Kim Roxie, founder of LAMIK Beauty, has created a clean cosmetics line for women of color, women who historically have been marketed more toxic makeup options than their counterparts. She continually breaks new ground with LAMIK, including becoming the first black-owned clean makeup brand to launch on ULTA.com. Most importantly, Kim has built a company that embraces two core cultures — to be kind to people and to be kind to the planet. Kim is building an inclusive community for women across the c...
Kim Roxie, founder of LAMIK Beauty, has created a clean cosmetics line for women of color, women who historically have been marketed more toxic makeup options than their counterparts. She continually breaks new ground with LAMIK, including becoming the first black-owned clean makeup brand to launch on ULTA.com. Most importantly, Kim has built a company that embraces two core cultures — to be kind to people and to be kind to the planet. Kim is building an inclusive community for women across the country and is passionate about serving that community. And she's creating the highest quality products with the purest ingredients to promote the health of her customers and her community, all while being dedicated to promoting environmental stewardship.
Learn more about LAMIK Beauty.
Learn more about The Passionistas Project.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Passionistas: We first met Kim Roxie, founder of LAMIK Beauty, when she participated in a panel at the Power of Passionistas Summit in 2020. We were instantly drawn to her company's mission to create a clean cosmetics line for women of color, women who historically have been marketed more toxic makeup options than their counterparts since the launch of LAMIK 2.0.
In 2020, Kim has turned her own struggle with hair loss into the one, one of the most impactful beauty lines on the. And she continues to break new ground with LAMIK, including becoming the first black owned clean makeup brand to launch on Ulta.com. Most importantly, Kim has built a company that embraces two core cultures — to be kind to people and to be kind to the planet.
LAMIK supports and celebrates women in all of their glory. Kim is building an inclusive community for women across the country and is passionate about serving that community. And she's creating the highest quality products with the purest ingredients to promote the health of her customers and her community, all while being dedicated to promoting environmental stewardship.
Kim has been named one of the Houston Business Journals 40 Under 40 of the American Business Journals most influential young executives, and one of the 30 Black Stars by Face to Face Africa. The city of Houston, formally named June 23rd as Kim Roxie Day in her honor, and she received the Barack Obama Lifetime Achievement Award for community service. She is, without a doubt, a superstar, which is why it was our distinct honor to present the 2022 Passionistas Persist Nova Award to Kim Roxie.
Kim: Wow. Am I floored right now? Am I grateful? Um, the words that come to my mind are, you know, people don't have to show you appreciation. They can go along like it never happened. And, you know, I appreciate the Passionistas because they have put their passion into action. And for that, I am so grateful. Being on this journey of creating an inclusive, a very, uh, kind makeup line in a world of beauty that sometimes seems intimidating. Um, took a lot of passion and it took a lot of grit and it took a lot of belief.
Um, and so I thank. Um, you all for endowing me with this award and seeing the work that we're doing at LAMIK is once to be honored. Um, and I honor you for that. I honor you for seeing me. Um, I honor you for seeing LAMIK and what we're doing, so we're gonna continue to make makeup that is speaking to all skin tones, that's showing up for all skin tones. Uh, but more than that, we're gonna continue to be there for women in ways, uh, that others have forgotten about us. Thank you.
Passionistas: What are you most passionate about?
Kim: At this point, to be honest, what I'm most passionate about, about is, is almost like a variable that's changing right now. What I'm most passionate about is, um, Is enjoying every moment and getting others, encouraging others to do the same.
Like that's what I'm really passionate about right now is soaking in every single moment and giving others the freedom and reminding them that they have the freedom to do the same. Um, and so in beauty, I'm always in a woman's ear, right? I'm always there for her. And right now, that's my, that my, that's my most pertinent, passionate, uh, message is to enjoy every moment. Right now.
Passionistas: What inspired you to create LAMIK Beauty?
Kim: I have the inspiration for my mother, uh, who believed in me when I was 21, who helped me financially. Put her $500 to help me open up my own makeup shop when I was graduating from college. Um, but she later developed metastatic breast cancer and passed away, um, the year before my daughter was born.
And now my daughter is named in honor of my mother, Loretta. Um, but I have the, the, the passion of my mother inside of me. That's part of my inspiration. She wore makeup every single. And she trusted that the makeup she was using was okay. Um, but come to find out, as we did our research, it wasn't, And so I have that inside of me that's inspired me to create this line.
