Tarte Cosmetics: Maureen Kelly

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2023

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Let’s say you had a passion but thought of it only as a hobby; certainly never the seed of a billion-dollar company. Plus, you are studying for a career in something unrelated to business. That’s Maureen Kelly’s story, CEO of Tarte Cosmetics. She was pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and already had TWO Master’s degrees when she realized she didn't want that to be her career. What she wanted was to launch a makeup company—despite having no significant start-up money, no experience, and no connections. How she did it is a story of pure moxie. She relentlessly knocked on the doors of chemists, manufacturers, retailers, and the fashion press. She maxed out her credit cards and enlisted the help of friends and family, turning Tarte into a wildly successful brand.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	I can remember the beauty editor from Bogue came up to me and said,
0:34.0	what is this and who are you?
0:36.0	And I was like, I'm Waring Kelly and this is Tarte and she's like, okay, so you're not a celebrity make-up artist
0:42.0	and you're not an ares, you're a nobody.
0:43.0	I was like, okay, I know that everybody told me I'm a mom and nobody.
0:47.0	Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:03.0	I'm Guy Raaz and on the show today, I have one woman conquered the cosmetics industry without experience, connections, funding or even a way to sell her homegrown products.
1:16.0	Turning her company Tarte Cosmetics into a billion dollar brand.
1:23.0	One of the reasons I love stories about cosmetics so much isn't because I have a natural interest in them.
1:29.0	To be honest, I don't.
1:31.0	But over the years, I've become really interested in business stories about cosmetics for one simple reason.
1:38.0	And the reason is there are so many lessons to be learned about business in cosmetics, how to market, how to sell, how to manufacture, how to bootstrap, how to grow slowly and intentionally.
1:51.0	I could go on and on.
1:53.0	And today's story is a great example of this thesis because even if you've never heard of Tarte Cosmetics, this episode is a masterclass in things like getting your foot in the door and how to come up with a product that gets people's attention.
2:07.0	And most importantly, how to weather creases.
2:10.0	For those of you who may or may not know, Tarte Cosmetics is among the best selling makeup brands in the United States.
	...

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