One year ago, The Lip Bar owner Melissa Butler and her creative director Rosco Spears appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank to pitch the vegan, gluten-free lipstick company, along with a mobile food-truck-like vehicle that would allow Butler to get her products directly to consumers. At the time of the pitch, The Lip Bar had earned $107,000 in sales over two years.
However, both women were completely shut down and harshly criticized by venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary who said their competition would crush them like the ‘colorful cockroaches’ they are.
Since that time, they have held fast to their message of empowering women and are now running a brand very successful brand. Butler toldEbony that the harsh critique they received was largely a product of reality television.
“It was actually awesome. They were jerks on the show, but you have to remember that it’s TV. It’s literally reality TV. So at a certain point, you have to realize that they’re trying to increase their ratings. We’re pitching for like an hour and then they chop it down to about seven or eight minutes to make good TV, but it was good because it made us run our show a little more tight. It made us validate the reason for existence because they were right. It is a saturated market. But I’m a firm believer that people buy what you believe and not what you sell.”
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