And then I also have the desire. For all women to see themselves in beauty. And so I remember going to the makeup co, uh, counter when I was in high school, senior in for prom and getting my makeup done and looking like a ghost when I left, cuz my face was so ashy and so gray. And so like a cast, uh, on my.
And I was thinking to myself, this doesn't make me feel beautiful. This doesn't make me feel good. And thinking we need, we need makeup that makes people feel good. All skin tones needs to be accepted and appreciated. Um, and so that, those are the themes, right? And when I created my first product for amic, um, it was inspired by my personal, uh, diagnosis with.
Alopecia the, um, a form of alopecia that I have that cause hair loss. And, um, my first product was inspired by that, our revelation brow duo to fill in my own eyebrows so they could frame my face. Because 75% of the framing of your face comes from your brows. Why was it important to you to build not just a company but a community of women?
Because I. You know, women will realize how powerful we are together. So there's this staggering statistics that talk about, and, and that I know, um, that 0.006% of black women raise venture capital. Um, 2% of women, uh, raise venture capital. But with crowdfunding, for instance, women actually, um, do better. Um, with the raising funds in the crowdfunding atmosphere and what does crowdfund take?
Crowdfund takes community. So I remember going to iFundWomen.com to set up a rewards based crowdfunding campaign, and I was able to raise the money that I needed to launch my website, do all the stuff that I needed to do to get ready to launch. And all of that happened because other women read our story.
Believed in our mission and said, Hey, I'm gonna put $25 behind it, $50, a hundred dollars, $250. And that's how we were able to raise the money to launch LAMIK. So I think that, you know, for me, community is everything because we get to show each other what we can do when we come together, when we band together.
Um, and everybody's input and contribution can add up to mean a lot. And now our community shows up. In so many different ways for us to be on Ulta, Ulta.com. That was because our community showed up and voted for us to win a pitch competition, and that's how we got on Ulta.com. It wasn't because I knew the buyers or anything like that.
All of this work is from the ground up. This is like, I'm just like anybody else who's watching like you. Prob people watching are probably more important than me. Like I am not a celebrity. I am not anybody important. I'm just a regular old girl from Houston that you know. Um, has gets to travel a lot of different places so I can expose myself to different things, but I, it is nobody I knew, you know, that was gonna gimme sort of this leg up.
Right. Um, all I had was my faith in God and utilizing that to say, Hey, when we come together, I seen it happen in church. I seen people raise money at church to, to pay, you know, one of the ladies light bills or something like that. You know, I've seen people come together, do stuff and that's why I saw it and I, and I sort of mimicked it in crowdfunding. So that's why I believe in community.
Passionistas: Why have you decided that kindness is a cornerstone of your business?
Kim: I remember someone asking me what LAMIK stood for, Nancy. And um, I was originally, I'll tell you, LAMIK actually was my name spelled backwards and the LA from my middle name. Um, and. But I never had told anybody that.
That's just something. That's how I created the name and that's what I had. But when someone asked me what LAMIK stood for in that moment, I said it out. I was like, and it was the first time anybody ever asked me what LAMIK stood for. And I said, Love And Makeup In Kindness. And so the first time somebody asked me what LAMIK me stood for, I could not say Kim's about backwards like that didn't even come out.
All the work I did to put into creating le me, I was doing it beyond myself. Like it. If it was for me, I would've not done it. Like I would've stopped. Like, once the challenge comes up, I would've been like, Mm, I'm good. Let me go do something else. But it wasn't about me and it's not about me. And so in that moment when someone asked me, What does LAMIK stand for?
I said, Love And Makeup In Kindness. And I said, love and kindness is your true makeup because beauty is revealed and not applied. I think that for, you know, for me, growing up, makeup and all of that was associated with people. You had all these different stereotypes and connotations towards makeup. I didn't identify with some of those.
I didn't feel like I was just this pretty girl wearing makeup. Then I didn't feel like, you know, I needed to, I didn't feel like, Oh, I wanna just cover up and I wanna put on makeup. I didn't feel like I was fitting in those, these boxes that people had put. And I was like, my love and my kindness the way I am, the love I have for life and for people and for myself and for others, and the kindness that I show.
That's what makes you beautiful, that makes you walk away from a person and says, Man, that's a beautiful. Right after you talk to a person or after a person does a kind act, you're like, that is a beautiful person. Right? And so I think that the beauty that is revealed is the beauty that's lasting.
Passionistas: Tell us about a time that you have persisted in your life and how you got through that.
