Creator of Huge Lips Skinny Hips Lip Gloss (at Scoop, Ron Robinson and b-glowing), Karen Robinovitz takes us through the trials and tribulations of creating a beauty brand from scratch.

I thought raising money for Purple Lab would be easy. I envisioned talking to some uber-successful executive (say Warren Buffet for example) about my marketing ideas, future products and brand identity -- then he (or she) would be so impressed a check would be written immediately.

I was wrong.

Some of my friends were spawned from incredibly successful parents -- one is on Forbes' list of the world's 400 wealthiest people, while another owns $1 billion in real estate holdings. Plus as a journalist I was in touch with moguls, magnates, CEOs and plenty of well-funded individuals who I could call upon for a meeting. But when I made those calls, they asked to see my executive summary (a concise, professional one-page overview of the brand/offering) and my P&L statement.

Um, my P&L statement? I didn't have the stomach to ask what that was.

Google knew -- turns out it's just a profit and loss sheet. Clearly I didn't know what I was doing, or how to put any of these documents together, or what kind of projections would be realistic.

So I did what anyone would do – updated my Facebook status to plead for guidance. Thankfully an old editor of mine from Marie Claire said her husband might be able to help, and so I met with Harvard-educated Jake Hill of Hayfield Capital, a boutique financial advisory firm that specializes in working with emerging companies on fundraising. Perfect!

After a head-spinning three hour conversation, it was clear that I was out of my league and needed Jake's expertise. It took almost four months, but when all was said and done we had a comprehensive, five-inch-thick document full of spreadsheets, projections and plans. The process forced us to think about our company on a larger scale, which in turn quickly made it clear that the old methods for making headway in this business – in-store employees, rotating sales staff, trainers and all the other things you need for a brick and mortar operation – were dead.

Instead our plan became heavily focused on e-commerce and (ideally) a direct-to-consumer model utilizing TV (HSN, I'm comin' for you!).

Hayden Capital's advice didn't come cheap -- their retainer put us another $40K in the hole. (Fortunately it was worth it. I don't think I could have put that plan together on my own.) And that wasn't even the hard part; next was round two of my meetings with investors -- let's just say it wasn't pretty.

More on that – and the biggest manufacturing nightmare that nearly had me on mood stabilizers – next time.

Mwah!
Karen
Purple Lab Creatrix