At a Taiwanese restaurant, Eric Chen had a habit that made a small mystery of lunch. His colleagues would be eating at another table. If he happened to be there, he would quietly pay their bill. When they waved their thanks, he acknowledged them with a happy nod. Former employee Amy Chang remembered the gesture years later, after the business he founded had become a collection of familiar beauty brands.
It is a useful place to begin with Eric Sung-Tsei Chen. Cosmetics offers plenty of spectacle: gleaming packaging, famous faces, a new collection asking for everyone’s attention. Here was a founder whose remembered gesture depended on doing something without announcing it. A restaurant bill hardly explains a global company. It does, however, bring its founder within conversational distance.
Chen founded Markwins in 1984. Over the following decades, its portfolio came to include wet n wild, Black Radiance, Physicians Formula, Lip Smacker, Bonne Bell, and LORAC. His career connected the plain business of making and moving products with the more elusive business of knowing what different people wanted. Along the way, the family worked inside the company, and the founder kept visiting its laboratories.
A whole look in a little case
Chen came to the United States from Taiwan with ambitions to build an international business. Markwins began by importing Taiwanese cosmetics. In 1986, it introduced multi-palette compacts to the American market. The proposition was easy to grasp: several makeup choices gathered into one package. A compact made variety portable. It also gave a shopper something complete to pick up, carry away, or give to someone else.
There is a cheerful economy to that object. A collection of colors becomes a small invitation to experiment, with the practical benefit that everything closes into a case. Beauty can ask its customers to become experts before buying anything. A palette offers a more approachable opening conversation: here are the choices; try them.
Markwins launched The Color Workshop and The Color Institute in 1992. The importer now had its own named brands. The movement from bringing products into the country to giving them a recognizable identity would become a recurring feature of Chen’s career. He worked with objects that people could understand immediately, then built a business capable of putting those objects into more hands.
The shopping list becomes a company
In 2003, Markwins acquired AM Cosmetics, bringing wet n wild and Black Radiance into the business. Physicians Formula followed in 2012. These were acquisitions of established identities. Chen could expand the parent company while shoppers continued to approach a brand through its own name, products, and particular appeal.
The Lip Smacker and Bonne Bell transaction in 2015 made the audience question especially clear. Markwins president and chief operating officer Bill George described a younger customer base, roughly ages six to sixteen. The existing portfolio already served older teens and adults. The deal added an earlier point of entry into beauty, with flavored lip products that could make a purchase feel closer to a treat than a serious cosmetic decision.
George described a courtship lasting two years. That detail puts some patience into a history that might otherwise look like a brisk procession of purchases. A brand can be familiar to consumers for decades and still require careful work from a prospective owner. Recognition is an asset; figuring out how to give it another commercial chapter is the job.
Markwins bought the international Lip Smacker and Bonne Bell business in 2017. The sequence mattered: domestic rights came first, wider territory later. Chen’s international ambition was being assembled through specific agreements, each with its own scope. A globe on a corporate presentation is pleasant decoration. Rights, factories, and retail relationships are rather more demanding furniture.
Hollywood gets a seat at the table
LORAC joined Markwins in June 2018. Founded by makeup artist Carol Shaw, it brought a professional artistry heritage and a place in prestige beauty. The acquisition widened the range of the business again. A parent company accustomed to the mass market was taking responsibility for a brand whose story came from Hollywood makeup work.
Chen’s explanation was unusually compact for an acquisition announcement: “one brand can’t conquer the world.” His broader point concerned differences in consumers’ cultural and economic needs. Variety in the portfolio followed variety in the people buying its products. It was a practical argument for retaining distinct names and identities under the same corporate roof.
He also expressed a preference for California, connecting LORAC’s Hollywood associations with the company’s home state. Geography here had two meanings. California housed the business; it also supplied a recognizable beauty vocabulary, a place people associated with entertainment and the work behind a camera-ready face.
