She sold Urban Decay for nine figures. Then she started over.
Wende Zomnir co-founded Urban Decay in 1996 with Sandy Lerner, the co-founder of Cisco, whose pitch was simply “I broke tech, why can’t we break beauty?” L’Oreal bought it in 2012. Then she launched Caliray into a category that had spent a decade copying her.
She tells Elizabeth Gore how she found her first nail polish supplier by asking an auto body shop where it bought car paint, how she got the buyer list for every Nordstrom in the country out of a friend’s bag, and why the mistake she still keeps in her office is a palette she could never sell.
Featuring
Wende Zomnir, Co-Founder, Urban Decay and Founder, Caliray
Carl Breedlove, Block Advisors [TITLE UNCONFIRMED – DO NOT PUBLISH BARE]
Presented by Block Advisors, built by H&R Block.
Timestamps
0:00 Thirty years, two brands, one industry
0:51 Tariff refunds: are you owed money
2:06 The palette she still uses
2:37 How she landed the co-founder of Cisco
3:16 I broke tech, why can’t we break beauty
4:26 The buyer list in the bag while he showered
6:06 Rail vodka in her twenties, green juice in her forties
6:56 Yoga and no parabens, eighteen years early
8:08 Why she left after L’Oreal bought it
8:30 She built the 405, now she cannot merge onto it
8:52 Asking a body shop where to buy car paint
10:27 The dirty unicorn: always an inventory mistake
11:14 Go viral, run out, and the virality collapses
11:57 An uninhabited island covered in plastic
13:01 The Naked palette that broke her heart
14:07 The product she has never shown anyone
15:57 Her small business shout-out
17:08 Tax break: what changed this year
17:59 Why your 1099-K did not arrive
19:43 The new form for digital assets
21:09 The freelancer threshold moved to $2,000
22:02 The micro business deduction
23:20 Records, and when to call a pro
#UrbanDecay #Caliray #beautyindustry #founderstory #TheBigIdea #YahooFinance
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