Even with an established business innovation is a must
My first two interviews were with entrepreneurs in their early stages of business. I picked Stephanie Sakoff, founder and owner of Lucky Chick beauty products who has been in business eight years for my third interview to highlight yet another facet of being an entrepreneur. Her company has been featured in top beauty magazines and her products are sold at top stores. And yet, she’s constantly thinking about evolving to the next level. “It never gets easier,” she said to me in the begining of the interview. And you’ll find out why
The Story
Stephanie always knew that she was going to be an entrepreneur. When she was in school, she made pretty little hats on her sewing machine and sold them to her friends and neighbours. “I dreamt of being featured on a show called Style. It was the it show back then.” However after graduating from college, she ended up in corporate America designing shoes and spending her time traveling between factories in Asia and her American office. When she wasn’t working, she was nursing her jetlag. “I looked at the women’s lives around me and I didn’t want my life to look like theirs.” Her colleagues and friends led busy, stressfull lives with little or no time for themselves. When realization dawned, she knew quitting corporate America was the best decision she could make for herself. And so, without a backup plan, she quit.
The Idea
Plenty of discarded ideas, long nights spent with the thinking cap and several positive comments later- Lucky Chick happened. “I was living in a lovely apartment in Chelsea, New York, and all my friends called me lucky chik. I just thought – hey why not take the idea of Lucky Chick further and create a concept?” She toyed around with the idea of creating a footcare products line but then decided to go head-on into full body care. So the decision was made, but there was one tiny problem. She had no experience in the beauty industry or in creating beauty products.
“I was 28 when I was starting out…it was like 8 years ago. I had no idea what I was going to do,” Stephanie laughs. “Internet was just becoming popular and I bought this gigantic whiring computer for research and it froze every few seconds.” She drafted out her concept and shopped around labs with the hopes of finding a chemist who would help her create her product line. She shopped her idea around at industry trade shows and slowly began to meet the right people. A few hits and misses and she found a lab that was willing to create her first line of products and finally, she was in business!
During the early years, her parents supported her endeavor with just as much ardor and passion. “My Dad owns his own business. I didn’t even know how to create an invoice! He also had a warehouse for that he let me used. I have to say, he provided me a great deal of help.” Her family and friends would stop by at her office and help her with packaging and other small tasks around the office at all times. Even now that she has employees to help her out, her family helps her out whenever they can.
The Big Bully
In the multi-billion dollar industry beauty industry, competition is severe. More dangerous is the encroachment from large corporations. “A huge company didn’t want me to use the word lucky in my brand name and they sent me a cease and desist order. I was unnerved. I had just started out and had no money to fight such a huge corporation.” But it was either fighting for it or allowing the behemoth to gobble up her business. “I learnt everything I needed to know about the legal issues and decided to fight them. I was doing nothing wrong and they weren’t going to shut me out.” Stephanie’s company had not breached any copyright laws or stolen intellectual property from the said corporation. She declined to change her business name and was willing to fight the case when the company decided to back off. “That was one of the biggest lessons I learnt in business, and the one piece of advice I always offer other small businesses is that when big companies come after you, don’t back down. Fight out the battle. (unless ofcourse you are blatantly copying something off!)”
Keeping up the the Joneses
Stephanie still maintains that owning her own business is very hard. The market is always in a flux- constantly changing and re-inventing itself. “Things are different now than eight years ago. Big box chains are taking over the market and it is a challenge to think about getting my product out to women at the right price points.” In a fiercely competitive industry such as hers, innovation is key. 
If you’ve been to the Victoria’s Secret store lately, chances are you’ve admired the snazzy new Lucky Chick lipgloss that lights up when you take out the wand. Another key breakthrough: a beautifully designed two-way lipgloss that packs tiny mints on the other side and yet another lip-gloss comes with solid fragrance on the other side. “My customers are a true source of inspiration,” she says. Women often always carry their lipgloss, mints and fragrance in their handbags – no matter how tiny the bag. “I thought, why not combine these essetials into just one pack?” Stephanie collaborated with a company that holds patents in product design and created these innovative new lipglosses. The lipglosses are just one of the 30 odd products that her company is launching in the coming months. The future for Lucky Chick looks just as promising — Stephanie is working on expanding the brand to create a special line of cosmetics and beauty products for teenage girls. “I constantly think about how can I keep my brand fresh? How can I use new technology to make better and different products for my customers? how can I manage my sales better abroad?!” When you own your business, you own it all the way. “You can’t bring it to a certain point and hope it will continue to grow on it’s own.”
The Lucky Chick Tip for Success: From any challenge comes an unexpected opportunity. Don’t miss it.
