For those who take to the beauty section during their Target runs, there’s some Black history made within the aisles.
Founder and CEO of The Lip Bar, Inc. Melissa Butler announced that her company has become the largest Black-owned makeup company in Target.
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“@thelipbar and @threadbeauty are taking up 6 shelves of space in select stores! I saw it for the first time on Wednesday and I cried my eyes out. I am so proud of where my team and I have taken the business and the beauty industry,” Butler shared in an Instagram post.
“Y’all may not know how MAJOR this is. We are the first black owned makeup company to take up this much space,” she continued. “I just love making Black History during Black History Month.”
Butler emphasized the fact that The Lip Bar’s journey started online with one SKU.
“We’ve been working on this for so long,” she expressed. “When you see a lot of the brands with the big space, it’s conglomerates. It’s not like little Black girls from Detroit taking up this much space.”
In addition to starting from humble beginnings, Butler’s vegan beauty company faced rejection. As previously reported by AfroTech, she and her business partner appeared on “Shark Tank” in 2015 and didn’t walk away with an investment. However, Butler took the “no” as fuel to keep going.
In February 2022, the company had billboards in Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. that read:
“‘Shark Tank’ told me to quit. 10 years and 2 million units sold. Thanks, Mr. Wonderful.”
Kevin O’Leary, also known as “Mr. Wonderful,” went on to applaud The Lip Bar’s success.
“I’m proud of them for taking the heat,” he told The Breakfast Club. “I’m proud that they’re entrepreneurs and are successful. It’s a wonderful thing to see that happen. They were facing an almost impossible task because going into the cosmetics industry is so difficult to get market share. But they pulled it off, so you gotta applaud them — there’s no question about it. But that is a tough space because the margins are so high that the competition is just brutal.”
