Beautyblender: Rea Ann Silva

Working as a Hollywood makeup artist in the early 2000s, Rea Ann Silva designed a sponge that reshaped the face of beauty. She'd been looking for a technique to simplify makeup touch-ups without worrying about the smudges or streaks that were easily detected on HDTV. Her solution? A teardrop-shaped sponge—hand-cut from a foam wedge—that could apply makeup from any angle, and absorb just enough water to be extra-efficient. Actors and fellow makeup artists raved about the sponge, so Rea Ann cold-called an industry insider—who almost hung up on her before agreeing to listen to her idea. That call led to a fruitful partnership that helped Rea Ann launch Beautyblender in Hollywood pro shops, then Ulta and Sephora. Today, the bright pink teardrop sponge is at the center of a multi-million-dollar beauty brand, available in over 50 countries. 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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• 4:23Guy Raz?

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• 5:07Guy Raz?

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• 5:12Speaker 01

  I cold called them and I said, my name is Rhian, and I'm a makeup artist, and I have an idea. And they were like, I could just, I could hear the sigh on the other end of the phone. You know, and she was trying to basically get off the phone with me. And I, you know, I said to her, I said, well, who designs your makeup sponges? You never had a makeup artist help you design a tool to apply makeup for your companies? And she said, well, no, actually, we never have. And I said, OK, so then maybe you want to listen to me. Maybe you want to hear my idea.

• 5:53Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:05Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how a Hollywood makeup artist figured out a better way to apply makeup with a teardrop-shaped sponge and grew that idea into Beauty Blender, a multimillion-dollar cosmetics brand.

• 6:27Guy Raz?

  If you happened to walk into a big-box electronics store in the early 2000s, you might remember being slightly blown away by the new televisions on display, because at the time, HDTV was just getting popular. And when you looked at those sets, even from across the store, the super crisp pictures would like pop off the screen. But there was one problem, at least for the people onscreen, the actors and news anchors and talk show hosts, because high-def resolution made every pimple, every pore, every stray bit of stubble that much more visible on screen. And the makeup that was used to cover all those imperfections, well, you could usually see that, too.

• 7:10Guy Raz?

  So at the time, the makeup artists who worked in TV were struggling to figure out how to deal with all of this. And today's guest, Rian Silva, she was one of those makeup artists. In the early 2000s, Rian was working in Hollywood as head of makeup on the sitcom Girlfriends. And she was trying to come up with a way to apply makeup so that it wouldn't show up in high definition. And the way she figured this out was by inventing a special tool, a tool that was so small and so simple, it's almost hard to believe that it became a multimillion-dollar business. Because the tool, it was a sponge, a sponge, a sponge that is used to apply makeup, except Rian designed one shaped like a teardrop.

• 7:55Guy Raz?

  And that shape, believe it or not, kind of changed the world of makeup. Pretty soon, other makeup artists wanted it. Rian called the brand Beauty Blender, and eventually, her sponges got picked up by the big beauty stores, including Ulta and Sephora. But how she built a multimillion-dollar business is also an incredibly amazing story that includes NFL Hall of Famer Eric Dickerson, a Saudi prince, a cameo from Rick James, and years of struggle as a single mother. Rian Silva grew up in a working-class family in Southern California in the 1960s and 70s. And as a teenager, she didn't really have any serious ambitions.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I really didn't have a direction. My dad was a mechanic, an auto mechanic. He was like the Fonz, you know, in like Happy Days. Like, he slicked his hair back, he raced motorcycles, he raced boats, he raced cars. He ended up being a mechanic. He came from very humble, you know, very humble background. And the same with my mom. My mom was a waitress. And, you know, I think they were kind of of the mindset that having a trade was the way to go. They didn't, there was nobody in their history and their family that had gone to college.

• 9:15Guy Raz?

  And after high school, I guess it was your mom who, who kind of encouraged you to go, to go into a trade, right? To go to a fashion school in LA, right?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Mm hmm, yeah. I think she started thinking about what is, what is she gonna do? She can't just get married and have kids. Like, you know, what is she gonna do? Because my mom was very kind of, I think, she wished she had more opportunity. So she was the one that found FIDM, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. And my mom was a very fashionable person. And I think that's part of the reason why she worked. Her and her sisters liked to shop. So they liked fashion. She saw that I, I enjoyed fashion too. And I was also a sketcher. Like, I liked to draw a little bit. And I think she put those things together and then, you know, found out about the school. And, um, yeah, she marched me down there.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  One day, we signed up and she took a loan out, you know, to, to afford for me to go to that school. And that's where I went for a couple of years.

• 10:18Guy Raz?

  Tell me about how you got into makeup. From what I understand, it started, you got a job selling perfume at a department store. What department store was it?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think it was an old one called Bullocks.

• 10:37Guy Raz?

  Bullocks, Bullocks, I remember Bullocks. I grew up in Southern California.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Downtown. Anyway, I got a job and as a perfume model, they dress you up and they give you a bottle of perfume and you spray people. But spraying people with perfume is a great way to live a solitary life because nobody wants you to spray them with perfume.

• 10:59Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Most people just like put their hand up and say, no, thank you, no, no, no. So, you know, I quickly realized like this is really a horrible job because I'm not making any friends. I'm walking around in high heels all day, making minimum wage. I'm sick to my stomach at the end of the day smelling this perfume. But I noticed that the girls in the cosmetic counters, you know, they were laughing and people loved them because there was this positive experience going on with the consumer. They were selling product, which meant they were making commissions and more money and they loved their job. I was like, that is what I need to be doing. I don't need to be spraying people with perfume.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  I need to somehow find my way onto the cosmetic floor and, long story short, you know, fake it till you make it. I convinced someone to hire me in the department store. So I got a little bit of experience there.

• 11:56Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so you switch over to selling cosmetics at Bullocks. And I think around this time, you also moved to a new apartment. And I guess by chance, in that apartment, you meet someone who works in the movie business? Is that right?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I met this woman who was a makeup artist. She lived in the building. She lived in West Hollywood. And so I, it was very interesting because I got to see two slices of life when it comes to makeup artistry. You can work retail, or you can be lucky enough to live in Los Angeles where you can be in production.

• 12:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  So I was able to see, okay, this girl that I met, she goes on set and she works and she does makeup. And as my friendship went on with my friend who was the makeup artist, and I met other makeup artists, I started to focus my attention to moving in that direction because their life seemed really exciting. They were working with, you know, all kinds of different producers, different jobs, celebrities, and I thought, and they were making great money. I was like, wow, that's, you know, that's, that's how I actually got the bug or the interest in makeup.

• 13:08Guy Raz?