Kim: I had my makeup shop, um, that I ran from 2004 to 2018. And, um, closing that makeup shop in 2018 for me was almost like how people feel when they like leave their corporate job. Because I was so used to opening up that store every day, working inside of that store, having my staff there, like was so used to that life that when I closed it and I, and I initiated the clothes because I had this vision of a building, a makeup line for 2020.
And, um, when I closed it, I was like, okay, excited, you know, I got this vision, you know, I'm gonna revamp, I'm gonna, you know, really concentrate on the products. I'm gonna launch LAMIK, you know, the product line, you know, all this. I had this like vision, but about three, you know, I, I joined an accelerator the month after I closed my store, April of 2018.
In, in Austin, Texas, when I first got in there, I was thinking to myself, Oh my God, this is not what I thought I was going to. What was go it was gonna be, I thought it was just gonna be like, Oh, just, just come up with some cute packaging. Pick out some colors, some branding, launch a brand, you know, And that's not what it was.
I got tore down to the bare bones. I got tore down almost to just like the foundation, you know how the people say like, you can, like, you know, you tear everything down, but keep the foundation and we're gonna build back up. That's how I felt. I felt like I got torn down to the foundation and, um, it was like, No, you gotta, you gotta really think through this.
And so, um, 2018, 2019, I. I had to be persistent to get through those times. You have to imagine. All I knew was having that store, having it open, and I'm trying to figure out e-commerce and I was used to brick and mortar. This is when I had to persist. I had to persist in learning. A lot of us think about persist, persisting in working.
Right. We think about just stay persistent in the work. What about when there's no work, it's only for you to learn. What about when you're in a learning season? And for someone who's used to, you know, having a, uh, cash register full when they get done at the end of the night and all of that, right? But you're in a season of just learning and it's like you have to be persistent in.
Wow. That was a season. So when 2020 came and we were ready to launch for March, 2020, that was our date. The pandemic happened, everything. But for me, everything closed. What I did in 2018 happened for everybody in 2020. Brick and mortar closed. Everybody closed. But I was opening up, and to be honest, it was the right type of, um, attention for e-commerce business to launch in. And so it gave me the opportunity and it, and it gave me a spotlight opportunity to come through with exactly what I had. And if I wouldn't have taken that time to get ready for 2020, I wouldn't have been ready. I would've still had a brick and mortar.
I would've been reactive, I would've been reacting and responding to what's happening versus p. Putting in the market what needed to be there for that time. And that's what I came in and did.
Passionistas: What does the term Power of Passionistas mean to you?
Kim: When you think of passion, um, you think of being relentless. Um, you think of being unwavering. Uh, you think of being crazy you think of being, um, you know, um, even to a certain extent, misunderstood. And, uh, and, and sometimes it's not that you are doing something wrong, but it is other people's understanding. They're missing it. They're missing it. Right. And they're under stating what you're doing.
And so, uh, but then at some point they, they, they rise up to the occasion to understand what you're. At some point, at some time, at some juncture. Um, and you have to be persistent enough to keep going until people get there, right? So when I think about the power of passions, I think about this grid of power of, of people, of human beings, of women.
Are so passionate, so relentless, so crazy, so, so misunderstood that they would continue to go beyond and be like a power grid for others to plug into. That need another moment that they need it. And so what you all are doing, what you're standing up, this power grid that you have that others like myself, are able to plug into along our journey to give us the charge, to give us the battery life, to get through this journey of entrepreneurship and life and professionalism that it takes. So, you know, you all just power grid.
Passionistas: What's your dream for women?
Kim: To know that we are, we are feeling a blank after that. Okay. We are the, the, the, the salt of the earth. Okay? We are, we are. The divine beings at birth life, right? Like we are. I just want women to know that we are what we've been waiting for.
We are the answer I want. I want women really to fill in that blank at the end. I do believe in, in in self-advocacy, and I, uh, uh, And that's the reason why I answered that question towards my daughter. Cause I already know the promise that my daughter has on her lifestyle. I notice she is. And when I think about women, I know that we are, you know, and you know, for women it is a weak situation.
You know, I think, you know, it is about us banding together. Um, that's why I love the power grid of the power passions. Power the passions. But I think that it's, it's just that we, and that we are, and we get to fill in the blank blank. We are a chemist. We are, you know, Um, uh, owners of trash companies, we are, you know, beauty pioneers.
We are, you know, we are that fill in the blank. And I think that that's what I want women to know. It is time for us to just show up and define, uh, what womanhood looks like, um, and know that we are.
