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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Colorful History

When Doe Deere couldn’t find a brand of colorful makeup to fit her eclectic tastes, she decided to create her own. The former musician and beauty blogger founded Woodland Hills cosmetics company Lime Crime in 2008 and has been as creative in her business efforts as she is in her hair and makeup styles – despite a few hiccups. “I noticed that the colors I personally loved, the really bright and saturated colors, were hard to come by at the time. Barely anybody was doing it, especially not in the way I envisioned it,” said Deere, 34. “I just wanted the colors so bad that I realized the only way I’m going to have them is if I made them myself.” Seven years later, Lime Crime has grown into a major e-commerce brand – and is gaining ground in retail stores. Last month, the company signed an agreement with Urban Outfitters, a hipster apparel chain in Philadelphia with more than 230 outlets. The agreement calls for the exclusive launch of Eraser, a lipstick inspired by the classic No. 2 pencil eraser, in addition to making Lime Crime’s entire cosmetics line available at 10 Urban Outfitters stores nationwide – including one on Melrose Ave. in Los Angeles and another in Santa Monica. “We’ve been partners with Urban Outfitters for five years now,” Deere said. “We’ve always done extremely well with them online, so when they suggested rolling us out in stores, of course I said yes.” Urban Outfitters did not respond to requests for comment. Lime Crime has built its brand on vibrant colors. The company says its line of Velvetines liquid-to-matte lip gloss is a top seller at $20. Lime Crime also carries nail polish, eye shadows and lipsticks, all of which are promoted as vegan and cruelty free. Prices range from $15 and up. “I definitely think the shopper who shops at Urban Outfitters is one who would wear Lime Crime,” said Renee Loiz, an L.A. celebrity makeup artist. “Urban is trendy and ahead of the game. They cater to every kind of trend – from hipster to hippy and bohemian. I think Lime Crime fits perfectly there.” However, Lime Crime shares the radical-color market with competitors, including Kat Von D Cosmetics, sold at Sephora; Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics in New York; and Make Up for Ever in Paris. On the marketing front, Lime Crime looks to leverage its social media presence – comprising more than 1 million Instagram followers, and 1.5 million Twitter and Facebook followers combined. Customers ages 18 through 24 drive sales, though Deere said her products have been known to appeal to a wide range of female and male customers from 10 to 50 years old. “Our customers are both boys and girls. I think the brand has a very wide appeal even though our target demographic is a girl in her 20s,” Deere said. “We have a mobile site which most customers prefer to use. Our customers are very social media driven and live on their phones, as do I quite frankly.” Online backlash Born Xenia Vorotova in Russia and raised in Brooklyn, Deere said she was not always a makeup enthusiast. It wasn’t until she graduated high school that she began experimenting with makeup and posting tutorials online. When she finally launched Lime Crime in 2008, she and her husband, who has a degree in economics, invested their savings to get the line off the ground. “The crazy thing is that we were profitable right away. I started really small. We had a line of 13 eye shadows and 10 lipsticks in the original launch. The staff was just me and my husband part time,” Deere explained. “I did invest my own money. We’ve never taken any debt and have spent zero dollars on advertising.” She said that the company’s e-commerce strategy allowed it to grow without the costs of retail distribution, but the Internet can be tricky. Lime Crime has been dealing with controversy and online backlash online since its inception. Customers who claim to have never received their products have taken to social media to vent, and during its early years, people accused the company of repackaging makeup from wholesale beauty manufacturers, marking up the price and selling it as original Lime Crime products. The company addresses these accusations on its website, dismissing them as rumors. “Like many rapidly growing companies, Lime Crime has had its share of struggles supplying the demand,” Deere explained. “High traffic would crash our website during launches, inventory would be gone and we’d be left out of stock.” “We listened, we learned,” she continued. “Our young millennial customer doesn’t like to wait – and as such, production efficiency became a big focus for me and Lime Crime. I’ve hired a dedicated, experienced team to keep the production rolling smoothly while ensuring top-notch quality.” Just last year, the company’s website was hacked and dozens of customers reported fraudulent activity on their accounts, some that amounted to almost $10,000, as reported on fashion website Racked in September. Lime Crime released a statement apologizing to customers for the breach and informing them that all claims of fraudulent charges would have to be refunded by customers’ banks. “They say, The safest place to eat is a restaurant that just had a food poisoning scare – I think that describes the situation perfectly,” the statement read. “We brought in a new team of security experts and partnered with Trustwave and Norton to make limecrime.com the makeup equivalent of Fort Knox!” More recently, the company received a warning letter from the Food and Drug Administration on July 24 regarding the use of harmful chemicals in its products. The FDA said Lime Crime’s Velvetine lip-gloss labels list two harmful chemicals – both of which are only allowed for external cosmetic use, meaning the chemicals cannot be used on lips. The company was urged to address the problem. Last month, Lime Crime publicly responded to the FDA’s letter, stating its product had been retested by a government-approved lab and does not contain harmful chemicals. “We take our customers’ safety very seriously and these lab results confirm what we have known all along – that this was simply a labeling error,” said Lime Crime Executive Vice President Kim Walls in a statement. ‘Hairspiration’ In spite of its FDA and Internet issues, the company has expanded its operations both on- and offline. Earlier this year, Lime Crime relocated from a 1,500-square-foot office to a 3,000-square-foot office at 20501 Ventura Blvd. In addition, the company has almost doubled staffing this year from eight to 15 employees. A company spokesman said Lime Crime is looking to expand into a vacant 1,500-square-foot office space adjacent to its current location. Also, the company is ramping up for this spring’s launch of its first line of hair dye – in radical colors, of course. In preparation for the launch, Deere has created Hairspiration, a feature on the company website that allows customers to view makeup colors to complement colorful hair. Instagram photos of fans that have paired their hair dye with Lime Crime makeup are featured on the site as examples. “As someone who has been dying my hair fantasy colors for many years, I’ve noticed that when you switch your hair (colors), it’s a radical change and makeup and clothes don’t always work the same way,” Deere said. “Hairspiration allows you to choose your own hair color and gives you makeup color suggestions that will work for your look.” Celebrity makeup artist Loiz said Lime Crime remains a popular brand in the industry and its products are used often by professional makeup artists such as herself. “I feel it’s a respected line,” she said. “Doe does a really good job packaging her product, which is a big part of what appeals to makeup artists.”

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