  Hmm. And I think we're talking like somewhere, this is like somewhere in the early 1980s at this point. And I guess you decide to leave school to, to leave the Fashion Institute so you could concentrate on, on makeup. But I guess around this time, you also ended up going to London and spending time there for a while. How did, how did that happen?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was doing makeup jobs, retail makeup jobs, and I met a Saudi prince.

• 13:41Guy Raz?

  Wait, where?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  In Newport Beach.

• 13:43Guy Raz?

  Just in, like hanging out in Newport Beach?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Just hanging out. It was the craziest thing. So I don't know, but if you recall, in the early 80s, late 70s, the US had started to do a lot of business with Saudi Arabia. And a lot of the royal family and, you know, politicians and, and important people were sending their kids, mainly their sons, to the United States to go to college.

• 14:13Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  And socially, I had met this one guy, and it wasn't, he wasn't like anybody I dated or anything. But he would invite a group of friends to come to Europe, and he paid for everything.

• 14:27Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, living in Newport Beach at that time, too, you have to remember, I'm not a blond haired, blue eyed yuppie girl. So I can only imagine when they saw me, and I heard this over and over again, you know, they'd be like, where are you from? Are you, you know, they would try to speak Arabic to me or Persian. I'm like, no, I'm Mexican. And they'd be like, wait, you're Mexican? You look like one of us. So I think that was their initial attraction to me was like, there's somebody that looks like us, you know? And then I actually ended up meeting somebody that I fell in love with. And I thought I was going to get married and move to Saudi Arabia and live happily ever after with this person. So I kind of didn't think about fashion design anymore. But then that didn't work

• 15:11Speaker 01

  out. So, so now fast forward to coming back to America where I had been gone for a couple of years. I'd, I'd lived in London. I had a flat in London. And I came back-

• 15:21Guy Raz?

  What were you, what were you doing there, by the way?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  I was, I was living my life. I wasn't working. I had a boyfriend who supported me. And we were going to get married and I was going to move to Saudi Arabia.

• 15:33Guy Raz?

  Wow. And was, was your boyfriend a member of the royal family? Or was just a, well, sort of a wealthy Saudi?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he was just a, a wealthy Saudi. His dad was like the attorney to the king.

• 15:44Guy Raz?

  Wow. I mean, and that was, that, so that was in the, in the early eighties, you were kind of living in London, hanging out with this guy.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  And my parents were freaking out. They knew nothing about Saudi Arabia.

• 15:54Guy Raz?

  And they were like, what are you doing in London? Who is this guy? What's going on?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  They're like, oh, my God, you go to Saudi Arabia, we're never going to see you again. What are you doing?

• 16:02Guy Raz?

  And so, what, you were what, 20, 21, and it, and it kind of fell apart? And you came back to LA?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. I loved this guy so much, and we're still friends to this day. It just wasn't for me going to work because I, I did want to have a career. I didn't know what that was going to be. But in my heart and soul, my intuition told me, look, you have more to do than go to Saudi Arabia and, you know, have a bunch of kids and be the one he's leaving in Saudi Arabia when he goes to Europe and parties. You know, it's like-

• 16:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah, that would have been, that would have been a difficult life also.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:39Guy Raz?

  All right, all right. So you you find yourself back in LA. And and let me let me ask you about about that time in your life. Because I I think shortly after you you broke up with the guy in London, you began dating someone new, a football player, NFL football player Eric Dickerson. I think I think he was already pretty famous at that point. How did you? How did you meet? How did that relationship begin?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  So I go out one night with my cousin to this place called El Privado, which was the second floor of Carlos and Charlie's on Sunset Boulevard on a Monday night. So I'm hanging out and I'm meeting a lot of different people in LA. One of the people that I met, this is going to sound crazy, but it was Rick James. I met Rick James and-

• 17:28Guy Raz?

  Rick James, the Rick James, super freak.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  And the thing about Rick is everybody knows like he is wild, right? We weren't wild. So the way we got introduced to Eric was, well, I got introduced to Eric was, Mr. Just Say No To Drugs, I want to introduce you to Mrs. No Say No To Drugs. This is Rhian, and I think you guys are going to get along just great. And we just sat and talked.

• 17:52Guy Raz?

  And Eric Dickerson was known because of for being Mr. Saying No To Drugs because he was an athlete?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Well, he was the he was the like spokesperson for the Nancy Reagan Just Say No To Drugs campaign.

• 18:03Guy Raz?

  Really? Wow. Okay. Wow. I didn't know. I mean, I grew up in LA. I used to worship Eric Dickerson because I was a Rams fan as a kid. Was he, when you met him, was he, did you know who he was?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  No, I knew nothing about football. And I think really that's why it kind of worked.

• 18:21Guy Raz?

  And all right, so you meet this guy who was already pretty well known in LA. And would of course, for people to know, Eric Dickerson is a Hall of Fame, Hall of Fame or running back. And what, you guys start dating? He you kind of became a couple?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we we started dating, you know, look, he's an athlete, right? I mean,

• 18:46Speaker 01

  there is no shortage of women around, let's say that. But we started dating and, you know, one year went by, two years went by, three years went by, and we were still dating, you know, we actually got engaged. And I ended up getting pregnant and-

• 19:05Speaker 01

  He asked me to marry him, you know, brought me on the Oprah Winfrey Show. And I thought, OK, I'm going to be an NFL wife and a mom.

• 19:15Guy Raz?

  Wow. Wow, you went on Oprah.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:20Guy Raz?

  It's amazing. So, obviously, the relationship didn't last. You guys did not get married, right?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  No, it didn't work out. And when it went bad, it went real bad.

• 19:32Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so you find yourself, what, mid 20s as a single mom?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had Erica when I was, I gave birth to her when I, we're both October babies. And she was born in October, so I had just turned 25. So, what ended up happening was, yeah, I had to figure out what I was going to do because I didn't think he was going to support me at all. And so, at this point, I had continued to work doing makeup at a retail level. And this is when I kind of like put it into like turbo and like, OK, I need to figure out how to get into production.

• 20:12Guy Raz?

  So, how did you do that? I mean, LA, obviously, the world capital or one of the world capitals, because I think you could make the argument that Bollywood is another one, but a world capital of the entertainment industry. And so, presumably, there was work for makeup artists. But I can't imagine it's easy to get into. There's probably unions and there's probably, right, there's lots of people who want that work. How did you break into that, to that industry?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  So, you're right. And if you think about the time we were in, you know, early to mid 80s, it was the MTV revolution. And you're absolutely right, there are unions for makeup artists and literally for anybody who works behind the scenes. However, there are non-union projects that go on as well. And it was the MTV revolution, like I was saying. And I started to understand through my research, you know, where these music videos were getting made, where the production houses were, what their names were. And I'm kind of bold. I would just walk. Walk in and say, hey, I'm a makeup artist. Can I talk to, you know, the head of production or somebody there? I'm looking for work. I just want to leave my resume. If you guys ever need anybody.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  You know, the, these were the days when you walked in somewhere. You, you didn't do it online, which

• 21:28Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  You know, I find it so hard for young people now because nobody ever gets that eye to eye.

