Vietnamese makeup wizard successfully restarts business

Michelle Phan is a Vietnamese-American who is famous on Youtube for her beauty tutorial videos. According to statistics, her channel currently has nearly 9 million subscribers and more than 1.1 billion views. Not only stopping at being a Youtube star, she also ventured into the business field and successfully started a beauty company called Ipsy in 2012.

Ipsy is a company that sells cosmetic samples to customers on a monthly subscription basis and is valued at over $500 million. In addition, Michelle Phan also owns a cosmetics line called Em Cosmetics after she bought it from L'Oréal in 2016.

Currently, Ispy has more than 200 employees and cooperates with more than 700,000 products from cosmetic brands around the world. However, in 2015, Michelle Phan failed with the cosmetic brand Em Cosmetics and started to restart her business in mid-2016.

A difficult childhood could not extinguish the dream of the little witch.

Michelle Phan was born in Boston to a poor family, her parents worked many jobs to make ends meet. Phan's childhood was not a peaceful one as she had to move around to make a living from Boston, San Francisco, throughout the Bay Area and finally to Tampa, Florida. When she was 6 years old, her father left home.

There weren't many Asian Americans in Tampa, so she was bullied at school and subjected to racist taunts. Even so, Phan worked hard to achieve what she wanted from a young age. "I don't live by the idea that everything is rare," she says. "Success isn't rare. Everyone can find their version of success, but everyone has their own way."

Michelle Phan has been passionate about beauty since she was a child, but her mother wanted her to study medicine. In the end, Phan was determined to pursue her passion for beauty and started filming her first beauty tutorial video in 2007. She shared her eyeliner and makeup tips in just 7 minutes. Within a week, the video had more than 40,000 views on YouTube.

The success of her first video motivated Michelle Phan to make more videos and quickly became a YouTube star with millions of followers. In 2010, she was invited by the cosmetics brand Lancôme to collaborate and become the brand's first online makeup artist.

Successfully started a $500 million company

In 2012, thanks to her influence on social media, Michelle Phan built a beauty company called Ispy. Ispy provides a regular beauty service called Ipsy Glam Bag, the service costs only 10 USD - 12 USD / month. Users can subscribe to this service according to their personal preferences and will receive 5 to 7 most suitable beauty products each month.

In 2013, she collaborated with the world-famous cosmetics company L'Oreal and launched the cosmetics brand Em Cosmetics. This brand launched more than 200 diverse beauty products from lipstick, concealer, eye shadow, makeup tools... However, the products are quite expensive compared to the mid-range customer segment and also Michelle Phan's fans.

In 2014, Michelle Phan launched a bedside book for young people passionate about beauty, “Michelle Phan Make Up: Your Life Guide to Beauty Style and Success - Online and Off”. This is considered the most successful period of Michelle Phan when her image covered all beauty forums and media.

In 2015, Ispy successfully raised $100 million in funding and was valued at over $500 million. The company has annual revenue of $120 million and has about 100,000 subscribers to its Ipsy Glam Bag service each month.

Failure and depression

The cosmetics brand Em Cosmetics in cooperation with L'Oreal was not as successful as expected. Em Cosmetics was turned away by consumers because of its high prices and average quality. Em Cosmetics' revenue plummeted and the company decided to sell all of its products at the end of 2015 at a discount of 50% - 70%.

During this time, Em Cosmetics and Michelle Phan received a lot of criticism from online forums and fans for their high prices and mediocre product quality. Pressure from work and the community caused Phan to fall into depression. She confided, "I always felt sad, wanted to cry and didn't know why." "I took an online test and the results said I was severely depressed."

Restarting and opening a new era for Em Cosmetics

Around mid-2015, Michelle Phan disappeared from the media and social networks. She spent time traveling to restore and balance her mind. After nearly a year of disappearance, Michelle Phan reappeared with a more mature image.

First, she decided to buy back the cosmetic brand Em Cosmetics in mid-2016. Michelle started to build a new look for her brainchild Em Cosmetics. She changed the brand logo, launched new products with affordable prices for consumers, especially students.

Em Cosmetics' two new products, lipstick and eyeliner, received positive feedback from consumers and sold out during the trial period. Em Cosmetics will continue to launch many new beauty products in the near future. The cosmetics industry is witnessing a strong transformation of the Em Cosmetics brand.

Michelle Phan believes that the most important thing in business is to listen to consumers' opinions. Thanks to that, she revived a cosmetics brand that seemed to have died a long time ago.