By 2019, LORAC was preparing its first expansion beyond the United States, including Canada and online sales in China. It appointed makeup artist Kelsey Deenihan as artistry adviser. The next chapter involved product work, professional relationships, and new channels. The acquisition date was the beginning of that assignment, with plenty still left to do.
“one brand can’t conquer the world”
Eric Sung-Tsei Chen, on the LORAC acquisition, 2018
The founder kept going to the lab
Chang’s memories return Chen to the workbench. She recalled regular laboratory visits and a founder who remained involved in formulations despite his senior position. He cared about bringing innovation to an affordable price point. Her account gives a physical setting to a business philosophy that could otherwise remain a tidy sentence in a presentation.
In 2018, Markwins described its structure as vertically integrated, keeping research and development, manufacturing, operations, sales, and marketing in-house. Chen’s children also held roles in the business. The company reported more than $580 million in sales for 2017 and growth of 35 percent. Those figures belong to a particular year, when its expanding portfolio was producing measurable momentum.
Chen’s comments about value were more demanding than a promise of low prices. He said consumers researched trends and formulations, and would respond when a product failed to meet their expectations. An accessible product still had to satisfy an informed customer. The price on the label could start the conversation; the contents had to carry it.
The company’s operating geography gives the idea some scale. Markwins lists manufacturing in California, Mexico, and China, with research and technology laboratories in City of Industry. Its Tijuana facility was established in 2018. International headquarters and distribution locations add further layers to the business. A makeup compact arrives as one object, though many different kinds of work have already met inside it.
Beyond the edge of the shelf
By early 2018, Chen was talking about Amazon and the effort going into Markwins’ own websites. wet n wild’s website sales had risen 114 percent from 2016 to 2017. The digital channel offered room for an assortment that a physical rack could never accommodate. A shelf has dimensions; a website has a different set of constraints.
That shift belongs in his story because importing, manufacturing, and acquiring brands only solve part of the problem. Products still need a route to customers. Chen had spent decades building a business around retail relationships, and now another route was becoming important enough for him to discuss as a potential growth driver.
In June 2019, Markwins signed an agreement with UCO to establish Markwins Blue Beauty in China. The partnership combined Markwins’ research and manufacturing capabilities with local operating, sales, and marketing expertise. Chen appeared in the signing coverage. Global ambition had reached the point where a new market called for a partner and a specific working arrangement.
A family business with room for careers
Chen’s family connections were part of the operating structure. His wife Lina, daughters Alice and Elaine, sister Jane, and niece Emily held responsibilities in the company. The word family could refer to an actual relationship as well as a way of describing the team. Both meanings were present, which makes the people around Chen worth following individually.
Outside that family circle, long careers also shaped the leadership. Eric Weeks joined Markwins in 2001. In November 2020, Chen appointed him president of sales and revenue for North America, with responsibility spanning the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The announcement connected his development to the demands of a changing retail and digital environment.
Chen had also supported a leadership transition in 2018, when Stefano Curti became global president and Bill George moved from daily management to an advisory role. He described the change as part of an existing succession plan. These decisions show a founder assigning responsibility to others while the business continued to expand. Leadership, in that setting, included deciding whose judgment would carry the next piece of work.
What continued after the nod
Chen died in 2021 at sixty-three. Lina Chen continued as chairman and CEO, with John Stephenson managing daily operations and an established executive team around them. The company he had founded remained a family-owned business with a broad portfolio. Its continuing story belongs to those leaders and employees as well as to the founder’s early decisions.
In August 2026, Markwins highlighted five women who had advanced within the company: Michelle Lee, Regina Mendoza, Missy Paramo, Monica Tu, and Ai Yoshida. Alice Chen, identified as owner and chief marketing officer, spoke about their development. Among the careers described were an intern who became a senior marketing director and an art director who became vice president of creative.
That later announcement offers a concrete way to consider Chen’s legacy. The brands remain visible on shelves. Careers continue behind them. For Chang, the memory was closer and smaller: colleagues at lunch, a bill paid without ceremony, an answering nod. A company’s history can be measured in transactions and territories. The people who worked there may keep a different account.