• 21:34Guy Raz?

  No.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  You know, kind of connection with people anymore. You don't really get to know anything about a person other than whatever is, you know, in front of you on your computer. But I would walk in.

• 21:45Guy Raz?

  So what were some of the video shoots that you got jobs on? Like, what was the, do you remember the first one where they're like, okay, yeah, we could bring you on?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Well, the first artist I ever worked with was Tina Marie.

• 21:56Guy Raz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Woody Johnston, dear friend of mine, was her road manager at the time. And he was like, well, Reanne, I'm gonna give you a chance because she's looking for someone. And we, we don't have a lot of money. And would you do it? I said, I'll do it for free, Woody, you know, just to get in. Then I started working, doing some artists at Motown. I did the Good Girls. And I did a ton, a ton of musical artists at Motown and people that you wouldn't know because they come and go. But, you know, they were churning out artists and developing artists like, like mad. People that would need photo shoots, album cover shoots, press shoots.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Like, I mean, eventually, over a very fast time, over a couple of years, my skill set increased greatly. I mean, listen, I did the California Love video with Tupac and Dr. Dre where it was, you know, all Mad Max.

• 22:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  But that was easy compared to like when I had to do Meatloaf and make him look 20 years younger.

• 23:02Guy Raz?

  And, and you would come with your own kit of makeup, presumably? And did you, I mean, were you bringing in like really expensive, high end makeup or, or what?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  So I did have a kit and I did purchase makeup according to the job. So I eventually accumulated what I call a dead body worth of makeup. I mean, I would drag around, you know, 80 pounds, 90 pounds of makeup with me everywhere. Before it was very, almost like, like the businesses were very separate. The makeups were very different according to the medium you were working in.

• 23:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah, we, we, we interviewed Bobby Brown on the show maybe five years ago. And I remember her talking about how You know, when she started out as a makeup artist, it was about showing makeup. And then eventually, she was kind of interested in using makeup that didn't look like makeup. And that was a big change, I think, in the 90s, right? That it was, you almost didn't want to look like you were wearing makeup. It was so good that it looked natural.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  For sure. So if you think about the history of makeup, makeup artists were basically men, for the most part, and hairdressers were women. And it's reflected in the pay rates. The makeups that were designed by men back in the day, and the heavier makeups, when you go back and you look at black and white, silver screen makeup, all the way to, like, say, the 70s or 80s, right? When you're talking about Bobby Brown. Those makeups had all a red or pink cast to them. And that's why there wasn't a lot of great darker makeups.

• 24:41Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  However, what Bobby did was, what was so genius with her is that she started this trend of having makeup look natural by using yellow-toned makeup. So all of her formulations were based in yellow tone. And that's when women and consumers and people that used makeup themselves were able to kind of understand a little more about color matching and being able to have colors that actually looked like their skin.

• 25:14Guy Raz?

  You're, I mean, as you were sort of getting more and more in higher-profile jobs, like doing the Tupac video for California Love, which, anyone listening, just pause and go watch it. Because it's so, it's like Mad Max and Burning Man.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  It is.

• 25:33Guy Raz?

  It's such a wow video.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Wait, and they flew Tupac from jail to the desert, right there. We had a big circle of trailers. He landed. It was crazy.

• 25:44Guy Raz?

  And then, like, you did Brandy and you did...

• 25:48Speaker 01

  I did Eve, I did Brandy. I worked with Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton. I worked with Sean "Diddy" Combs for about 12 years. And all of his artists. I did Faith Evans. I mean...

• 26:01Guy Raz?

  And were you making a pretty good living?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I was making six figures at this point.

• 26:05Guy Raz?

  Wow, yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I was working all the time. I had spent a lot of time away from America. You know, production is not like being a CEO, you know.

• 26:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  They tell you when to eat, you show up and you show up and you rap when they say rap. So, you know, sometimes it was a 12 hour, 14, 16, 18. Sometimes I had jobs that were almost 24 hours. It was exhausting.

• 26:29Guy Raz?

  And you had very high profile people, so it was probably a lot of pressure.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it was, it was crazy when I think about it now, but you know, at the time, I was in it, man. I loved it so much and it was like, almost like a game to me to be able to see how much I could do.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the sheer amount of work and my agents were all about it. They were like, okay, you think you can do it? Okay, bet, let's make that commission. Come on, let's do it. How many assistants you need? Okay, let's do it.

• 27:02Guy Raz?

  All right, so here's, here's what I'm wondering, because I think there was a kind of a turning point in 2000. I think HDTV started to be used, like, and HDTV, I remember this, I remember the first time I saw like a newscaster on an HDTV and you could see their makeup. Now you don't, that doesn't happen anymore, but I remember seeing that. And that probably really changed how makeup was applied, right?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. That recognition that you have was the singular reason why I was hired to do the show Girlfriends, where I created Beauty Blender. So makeups, how we talked about it a few minutes ago, early on for film, were consistency wise different, more opaque, more pink based, more creamy, and you would use a lot of powder to powder them down, right? Because literally you were creating like a mask on someone's face because you wanted to recreate the canvas, right? When you use that technique in high definition,

• 28:13Speaker 01

  it does exactly what you said. You just see, you see nothing but like crazy looking makeup, right?

• 28:19Guy Raz?

  It's like sitting next to somebody who's just been on a TV set and didn't get their makeup off.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you have these people that either look like they were wearing a shit ton of makeup or people that just look terrible, like they just didn't do anything. So how did you find that balance, right? So one of the skill sets that I taught myself during this career of mine was to airbrush makeup. And airbrushing makeup is the art of spraying makeup onto a face.

• 28:50Guy Raz?

  Right, like literally an airbrush?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Literally spraying it on with an airbrush. It was used for many, many years prior to beauty makeup in special effects. And it creates a seamless look of makeup. Like there's no line of demarcation, like what you were talking about a few minutes ago. So although airbrushing was a wonderful technique to make makeup look natural and high definition, it's not a practical set tool. So in the morning, in my trailer on the back lot of Paramount, I can be spraying people in my trailer. My music is on, we're chit chatting and laughing, getting ready for the day. But the minute I walk on set and the rolling sound, I can't turn my compressor on.

• 29:38Guy Raz?

