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AUSTIN BUSINESS JOURNAL
PROFILE
Beauty in authenticity GIVING UP ONE PASSION LED TO A NEW ONE FOR THIS CEO
cancer and passed away in 2014. I did some research and found some links there between some of the ingredients in personal-care products and breast cancer. I asked questions in product forums about ingredients that are carcinogens and hormone- disrupting. My mom’s experience was part of the inspiration for taking the [LAMIK Beauty] product line itself, and scaling that as the business. She was one of the big reasons I chose to close the store and come to Austin in 2018. What’s it like to be an entrepreneur in Austin compared to your hometown of Houston? I feel like I live dual roles in both cities. Houston is the most diverse city in the country. It’s what I believe companies and customer bases should look like. But Houston is lacking the startup and tech scene. Austin is where the [startup] ecosystem is, which has given me the opportunities that I read about in Entrepreneur and Fortune magazines. Because of the foundation I got in Houston, I didn’t feel alone in those spaces in Austin, when I was the only Black woman in all the incubators and accelerators I participated in. What’s a lesson you learned from an unexpected source that still informs how you live today? I was in New York in 2017 when I overheard a conversation between two people. I wanted to talk to one of them, because this person was high up on the food chain and successful. But I didn’t know this person. I overheard that person say to the other one that it’s never as bad as it feels, and, when you look at others, it’s never as good as it looks. I overheard that and took it with me. You can make a woman look great, but you don’t know what’s going on inside her for real. What’s a mistake you’ve made that you no longer make? Making the mistake of not applying for something, or giving myself the opportunity to achieve something — not giving the chance to someone else to tell me no. Instead, I was telling myself no. I could’ve applied for some opportunity, but because I didn’t apply, I didn’t get it. Before, if there were business-pitch competitions, I would say to myself, I’m not going to do that because they’re probably not going to pick me. But now, I realize that I miss 100% of the shots I don’t take. So, now, I take the attitude of just apply, and let them tell me no. I use that [approach] all the time in business.
KimRoxie is founder and CEO of LAMIK Beauty, which creates makeup and beauty products for women of color.
ARNOLD WELLS / ABJ
K im Roxie’s love of the piano brought her to Clark Atlanta University in Georgia, where she majored in the instrument. But playing the piano wasn’t pay- ing the bills, so Roxie switched majors to communication and media studies, and went to an Atlanta mall to get a job at Foot Locker. Instead, she snagged a position at a makeup counter. During the three years in college Roxie worked there, she “fell in love making women feel good about themselves.” Roxie became the counter’s top sales- person, prompting her boss to ask her what, exactly, she was telling these women. The secret was all about boost- ing their self-esteem, Roxie had realized. “If a woman feels good, she’ll get it all,” Roxie said. Though she felt “devastated” about giving up piano, and wasn’t sure for a while what she wanted to do with her life, working at the makeup counter was when “it all started to come together,” Roxie said. Some entrepreneurs launch compa- nies to solve a problemvexing them. Oth- ers form businesses as a way to get paid for what they love to do. Roxie falls into the latter category. Sixteen years after founding LAMIK Inc. — an acronym for Love and Makeup in Kindness that does business as LAMIK Beauty — in 2004 in Houston as a brick- and-mortar beauty-product store, Roxie
KIM ROXIE TITLE: Founder and CEO, LAMIK Beauty FAMILY: Spouse, two
and the nowe-commerce startup remain in growth mode. LAMIKBeautyboastsmore than 3,000 customers and sales have increased by 10% month-over-month each month since March. Roxie had projected reve- nue “would be in the six-figure category” by the end of 2020. The CEO has said the company has “very healthy profit mar- gins” of 70%. The Black founder in 2018 pivoted the company to an online consumer-facing business. LAMIK Beauty provides wom- en of color with vegan, natural makeup that matched their skin tones. And Roxie emphasizes that “women of color” means white women, too. LAMIK offers products for women with all skin tones, “from pale to dark,” she said. Where did you get the idea to found your store and company? It was to provide myself with a job, basically. When I was in school in Atlanta, I realized nobody was catering to this group of women in the area. I thought to myself, we need this in Houston: a place women have to go and receive beauty services, a place that could do makeup for these women [of color] and match their skin tone. Back then, it was hard because there was no familiar place to go.
children AGE: 38 LIVES IN: Austin
HOMETOWN: Houston EDUCATION: Executive certificate in business, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University; aesthetician Community College; bachelor’s degree in communication and media studies, Clark Atlanta University EMAIL: kim@lamikbeauty.com PHONE: (866) 305-9784x4 and esthetician license, Houston
What influence did your mother have on your business? My mom, Loretta Wiggins, developed breast
— Interview by Mike Cronin
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