vegan-makeup
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Lady Gaga Burned Down Her Own Makeup Brand - Then It Grew 400%
Haus Labs failed quietly on Amazon. Then Gaga and CEO Ben Jones threw out every formula, moved to Sephora, and bet the company on fermented arnica and 51 shades.
Rare Beauty
Selena Gomez built a makeup company where a blush that sells every three seconds funds therapy for teenagers. Here is how Rare Beauty turned self-acceptance into a business worth around $2 billion.
Kosas
A bug taxonomist turned four kitchen-table lipsticks into a $150 million makeup company - by insisting cosmetics do the work of skincare.
DIBS Beauty
DIBS Beauty - short for Desert Island Beauty Status - is a New York and Austin-based makeup brand built on a simple premise: fewer products, better results. Co-founded in 2021 by creator Courtney Shields and operator Jeff Lee alongside Tula Skincare's Ken Landis and Dan Reich, DIBS makes multi-use, vegan, cruelty-free essentials like its hero Desert Island Duo blush-and-bronzer stick. The brand grew primarily direct-to-consumer through Shields' social following, took growth capital from L Catterton in 2023, and expanded into Ulta Beauty in 2024. Its tagline: 'Do less. Look like you did the most.'
Jeff Lee
Jeff Lee is the CEO and co-founder of DIBS Beauty, the L Catterton-backed color cosmetics brand he launched in September 2021 with influencer Courtney Shields and Tula Skincare founders Ken Landis and Dan Reich. Before beauty, Lee was a corporate attorney at Wachtell, Lipton and Skadden Arps, then chief operating officer and partner at Alex Rodriguez's AROD Corp. He also spent two decades as a globe-trotting pageant coach - GQ dubbed him 'Mr. Miss Universe' - and is the only person to have worked out at all 106-plus Equinox gyms worldwide. He holds a JD from Yale, an MBA from Stanford, and lectures on ethics and leadership at Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Wharton.