Michele Kish markets the All-In-One Cosmetic kit — a single product that self adjusts to individual natural pigments and bone structure to produce a perfect natural color fit with each user — through her company Go-Natural, Inc.  The silky pressed powder from her replaces eight different types of cosmetics — blush, foundation, eye shadow, concealer, brow and lip color — in a single application, while it also blends away imperfections and produces a natural healthy glow. Simply brush it on and daily make up is completed in seconds. All-In-One Cosmetic works with all ages and all skin colors. With a two year development cycle that began in 1999 Kish has been able to develop her idea to the point where it has been sold on TV, is offered in a major mail order catalog is sold at more than 450 upscale salons and spas.

Michele Kish was a cosmetologist for over 20 years in Ontario Canada and she kept noticing how customers were confused by what shade of make-up to apply.  Kish started to experiment with a variety of makeup with the advent of mineral make-up and saw some encouraging signs that suggested she could make an all in one makeup kit, one that would provide all the functions of a variety of makeup products that would also work with a wide variety of shades of people’s skin.

She started out by finding a cosmetic laboratory that would work with her and she spent two years working on developing the product with the laboratory.  When she was sure she had the right product, she didn’t know how to start selling her product other than through her own store. Cosmetics is a product area that is controlled by big companies who dominate markets like drug stores and mass merchants making it very hard for a small inventor-led one-product company to penetrate.

The other market that was ideal was small salons and day spas where cosmetology services are performed.  Once the spa started to use the product they could then offer it for sale. But those spas are hard to sell to without representatives and they can be very reluctant to take on a new product.

Kish started the ball rolling by displaying her product at bridal, travel and other shows related to women.  Her goal was to demonstrate her product, pick up orders and then hoped the people liked the product enough to reorder from her web site.  Kish then had several milestones that propelled her close to her first million in sales in just three years;

1. She displayed at Toronto’s 11 day One-of-a-Kind Show  where she had to raise the product’s price because it was selling so fast off the floor that she feared she would run out of inventory if she didn’t raised the price to slow down sales.
2. She then found a series of 11 women’s shows run in the SE part of the US, booked all of them and had strong sales.  Now Go-Natural products are displayed at over 100 shows per year and she has picked up most of her salon customers at shows.  Shows have always been a big selling point for the “All-in-One Cosmetic Kit” because the excitement from end users is contagious.
3. Kish product was featured on the Canadian Home Shopping Channel and had great results and generated exposure for her product across Canada.
4. As Kish continued to pick up distribution outlets, she decided to attend a trade show geared toward the Professional Beauty Industry, including licensed beauty salons, spas, esthetician, dermatologists, medical spas and skin care clinics.  That helped expand her distribution network to over 500 outlets.

Kish benefited greatly that virtually all women can use her product so that she could build an entire business by first going to trade shows.  The success of her product at the shows built real buyer momentum that was noticed by buyers and owners of salons and spas.  Don’t think that Kish is alone; many entrepreneurs start out at shows, including Max Appel who invented the $100 million per year Orange Glow line of cleaning products that sell at grocery stores and mass merchandisers throughout the country.

Since her fast start, Kish has continued to fine tune the trade shows she attends, continue to add retailers and this year she has made more of a push to sell direct to consumers, through a direct response TV programs and through Don Debelak’s Catalog Marketing Program. To give you some idea of her product’s appeal, Solutions catalog put the product in for the first time in a late October catalog, and then reordered, with the second reorder twice as big as the first order, and the third order three times as large.  That’s the type of pull you can only get if your product effectively meets a real customer need.

Related posts:

1. Inventor Story: Carroll Bassett
2. Inventor Story – John Lyddon
3. Inventor Story: Sara Blakely