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From brick and mortar to ecommerce with LAMIK Beauty

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned our world upside down, with small businesses being hit especially hard. This is a pivotal time for SMBs, and the way they respond to the pressure will determine how their business runs for years to come. Many companies are taking this difficult situation and turning it into an opportunity. In our Positive Pivots series, we’re diving deeper into what these innovative businesses have done, and what lies beneath the surface to produce this kind of creativity and resilience.

This week we spoke with Kim Roxie, Founder and CEO of LAMIK Beauty, to discuss how the company was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

What is LAMIK Beauty?

LAMIK (love and makeup in kindness) is a vegan makeup line made with natural and organic ingredients for multicultural women. I recognized the opportunity to create a makeup line for women of color with ingredients that were safe, natural, and organic, and I opened my first brick-and-mortar store in 2004. In 2018, I pivoted 100% to ecommerce, which turned out to be a wise move.

How did COVID-19 affect your operations?

I had been attending accelerators for years to get up to speed on technology and saw the opportunity ecommerce offered for the LAMIK brand. In a way, COVID-19 helped launch LAMIK 2.0 because I was forced to really lean into ecommerce. After an initial downturn, the ecommerce foundation we established helped us recover and pivot quickly. I consider LAMIK a beauty-tech company because we offer more than just physical products.

How did you respond to changes due to COVID-19 at your company?

Our ecommerce channel was already set up, so one of the first things we did when COVID-19 hit was launch a program to let women try on makeup virtually. Our Celebrity Brow Kit is one of our most popular products, so I started with that. We set up a way for customers to try on the brow kit virtually with no commitment. It was a huge hit and reassured me that women still want to look good in the midst of a pandemic.

Has there been a silver lining for your business throughout the COVID-19 pandemic?

COVID-19 forced a lot of entrepreneurs to find new ways to interact with customers, and I am no different. I started doing live Friday happy hours, called “Friday Night Live” on Facebook, where I give viewers makeup tips and talk with them about everything from motherhood to entrepreneurship. Connecting with other women and helping them look and feel better during this time has been like therapy. I definitely plan on continuing this in the future.

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