Creator of Huge Lips, Skinny Hips Lip Gloss (at Space NK!), Karen Robinovitz takes us through the trials and tribulations of creating a beauty brand from scratch. Last week, we left our beauty heroine on the assembly line. She found her perfect componentry, but, oops, forgot about a little thing called a name.....
Hold everything! I needed a logo, a color scheme (it had to be purple, my favorite color, but which pantone shade exactly, I didn't know), and... um... a trademark on the name, something I didn't do until my eagle-eye lawyer of a brother, Jason, asked me about it.
J went to law school (Emory in case you're wondering) with a guy named Danny who is now an IP attorney (IP = intellectual property) in D.C. Just the guy we needed. He works for a prestigious white hankie law firm (i.e. Disney is their client). They're a fortune per hour. But J assures me he's the best and it's worth every dime – God forbid we make something and get sued or have to recall it later.
$500/hour and too many hours to count later, we got a green light to use the name "Huge Lips Skinny Hips." Phew! But the original brand name I wanted to use was unavailable. I had my eyes on the moniker, SKINNY, and my thought was to give "the skinny," some kind of insider tip for something relevant on each product.
Couldn't get the name – someone had it! Damn them. New mission: new name, which is no easy task.
Name 1? Taken.
Name 2? Taken.
Name 3? Taken.
4, 5, 6... Taken! Taken! Taken!
I hated my lawyer! I felt like every time he called with news about why I couldn't use a certain name, he was trying to hurt me. It took me two months to conjure the right – and available – name, not to mention about 10k in legal fees.
Ouch!
I combed through French, Italian, and Sanskrit dictionaries (always love a foreign word). I read the thesaurus as if it were the bible. I was making up words, all of which were taken, taken, taken. TAKEN!
I contemplated a leap off my roofdeck. The thing about challenges like this – they push you to a point that is even better than where you started.
And that point was coming... I was talking to a very creative artist friend about the brand name issue. He was asking me crazy questions like the name of my invisible friend when I was child, the street I live on, mom's maiden name (ironically, it's Moss, as in Kate!).
It came up that I used to sleep with a stuffed hippo when I was a kid – and he said, kind of flippantly, "what if you did something out there and kooky like 'Hippo Lab.' It doesn't mean anything but it gets people talking.'"
Hippo Lab?
Wasn't feeling it.
He started drawing logos of very cute hippos though. "Um. I don't know," I said. I didn't want to hurt his feelings – he was spending hours talking to me about it.
"What if we colored the hippo purple."
PURPLE!
I love purple.
I love everything about the color – the energy it has. It's sexy. It's chic. It's glam. It's fun.
"Purple Lab," I yelled. "Purple Lab!"
When I was in college, I was pre-med and en route to med school. When I decided to come to New York, the joke in my family was that I changed my lab coat for my fab coat (I may have mentioned this already).
Purple Lab made total sense. I prayed to the trademark gods that it be free! It was!
YAAAAAY!
Mwah!
Karen
Purple Lab Creatrix