  No.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  So how do you do touch ups? How do you maintain that airbrush finish? When you can't turn your airbrusher on, but you have to do touch ups in between takes? What ended up happening was you were still hand applying the makeup because you were touching up the makeup with your brushes and the old way that we had always been applying makeup.

• 30:02Guy Raz?

  I want to, I want to get to the, sort of how you kind of came up with this idea in a moment. But just to, just so I understand, I mean, I, I think, and for people who don't wear makeup. I'm gonna try and explain my experience, which was in 2003, I went into television for a few years as a TV reporter and I was taught how to apply makeup and I was brought to a department store and we, I bought a bunch of, they bought me a bunch of MAC makeup and I remember there was a, there was concealer and there was powder and, and I can't remember what else. There was a brush in there, but there was also a triangle sponge. And that was what I used to like, put the concealer under my eyes and like, anywhere

• 30:46Guy Raz?

  I had like, you know, alongside my nose and I was taught how to do this. And I go, I'm gonna be honest, I got pretty good. But it was this triangular sponge, right?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  The wedge.

• 30:55Guy Raz?

  Right, the wedge, okay. So, and, and so what I'm trying to understand is that was what presumably you used and lots of other makeup artists use. So what was wrong with that shape? Why couldn't that shape do what you needed to do?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Well, the thing about that shape, right, first of all, we never use the wedge, just like you get it out of the package. Makeup artists always cut and bevel the sharp edge off of the wedge. That's something the kids at MAC don't teach you.

• 31:25Guy Raz?

  They, no one taught me that.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  They don't get taught that. See, this is where there's that separation between fashion makeup, TV, film, you know, there's, and these are the kind of like proprietary trade secrets that makeup artists keep that make themselves feel different from that person over there and that person over there, whatever, right? So basically what we're talking, if you, it taught, and if you were ever to go to a makeup school, a school of makeup for film and television, you would have been classically taught to take that wedge and take some scissors and bevel the edges so that there's no straight lines of demarcation. Because it can look good to your eye.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  When you go in on a close up and you're in a theater and a face is like 300 feet by I don't know how many feet, you see those lines of demarcation. You try to work as perfectly as you can. So you cut those edges off the wedge to kind of ensure the fact that there's going to be a softer line of demarcation. So Beauty Blender is a wedge that I trimmed into a teardrop. The sponge itself has no edges. We round the sponge. And listen, I didn't create cutting sponges into round shapes. Every makeup artist before me historically has had to cut sponges. But it's just something that happened for me.

• 32:47Guy Raz?

  All right. So you've got this kind of rounded sponge that you've just cut, right? And I guess it would kind of look like a teardrop or like an egg shape. And from what I understand, around this time, you went to some kind of workshop where you get another idea about how to use this sponge that involves water. Can you explain that? What was the idea that you got?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I went to this one seminar with this really prolific makeup artist who's still working today. Her name is Kelsey Fry. And the thing that she said that stuck in my head was that she would wet her sponge. I know it sounds crazy, everybody. And everybody always says to me, why are you wetting your sponge when you're using this makeup? Because it's going to dilute, it's going to eh eh eh. And she said, but trust me when I tell you, this works. And by the way, it's not like a drippy sponge. Like you wet the sponge, you wring it out, and you towel dry it. But what ends up happening is then the sponge starts to repel the makeup. So it's then pushing the makeup onto the

• 34:01Speaker 01

  face as opposed to grabbing the makeup and trying to suck it in. So I don't know, is that like physics or something? Like, I don't, I don't know.

• 34:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  I'm a bit of a sponge scientist now, Guy, I have to say.

• 34:13Guy Raz?

  You are. No, but it is very, it is really scientific. It's really complex and it's things that people don't think about. They're just watching a TV show. You're what, when you, but I bet when you watch TV, you're like, oh, that makeup sucks.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  I'm the worst one.

• 34:27Guy Raz?

  Right?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  I can see continuity. I can see that's a different makeup artist this day. That, that was a different day. That was a different hand. This is not good. Did they not see the continuity? Like, it's bad. So with the sponge, when you wet it, like I said, it's now pushing the makeup onto your skin. So you have control of the makeup. You can thin it out or you can just keep adding more to it to, to get more coverage. So that was the lesson that I learned in that class. And I went back that next week to my show and I started experimenting with it and it worked. And I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing.

• 35:10Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, Rhiann pitches her new technique to a potential new partner who nearly hangs up on her before deciding to hang on the line. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 35:37Guy Raz?

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• 36:19Guy 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.

• 37:04Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together, and that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 37:49Guy Raz?

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• 38:08Guy Raz?

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• 38:52Guy Raz?

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• 39:14Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2001, and Rhiannon's working on the TV show Girlfriends and perfecting a tool to improve the look of makeup in hi-def. She's using this teardrop-shaped sponge that she designed herself. And to help the makeup last longer, she's wetting the sponge first.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  It allowed me to not have to apply more makeup on the actors, but rather kind of just redistribute the makeup that already was there, which, if you can imagine, take after take, scene after scene, you don't have time to recreate a whole look. So you're adding makeup throughout the day and trying to keep these makeup levels looking natural. In hi-def especially is very difficult. So it just made, you know, it made the whole job so much easier for everybody.

• 40:08Guy Raz?

  So basically, you were taking just like rectangular sponges and cutting them into like an oval, rounded shape. But it wasn't just the shape that mattered. It was also the absorption, the ability to absorb liquid.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Well, that's where the creation of Beauty Blender came in. So

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Yes, I was sitting on set with my two or three other makeup artists working for me and we were cutting sponges as we were sitting on, you know, the sidelines of the set during takes and we would just cut them for the next day because you couldn't use them over and over again. And so, one of the things that I thought about was the material. And I realized that the material that was hydrophilic, meaning it absorbed water and got softer and fluffier with the absorption of water, I started realizing that those materials actually gave a better makeup result.

• 41:08Guy Raz?

  Hmm. What I'm wondering is even before you, we're going to talk about this in a minute, how you figured out how to make them, but before that happened, when did you, I mean, you're cutting out sponges in certain shapes and what, at what point did you say, you know, I should turn this into a business? I mean, you had a makeup business, you were an artist. When did you say to yourself, I should see if I can like turn this into a product?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  So, I had already started, before Beauty Blender even was an idea, I had already started to think about, how long am I going to do this? How long am I going to be able to do this? How am I going to keep the schedule? And how am I going to keep making money? So, I had started to think about alternative, kind of like, ways to create passive income.

• 41:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  At the same time, I was cutting these wedge sponges and trying to figure out how, how can I make this a business? Because I think that there are going to be so many other makeup artists behind me and this experiment that I'm on, on this TV show, that are going to need these tools. Because, you know, the future was like the, you know, the buzz on all the sets is like, everything's going high def and you need a red camera and you need this and you need that and everything's going to be different. And, you know, how, how can I create a business for myself and take advantage of this, you know, technology that's going to take over?

