You Guys!!!! Like omg HELLO! I'm so happy to be writing this and even more ecstatic that YOU are reading this!! Hello again and welcome welcome welcome from the bottom of my heart!  Today is LAUNCH DAY!

I want to share with you a small snippet of my journey.

I started out in the kitchen trying to whip up my own lipstick and soon realized after hours that my knowledge of chemistry was pretty poor. (I mean I should've known. I got my first "C" in high school in...ta da! Chemistry! Teehee).  One of the important lessons here is that it's impossible to know how to do everything and when you don't know - seek out help. 

Here's the other lesson - when you venture into nontraditional paths you will get a lot of push-back and No's. A lot of people didn't want to work on this project with me. I had a lot of discussions and talks. Some people were like, "Oh yeah. We know natural lipstick...but we'll have to add this preservative and this synthetic ingredient to make it perform and this ingredient I'm not sure how to pronounce..."

A longstanding old industry is hard to change.

What kept me going is the vision I had. When you have a dream, you must have vision and conviction. My finance background in private equity and hedge funds helped a lot. Countless years of working with Type A personalities gave me the experience to do business and speak like you're working a $10 million deal. Having a dream isn't enough. You have to have vision and conviction to persuade other people that are stuck doing the same old things to change. 

Finally, after 3 years here we are.

I wanted to show you guys a picture of the progression of samples during our R&D process. (I wish I kept the earliest ones.)

Thank you to the people who were open minded and kind enough to answer my emails and calls when I was still doing business from a Gmail account. 

And to my family and friends and even my ex boyfriend(s) who were and still are all very, very supportive <3

 -Ada