With a focus on Greater Philadelphia small businesses and entrepreneurs, "The Creators" is a weekly feature presented by PHL Inno. Check back each Monday for a new profile on a local business. Have a story you think we should know about? Email associate editor Lisa Dukart at ldukart@bizjournals.com.
Not many entrepreneurs can say they have an award-winning product before they’ve even gone to market, but that’s what happened for Camille Bell and Pound Cake.
Bell, 28, and her cosmetics company Pound Cake snagged a coveted Best of Beauty win from women’s fashion magazine Allure in its annual awards, which called the brand’s Maraschino Cherry the best classic red lipstick of the year. This year’s winners, which were made public in September, were selected from over 10,000 submissions.
The nod from Allure has already been a boon to Philadelphia-based Pound Cake, which sold out of all 10,000 tubes of its lip colors – which numbered five at the time – in less than 48 hours, Bell said.
“It felt amazing and we really appreciated the support from our community and the community that we fostered leading up to launch,” she added.
The popularity of Pound Cake isn’t slowing down, with Bell and Co-founder Johnny Velazquez up some nights until 4 a.m. packing orders.
The company has come a long way in just a few years. Bell, a Pennsylvania native, initially conceptualized Pound Cake in 2016 shortly after graduating from Temple University, where she and Velazquez met as students. After earning her degree in 2015, Bell returned to her alma mater through its Blackstone Launchpad business incubator. Velazquez, 26, took on the role of chief branding officer.
At the time, Bell was frustrated by the lack of true red lip colors available on the market for people of color. While brands claimed their colors were intended for varying skin tones, the vast majority weren’t, showing up in other hues or not at all when swiped on.
“What this means is that someone with pink lips and someone with dark brown lips wearing the same red lipstick will achieve different results,” Bell said, noting the issue is exacerbated for those with “warmer to darker skin.”
That didn’t sit right with Bell. Tired of the discrepancies and lack of inclusion, she decided to launch her own brand to bridge the gap. Pound Cake is currently focused on its signature Cake Batter collection, a liquid lipstick available in six colors. Each tube retails for $24 and the brand says an application will last seven to eight hours without flaking or crumbling.
Most importantly to Bell is that the color goes on opaque for varying skin tones. The Philadelphia company takes a similar approach to lip colors as select segments of the beauty industry, like foundation, to ensure the color is true.
Achieving formulas that did so took years of research, three labs and over 400 test iterations, Bell said.
Recognizing the potential roadblocks Bell faced early on, advisors initially encouraged her to go the white label route – using a non-exclusive product with her brand labeling on it. Doing so would give her time to develop her own line, but it didn’t feel right. “There's nothing wrong with having white label products, but for me, we were really trying to solve a problem and I wasn't happy with anything that was out there,” she said. “In my mind, custom was the only route.”
Funding would prove critical to get there, so she and Velazquez turned to pitch competitions where they received plenty of positive feedback but not the elusive prize which would help fuel their brand.
Instead of trying more competitions, Bell and Velazquez eventually turned to their own community for a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, ultimately raking in $20,522 from 168 backers.
With that initial funding secured, they began the formulation journey, working first with a lab in Utah, then one in Canada, before finally landing on their current lab in northern New Jersey.
Last year, the duo also snagged a $10,000 infusion through cult beauty brand Glossier’s Grant Initiative for Black-Owned Beauty Businesses.
Embedded within the ethos of the brand is a commitment to inclusivity, and Pound Cake describes itself as pro-Black, pro-fat and pro-queer.
The name itself is a reference to the historic marginalization of non-white individuals in the beauty industry and a nod to the dessert of the same name, which has roots in the Black community.
“We really wanted to make sure that each particular skin and lip tone category had a true red so that when they all showed up, they looked like the same color.”
That’s what hit the market on Sept. 30 and sold out thereafter. Since then, Pound Cake has restocked, though Bell declined to share the new inventory size.
Growth remains top of mind, and with it additional funding. The duo is looking to raise a seed round or Series A in 2022. “The rate we want to grow and be able to release products quicker, we are going to need an investment, so we are going to be opening a round for investment and raise,” Bell said.
Securing funding will help scale the business and allow them to bring on employees. Currently Bell and Velazquez are Pound Cake’s only two employees and they each work full-time jobs in the tech industry. “We're keeping up with our peers in the industry, but we definitely know that this isn't sustainable for the growth that we want to reach,” Bell said.
Also a priority is finding a distribution partner, something they hope to do in “the very near future,” Bell said.
Getting nods from brands like Allure and Glossier lays the groundwork for a promising future and Pound Cake is in talks with potential retail partners, though Bell couldn’t disclose who. Bell said she hopes to expand sales internationally as part of the company’s five-year plan.
If they can do that, they can have their cake and wear it, too.
In what other ways is Pound Cake inclusive?
We make sure to not only hire Black, fat and trans models for photoshoots, but also as our partners and influencers whenever there are opportunities to do so. We also want to make sure that we have folks share their stories and experiences within our community as well. … We just launched and so this is what we're setting out to do in 2022 – we're going to start donating some of our money to organizations made for and by Black, fat, and queer folks.
Tell us about the meaning behind the name.
We named it Pound Cake because if you think back to the early 1900s, I believe, makeup was referred to as pancake. And that was a time where only thin and it was predominantly white women being at the forefront of beauty. That didn't include any other marginalized folks. We wanted to disrupt that and create a new type of ecosystem. Pancake represents what was in the past and we want to destroy that, disrupt it, let's pound that and so we named it Pound Cake.
Are you looking to add more products in the future?
Oh, absolutely. We definitely want to expand our colors for our liquid lipstick. And then we were even talking about what should the next product be? We'll most likely reach out to our audience and ask them what they want to see next in conjunction with doing our own market research to see what folks want, what's saturated right now, but definitely by the end of next year we'd like to release our second product.