• 42:41Guy Raz?

  So, you were, I mean, you were already thinking, what could I do? And this, this thing, kind of, all these things came together, it was like, wet sponge, shape. But initially, your idea was, I'm gonna make this for the industry. This is gonna be an industry tool.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. I dared to dream on occasion, like, wow, what if this could be a consumer product, but way too complicated for them to understand? Like, it's so far in makeup artistry. I don't think anybody would, you know, why would they trade this out with whatever they're doing now? Like, I just, I knew that my niche and my, you know, little slice of, like I said, passive income would come from the professional community that understood what I was doing.

• 43:27Guy Raz?

  All right, but here's the thing. This is like, early 2000s, and you know, this is pre, not pre-internet, but it's like, it's not, it's like, the internet's like, it's 1.0, right? And so, a little harder.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  It was pretty pre, it was definitely pre-social media.

• 43:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah. If you wanted to make something, how did you start? Like, what did you, I mean, you knew this, you knew these products as a makeup artist, and you knew who made them. So, how did you start to, like, research what you, what to do next? Like, where to get them made, and what material to use, and like, what, how to design it, and all that stuff?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  So, you know, I used to travel all over the world with my clients, and I used to collect sponges from every country, every city, because I was actually looking for a manufacturer to help me with this idea. But in doing that collection, I also started paying attention to the back of the packages, like, where it's made, where, who distributes it.

• 44:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  So, there was this one company called Victoria Vogue.

• 44:39Guy Raz?

  Victoria Vogue.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Was based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

• 44:44Guy Raz?

  And what was Victoria Vogue?

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Victoria Vogue was a company that manufactured and distributed beauty implements. So, that meant they created sponges for cosmetic companies, but the sponges that they created would fit into the compacts. Like, think of a powder compact, and you have a little thin sponge in there. You know, any, any tool that supported your beauty routine. So...

• 45:11Speaker 01

  I called 411 and asked for the phone number to Victoria Vogue. Then I cold called them and asked to speak to somebody in their product development department. And they said, well, okay, but who are you? And I said, my name is Rianne and I'm a makeup artist and I have an idea. And they were like, I could just, I could hear the sigh on the other end of the phone.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  And they said, hold please. And then this lady came on and said, can I help you? And I was like, yes, you know, I'm a makeup artist. I'm a professional, I work in film and television and I have an idea. And I need someone to help me get this made. And she, you know, she said, well, that's great, honey. We hold over 400 patents. I'm sure whatever you have designed already is covered in our patents. So I don't know that we could help you much. You know, and she was trying to basically get off the phone with me. And I, you know, I said to her, I said, well, okay, but wait a minute. Who designs your makeup sponges? And she stopped for a second.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  She said, well, we have product engineers. And I said, so you never had a makeup artist help you design a tool to apply makeup for your companies? And she said, well, no, actually, we never have. And I said, okay, so then maybe you want to listen to me. Maybe you want to hear my idea. And she just kind of was like, I guess I was being pushy. And she was like, okay, what's your idea? And I said, oh, okay, so I have an NDA. Cause I did, like, my friend was like, Rand, you have to, you have to definitely have them sign this NDA.

• 46:59Guy Raz?

  Cause otherwise they could steal the idea from you.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:01Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was like, okay, so I, I got, I got a little like, I don't know, like do it yourself NDA or something like that. And I had an NDA and she was like, oh, well, this is going to have to go back to our legal department. I don't know if they're going to sign it, but I'll get back to you.

• 47:16Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  So we hung up and, and then she got back to me, you know, I don't know, it was probably a couple of days later. And she goes, you know, I was thinking about what you said. And I've shared your NDA and they they signed it. So why don't you share your idea with me now?

• 47:33Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  And when I did, she said, oh, my God, that's like the palm slap to my forehead. Why didn't we think of this? And I said, because you're not makeup artists.

• 47:41Guy Raz?

  What were you seeking from them? You were hoping that maybe they would make them.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Collaboration.

• 47:48Guy Raz?

  OK, so so they would maybe like license this idea from you? And what did you present to her? Did you like fax over a picture?

• 47:55Speaker 01

  No, I sent I cut a sponge and I sent it to her. I mean, we'd been cutting these.

• 47:59Guy Raz?

  So and and and but it but it was cut by hand. So it wasn't like machined and smooth and. But it was basically this idea was sort of that egg shaped or that teardrop shape of a sponge. And maybe this is a stupid question. But why do you think that right away she recognized that this was different and unique? I mean, I'm trying to understand like when when she said face palm, you know, plant on my forehead like, why? What did she see in it immediately?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Right, so I, you know, I went into detail about why the shape and what I was doing and the show I was working on in high definition. Unbeknownst to me, the company had charged her for finding to find innovation. So she was looking for innovation within this space already. But she didn't imagine like, because I never told her it's a 3D round ergonomic egg shaped sponge. So when she saw Beauty Blender, she recognized like this is something really different.

• 49:05Guy Raz?

  All right, so you send one out over there. And this is Catherine Bailey who gets it.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:10Guy Raz?

  At Vogue, Victoria Vogue.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:13Guy Raz?

  But still, there was no like Catherine didn't say, what do you want from us? Like, at what point did she say, OK, this looks cool. Now what? Like, what then?

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so timing is so important, right? So again, unbeknownst to me, Victoria Vogue was suffering at the time. And she had gone back to her bosses. Apparently, this is what she told me. She'd gone back to her bosses and they wanted nothing to do with my project. But if you want to work on it, you can work on it, but you need to work on it on your time. You can't work on it on our time. And it'll be your project. We want nothing to do with it, which was such a blessing to me because I was not tied to Victoria Vogue. However, I was able to work with Catherine, who had all of this knowledge about sponges

• 50:07Speaker 01

  and tools. So we then continued to discuss the development of Beauty Blender on her free time.

• 50:15Guy Raz?

  What I'm trying to understand, Riann, is how did, so Catherine was working for Victoria Vogue and how did she, this is sort of like a side project she was working on, but like, what was in it for her? I mean, what would incentivize her to work with you on this when her own company was like?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Eh. She was probably looking to exit the business anyway. And then I come along and there's something here that interests her and it can be hers. And there's a, there's a part and a heart to Kathy where she's a mentor. And I think that she saw me as a young makeup artist with an idea, single mother, just wanting to help. I don't think that she had any kind of preconceived collateralization of it because she literally worked for me, Guy, for years without a dime. It was kind of a, it was very much a labor of love for both of us.

• 51:17Guy Raz?

