good at things that I'm not. That's really

• 54:35Speaker 01

  important because I'm not good at everything. And I'm, I told my Aunt Alice, I'm not really good at anything. I'm just good at telling people what to do. I'm really good at telling people what to do.

• 54:46Guy Raz?

  That's Bobby Brown, founder of Bobby Brown Cosmetics. And although she can no longer use her own name as a brand, she can sell her own makeup again. Her non-compete with Estee Lauder ended last year, and she just came out with a brand new line of makeup called Jones Road. And by the way, how lucky were you to have such a cool name, Bobby?

• 55:09Speaker 01

  I never liked my name growing up.

• 55:10Guy Raz?

  You hated it?

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. When they decided what to name me, I was named after my great-grandmother, Berta. Thank God they didn't name me Berta. Not sure anyone would use lipstick called Berta Brown.

• 55:22Guy Raz?

  Berta Brown. You could just, that could be your new line. You could be Berta Brown. Maybe it's time. Maybe Bobby, maybe it's time.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Berta, I'm not sure that would work.

• 55:33Guy Raz?

  And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. It was produced by Rachel Faulkner with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.