  And how long did it take before you sort of landed on, on the right blend of material and shape and like six months, a year?

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Oh, God, no, it was a couple of years. Yeah. It, it almost felt like it was going to take forever at one point because, you know, when, when you, when you're making something that has never been made before. And you don't have a huge investor behind you throwing money at labs and manufacturing companies. You're relying on the goodness and the kindness of people that believe in your idea to make the time to, to help you make that idea happen. And it's not happening in that nine to five space. You know what I mean? They have to do it in their off time. So I remember, I remember going to set because I was still working.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  I was still very, very active in my makeup career and, and they would, my friends, the other makeup artists would be like, what are you doing here? Aren't you starting a company? I'm like, girl, I still gotta work.

• 52:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  So in the beginning, when I first decided that this should, you know, I wanted to try to make this a business. I had invited another makeup artist to work with me. I eventually bought her out, but we had both, I think we both invested like $75,000. And when you're working all the time, you don't have time to spend money. So, you know, and there was no internet. I couldn't be on my phone buying things. So, you know, I amassed and saved some money to buy a house and I mortgaged my house and that's how I did it. I'm still working with the same fabricator and manufacturer from the very beginning.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Like they've grown with me in this business and, you know, they took a chance on me. It was really them on off hours, you know, from three different entities. When you talk about the foaming and, and the fabricator and then Kathy, like all three of them were very much just, I don't know, being philanthropic? I don't know. I look at a guy, I look and I think like I'm the luckiest person in the world.

• 53:35Guy Raz?

  All right, 2000, I think, sort of four or five, you start to, you have them, and you're using them because you're working as a makeup artist. But how are you, like, marketing it? And because you needed to sell them and you needed people to buy them. Were you just kind of selling them to other makeup artists?

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm, yeah. So, we have these pro stores that we create POs from the studios for. And the studios then pay for all of our supplies, right?

• 54:07Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  I had created very strong relationships with three or four of the main pro stores in the United States because by this time I was a very active makeup artist, working all over the place. So, they were my first clients, my first customers. And people were asking if they carried the product because I would give them out to makeup artists. So, in a way, that was, it was the pro community was my marketing. Like, I would be, like, feeding them sponges and they would be using them and they would want more. And then, that's just really how it happened. I had to have a place to sell them. I didn't have a website. I mean, even to this day, my digital, my e-commerce business is the smaller part of my business.

• 54:50Guy Raz?

  All right, here's what I'm wondering. This is a product that is, it's unique, right? And we've done this in the show. We've had, you know, Randy Hetrick of TRX talk about the TRX straps. This is a unique product that you invent. And it's going to be really revolutionary for the makeup industry. And you don't patent it. And it strikes me that it immediately, once people caught wind of it, this would be copied. First of all, why didn't you patent it?

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's not that I didn't patent it, it's that I wasn't awarded a patent. I tried to patent it for years.

• 55:30Guy Raz?

  And it kept getting rejected?

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a conflict. There was a conflict. There was a patent owned by a company that, and this is the craziest thing, and this is why I fought so long and hard about it. But- There was a medical ear cleaner that was like, if you can envision like, almost like a Q-tip, only bigger. It was like, it had a little handle and then on top of the stick, where the Q-tip would be, was a foam teardrop sponge.

• 56:06Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  And that was my conflict. And so, the ear cleaner people wouldn't sell me their patent. And so, I just, I was never able to get one. And I'll tell you, like I was saying, I was able to create real brand recognition during this time where we were patent pending.

• 56:25Guy Raz?

  How? How were you able, how were you able to do that?

• 56:27Speaker 01

  Because I kept selling Beauty Blenders to pros.

• 56:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  You know, some, some people would say, "Don't sell anything," you know, wait.

• 56:36Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  But I just kept selling. So cosmetic companies, they had, they had started to notice Beauty Blender, you know, backstage at Fashion Week. They'd started to notice Beauty Blender. But none of the big companies had like swooped in and really thought that there was any real revenue generating business there. So I didn't have any competition from, from them. So I just kept selling Beauty Blender and it kept growing within the pro community. And then, when consumers were walking into places like Sephora and asking for them, that's, you know, that kind of was like the game changer.

• 57:13Guy Raz?

  Because they were not, they were not available at Sephora at that point. But

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:16Guy Raz?

  And one of the things you did was, it was pink. The color of it was pink. And wow, that was very intentional, right?

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. That was, that story is so funny to me. So during this time, when I was trying to get the special material that was hydrophilic and expanded a certain amount and got soft enough for all of the things I wanted it to do, the company that I was working with, the foamer, would send me different variations of substrates to try. And every time that a new formulation was sent to me, they would dye it a certain color so that I wouldn't confuse them. So when we talked, they could say, hey, remember the blue one? Remember the green one? Remember the yellow one? Remember the purple one?

• 58:07Speaker 01

  And I remember getting this, the last box was a note when I opened it up and said, hey, I think, you know, they wrote, I think we've made it. I think this, you're going to love this material. Don't look at the color. Just use it and tell us what you think. And I opened up the box and it was the Beauty Blender pink that we all see today. It was this beautiful neon bright pink color. And I mean, I just remember opening up the box and being so hopeful and optimistic and thinking like, this might be it. And when I, you know, went back to the company and I was so excited, I said, we did, we found the material. This is perfect.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  I want you to be able to see it in a sea of black across the room, you know? When you walk into the store, I think the fact that it's an egg shape is so different. People are going to look at it and wonder, what the hell is this thing? And I want it to be pink. I want them to pick it up and actually ask, what is this?

• 59:11Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Beauty Blender moves from pro stores into Sephora and beyond, and why Rian isn't worried when the knockoffs start to come out. In fact, she kind of welcomes it. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 59:48Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2008 and Rian is ready to take Beauty Blender to the next level, out of the pro shops and into the mainstream. So she decides to leave LA and move to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where her partner Catherine Bailey is based.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we worked out of her bedroom.

• 1:00:10Guy Raz?

  Yeah, and I know you sort of moved the business to her house in Bethlehem. But at what, at what point, right, did you say, or were you able to take this into a retail store? Did you, did you say, did you go to, because obviously Sephora, Ulta, these are big mass distrib, you know, these are big retailers. Did you go to them and say, hey, you know, you should take a look at this? Or did they come to you after seeing the?

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Ulta came to me, Ulta Beauty came to me. Ulta Beauty came after Sephora. But I started in small, private boutiques.

• 1:00:47Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Boutique beauty stores. So the pro stores like Friends, Niamh's and Nigel's that I was selling at, I asked them, like, who is your favorite sales rep? I think I need a sales rep. And so they gave me the name of this woman, Laura Garletos, who still works with me today, too. And her and I met and we decided that the strategy we need to take is to not go to big stores because you have supply issues, right?

• 1:01:13Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Go to the smaller boutiques where you can control the messaging and you can do education, too. Because when you have a product like Beauty Blender that no one's ever seen before, you're talking about sustainability, cleaning it, it's a high-def tool. Like, those are all like things that are like way over the heads of consumers. Like, they, you know, if, if things become too complicated, then they walk away and get what they know. They don't try something new. So, marketing and selling initially in a, in a controlled environment where you have the opportunity to sit and talk with each customer and explain why and what and, you know, the, the ins and outs of the product was the, the way we grew the business.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  So, Sephora, honestly, I went after Sephora because it was going to be the only way to really justify the costs for me. And because Beauty Blender was an expensive product based on cost of goods and, you know, me probably not negotiating, you know, the best deals because I didn't know any better. It made it a very expensive product. I needed to have more people buying it.

• 1:02:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah, because it's twenty, it was twenty dollars, right?

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Twenty dollars, yeah.

• 1:02:27Guy Raz?

  And people were used to getting sponges free.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  For free, yeah. Because if you think about sponges, they come in the compact already in the price, you know, that that you pay for the product. And that was funny because, you know, that, you know, I I tried to get financing early on and everybody looked at me like I was crazy and.

• 1:02:45Guy Raz?

  Who did you try to get financing from?

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Just different investors, you know?

• 1:02:48Guy Raz?

  So you went out to see if they would invest?

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Well, I would meet, you know, there were people that would be interested and they're like, well, I don't, I just don't know. I don't know if people are going to spend twenty dollars for a sponge. And I tried to explain to them, they spend twenty dollars for a brush. They spend a hundred dollars for a brush.

• 1:03:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  What, it's it's that disposable mentality that we've been taught about makeup sponges that makes you feel like it's not a worthy tool, but it's the most recognized tool, but the least developed one because it's been marketed as a disposable product.

• 1:03:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  So I thought, why can't I make a cleaner and clean your sponge? Keep it longer. It would justify the price point because you're not throwing it away. So I created the world's first sponge cleaner. You know, when retailers like Sephora, you know, came calling, it would also justify the price point because they're prestige retailers. So, I mean, that that's kind of how that happened.

• 1:03:52Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so you managed to to get this into Sephora and Ulta, I think around 2012. Obviously, the groundwork had been laid. I mean, makeup artists had been using it. It was in magazines like Allure. So people, regular consumers, kind of were were looking at this product. What's what's amazing to me, though, is that I know there were knockoffs, right? There were and there are. But how did how did you maintain? I mean, why were you not ever, why did you never feel threatened by knockoff? Or maybe, did you ever feel threatened by knockoffs?

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Every time one came out.

• 1:04:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Guy Raz?

  And what could you do about it? Because you couldn't, you didn't have the patent protection. So how are you able to stay ahead of that?

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  There's a couple of things. So the fact that Beauty Blender is rooted in the pro community is a very important foundation for my business because the consumers, the editors, and everybody listens to the pros, right? So when pros only use Beauty Blender, then that's, you know, that's, that's an important message about the knockoffs. Secondly, the way that I soothe myself about knockoffs is that I remember this fact that, you know, Coke needed Pepsi, Xerox needed IBM.

• 1:05:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Beauty Blender needs knockoffs in order to prove why we are the category creator and the best. I mean, there's still, even in my biggest retailers now, there's, there's brands within those retailers that have Beauty Blender-type sponges. But all that does for us is give us a target to market our superiority to. Do you know what I mean? Like, if they, if they didn't exist, we couldn't talk about why we're the best.

• 1:05:50Guy Raz?

  Speaking of, I mean, of product development, I mean, as this product really began to take off and really began to become a significant business, I think, I think to date, like, what, 60 million Beauty Blenders have been sold, something like that?

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Probably more than 100 million.

• 1:06:09Guy Raz?

  I mean, it's amazing. You got into the, into the cosmetics business in 2018. You guys launched a line of, of foundation called Bounce. Did you have any, any, I don't know, was there any? I don't know, pushback or anyone from the makeup industry sort of saying, sort of like, well, wait, you're getting into that business? Like, we've been like, supporting your thing, and now you're kind of coming into our territory? Did you hear any of that at all?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  You know, you're never gonna hear it.

• 1:06:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Like, in any, in any industry, we all try to hold hands as, as partners. But, you know, there was definite fear from companies because Beauty Blender had been so widely successful. They recognized that I had created a foundation or a net to really make an impact in complexion, like, quickly, right? Because if I, you know, my, my whole thing was if I could get every person that uses a Beauty Blender to just try my foundation one time, I would, you know, be killing the game.

• 1:07:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  So there was definite, like, fear. There were, you know, there were makeup friends of mine, founder friends, saying, oh, just stay in your sponge space. You don't want to be out here in this makeup world. It's hell. And, and to their point, like, I don't know if, maybe you don't know about Shadegate, Guy, but when I launched-

• 1:07:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I want to ask you about that. Yes. Well, I know that when you launched different shades, and, and very consciously wanted to do this to represent all skin tones, you got criticized by some, some people who said, actually, it's not broad enough, and, and it doesn't cover the entire spectrum of skin tones. Tell me about how you, you know, I'm sure that that was not a, a, a, that was a tough pill to swallow for you. Tell me about what happened.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I created a line of foundations. By this time, my company had grown. I had an internal PR. I had gone to work with this really- Super amazing creative agency that created a lot of beautiful assets and, you know, ready to go. It's like, this is so exciting. And so I go to New York and I do press with all of these editors. And now, you know, it's not just editors of magazines anymore. Now you're talking to editors of blogs. And they're all wanting to get everything first, right? The editors and the bloggers. So there's this competition for them to be the first

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  one to have something. And so, one of the bloggers that we agreed to do this with, they re-photographed my shade range with a flash photography. And the bottles that I used in my original packaging were frosted. So when they took this picture, it looked like all of the colors were the same color. I mean, you know, there was a beginning and an end. There was a very light front end of the shade range, and then there was a very dark end of the dark shade range. But in the middle, there was this, what they

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  would call like a sea of beige, right? And they thought that I didn't really support diversity. So I will tell you that we got like a whole hellstorm of really, really angry and terrible responses to that one photo that that blogger put out. So we had to do a lot of control, you know, a lot of spin on our whole launch. But at the end of the day, we sold out of 22 shades. You know, it's like, it's a crazy thing. It's in the entertainment industry, they say good press, bad press, it accomplishes the same thing. It's kind of true, because even though that was like the worst thing that

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  could have happened at the time, I mean, I invested, you know, over $2 million into this launch. And, you know, it was...

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Probably the worst thing that could have happened, but the best thing at the same time because everybody knew we launched.

• 1:10:30Guy Raz?

  So even with that, even with that negative, you know, attention, it was not all bad for you, is that what you're saying?

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  It was not all bad. It's not to say there weren't, there weren't aspects that were really super challenging. There absolutely was and, but it also set us up for more conversation, more explaining, more trying to kind of undo that narrative, if you will. And so also set me up to be able to create other products. So that's why now, I mean, I have a full line of complexion products that we sell at Sephora. You know, we're doing really well. We've, I, I mean, I, it was challenging. I'm not going to say it was horrible. It was challenging. My whole team was stressed out. It was so not what we were prepared for.

• 1:11:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  But, you know, luckily, I can say, I mean, we survived it. It's all good.

• 1:11:28Guy Raz?

  Let me ask you about, you know, obviously you've got several other products now. You've got, you do foundation and you do, you know, other, you know, makeup and cleansers and you make accessories and, and other things. But I have to, I imagine that the blender is still the core of your business.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  She's the queen.

• 1:11:49Guy Raz?

  Right. The, the main seller.

• 1:11:53Guy Raz?

  Tell me about where, you know, sort of what, what your ambitions for, for beauty blender is. I mean, do you, do you see this, this as like an estee lauder? Do you, I mean, do you see this as a, cause you own, you still own all or most of this company, right? I don't think you, you took on outside investment or maybe have.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  No, I still own it a hundred percent. I have no investors. And, you know, that's an interesting question. I. I, listen, this year, this next year, 2023 is going to be 20 year anniversary for Beauty Blender. And I, nobody is, you know, more surprised at that number than I am because when I went into this business, if you recall, it was like passive income. So I could pay for private school, send my kids to college, you know, just take a vacation because I was working so hard. Like, I just needed some extra money.

• 1:12:43Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  I'm just now really starting to think about it. I don't know, like, would I love for this company to end up being an Estee Lauder? I mean, from a legacy perspective, of course, but then I also now understand how brutal the business is. And, you know, I would really need to have one or both of my kids really in it, right? To keep it a family business like that. So, you know, I don't know if that's gonna happen. Like, I don't consider my company a big company right now. Like, maybe we're midsize. I don't think we're a big company, but, you know.

• 1:13:20Guy Raz?

  You're like, like $200 million in revenue, something like that, a year.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that. But, you know, we're coming out of COVID, what can I say?

• 1:13:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Where people stopped wearing makeup.

• 1:13:31Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  But, boy, are they wearing it again now. I don't know. You know, I will say this. I think probably in the next three to five years, just because of my age and also my own personal desires, things that I want for my life, maybe I'll take on, like, a minority investor.

• 1:13:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  And then by that time, I'll be able to have a better idea of, you know, what the future looks like if I would, you know, do a full transaction, or, you know, do I, do one of my kids want a part of it? I really don't know yet.

• 1:14:12Guy Raz?

  I mean, it's kind of amazing to think about, to think about the arc of your life, right? Like, you had serious relationships with two very successful, wealthy men, you know, the Saudi son of a Saudi, you know.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Di, you only know of a couple. There's more there.

• 1:14:31Guy Raz?

  I know a couple, right? And Eric Dickerson, who I still think was, you know, I still remember fondly as a great running back.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:39Guy Raz?

  But, I mean, and no knock on those guys, but like, you kind of, you kind of. Kind of like left them in the dust. Like you, you really built a massive career on your own. And how much of this do you attribute to just the grind and how hard you worked? And what, if, if any percentage, would you attribute to luck? Just, just the luck of the circumstances of meeting Catherine and, and, you know, some other breaks you got? What, do you think it's really about the grind and the work? Or, or do you think there was luck too?

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  I think there's both. And by the way, I'm not, I've been with, I have a wonderful man in my life. His name is Rory Nix. And he's been, we've been together for almost 28 years now, but we're not married. We have our son together. But luck is, what do they say about luck? It's preparation, meeting, timing, or some, there's some, basically saying there's no such thing as luck. It's all

• 1:15:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  movement and preparation. But I do believe in luck and I believe in God, you know? I believe that, not to sound too woozy, woozy, but you know, I went through a lot of things in my life that were kind of unfair. And I just hustled and worked hard. I didn't dwell on it too much. I just, just worked hard. And I feel like it's, it kind of comes full circle, you know? So I attribute a lot to the grind.

• 1:16:15Guy Raz?

  I mean, it is, you know, we're often, we're often pitched on this show, and I understand founders who are like 25 of businesses or, you know, and that's fine. I mean, and it's a great, great, often great stories, but we generally prefer to talk to founders, you know, in their 40s, 50s and beyond because, not because they're better or smarter, just because they've lived life longer. And so there's more for them to kind of reflect on and offer up to the people who listen to the show. And one of the reasons why I thought your story was so compelling is because you really, you started this business when you were like in your 40s.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:49Guy Raz?

  You, you, you.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  39, yeah.

• 1:16:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, you were, you had a career behind you, but, but you, but in order to have made this successful, you had to have had that career. You, you could not have done this.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:00Guy Raz?

  If you didn't have 10-plus years as a makeup artist.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  20. Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm 60 and, you know, I have, my father's passed away, my mother is 86. I'm, you know, I'm watching her and how vibrant she is, but, you know, the reality of, of our mortality definitely is in my mind, you know?

• 1:17:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  And I think like, what, what do I want for my future? How much do I want to do that I'm not doing now? The, the problem for me, Guy, is that I love this business.

• 1:17:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  You know, I'm still enjoying this. This, there's never a day for me that I'm like, oh, I gotta go to work. No, I like, I get up every morning, like, you know, ready to play this game, like, I want to win.

• 1:17:57Guy Raz?

  That's Rian Silva, founder of Beauty Blender. By the way, the company says you should never have to throw away any of its sponges. After you've used them for a few months, they'll recycle them for you. And they also have tips on what else you can do with a used one. You can clean your shoes with it, you can use it as a stress ball, or a pincushion, or you can also tie it to a piece of thread and voila, instant cat toy.

• 1:18:25Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you enjoyed it, please help us spread the word. Tell someone about How I Built This or post about it on social media, and thank you. If you want to contact the team, our email address is [email protected]. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at HowIBuiltThis and mine is at Guy Raz. And on Instagram, I'm at Guy dot Raz. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with music composed by Ramtin Erav. Louis. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Sam Paulson. Our audio engineer was Maggie Luthar. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, J.C. Howard, Kerry Thompson, Alex Chung, Elaine Coats, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez.

• 1:19:10Guy Raz?

  Our intern is Susanna Brown. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.