Aspiring entrepreneur's take away from The MAYBELLINE STORY

 

I was 15, my grandmother suggested I tell the Maybelline Story in my speech class.  I did and not only got an A, but also gained a lot of overnight popularity. I decided at that young age I wanted to write a book someday so the story wouldn’t be forgotten.

What’s the core of the story?

Overcoming obstacles and succeeding. Believing in yourself and making your dream a reality. Like the new Maybelline New York tag link says, “Make it happen.” 

19-year-old entrepreneur founded an Empire with a $500-dollar loan and its effect on him and his family is a blessing and a curse.

My great uncle, Tom Lyle Williams, founded the Maybelline Company in 1915 and though he reached great success, he and his partner lived in obscurity to protect the Maybelline brand from public. The family’s blessings and curse came after the sale of the company. Some of them weren’t ready for overnight wealth.

So basically the book evokes the time-honored story of the small town boy who aspires to make it big and then proceeds to do so – in spite of neighbors who figured he wouldn’t amount to anything ---is that it?

Yes, that’s an excellent point. Rags to Riches and becoming a great success when everyone said he was a dreamer. 

 Have the principles of being a successful entrepreneur changed in the meantime?

The desire to aspire, achieve and create something is part of our DNA. However, the will to keep going is the challenge. Today social media, I think more and more entrepreneurs are creating brands that have a chance to thrive much faster than say, advertising in the classifieds like my Great uncle had to use in the 1920s.

The driving Spirit that motivates a person to produce and market something they believe in never changes. It's an internal spark that is ignited by some inspiration

1.Tom Lyle’s secret’s to success included

2.  Accountability: Though people called him a DREAMER, he didn’t rely on wishful thinking.  He stepped up to the plate and worked to make it happen. He had the fortitude to persist in spite of significant obstacles. He was Inspired and responsible for making things happen. Action is what separates doing from dreaming.

 What can an aspiring entrepreneur take from your book?

My story is about overcoming the obstacles that constantly try and silent the entrepreneurs voice. To never stop believing in your dream and succeed in the end. No matter how long it takes.

Michael Levine, one of the most successful PR Agents in Hollywood, captures the place of Maybelline when he says that every girl he ever dated as a teenager had Maybelline cosmetics in her pursue – and that even in later life, his dates always had some Maybelline product in their purses.  Today, it’s impossible to walk through a drugstore without seeing Maybelline products. That seems to speak both to the power of Maybelline marketing and its place in our culture …  

Maybelline has always been known for it’s Advertising and marketing. Tom Lyle Williams was known in the business as The King of Advertising. Maybelline had a tremendous effect on changing the culture in the early years.  Today, Maybelline’s standard of beauty is still holding strong with the younger generation. Maybelline continues to change with the times and keep up with what women want.

Amongst the firsts started by Tom Lyle Williams and now taken for granted was his use of Hollywood starts to endorse his products. What other firsts did start?

  

Carded thn bubble wrapped merchandise and the twirling displays we take for granted today in stores.  They were the first to do “Before and After” effects in print and the first to use special effects on TV in the early 1960s. They also were the first to use page, colored advertising on the back of magazines. And the list goes on.

Reading the book, one gets the picture that Tom Lyle Williams had had some failures and then when the early Maybelline products began selling well, he was almost surprised by his own success. Is that what happened?

In the early days the whole family took suitcases to the train station and wheeled bags of mail home in a wheel barrel because the Post Master told them their mail was jamming up the system. This was the first revelation that the American girls were ready for this new eye enhancing product. It was a shock for the whole family as Maybelline continued to expand over the years.

Was there some good old-fashioned luck here? A part of Maybelline’s success was that the times were changing? It was no longer assumed that women who used makeup were – as they used to say – of loose morals?

It was the flappers who launched the Maybelline company and Silent Films.   Tom Lyle featured Stars Silent Film Stars endorsing Maybelline saying they wore Maybelline in public. Husbands threatened to divorce their wives if they dared to buy the product. But, in the end the women won the vote and the right to beautify their eyes.

Was there some regret when L-Oreal took over Maybelline.

The company sold to Plough Inc in 1967. Tom Lyle did regret selling it. He wished he had turned it over to the younger generation. But you’ll have to read my book to see why.

The Maybelline Story reads like the best fiction but with real characters and plots that take us on a wild ride. REVIEW

From the Midwest through Chicago and Hollywood, we follow a path strewn with scandals, jealousies, triangles and betrayals. Throw in arson, a still-unsolved murder and even the Feds and Mafia and you have an exciting and bumpy journey that leaves more than one casualty in its wake. And Maybelline was along for the ride. 

The characters seem larger-than-life yet somehow remain vulnerable and sympathetic This is a family that continually grasped at the shiny ring only to discover that it might be no more than their own reflections staring back, sometimes accusingly, in the mirror. 

The legacy is in good hands with Ms. Williams. She's a true storyteller and writes with passion and candor while bluntly sharing her own resolve to rise above her 

family's lifelong mantra of money, beauty and the search for perfection. It's a critical but tender tale of redemption that displays an understanding, compassion and love for her family. She never gave up on her dream to tell this story and literally braved fire and fury to share it with the world. It's a book that you really can't put down, a true page-turner and I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. 

You'll never look at a Maybelline ad again without feeling a tug of empathy for these characters and the struggles and determination of one man's effort to capture beauty on a brush and change forever the color palette of the world.      Amazon.com

Maybelline, "The Little Company That Could"

Maybelline ad, 1936

As the Great Depression continued through the 1930's Maybelline cornered the market in eye cosmetics and money poured in from every direction. No other cosmetic company enjoyed more confidence and higher regard among the trade and had the envy among competitors as did Maybelline. Tom Lyle’s policy for perfection and his reputation for fairness set him apart and above all others in the field. Even his competitors agreed, there would never be another man like Tom Lyle Williams or a company like Maybelline. His sensitivity allowed him to see how women were affected by his advertising strategies. By 1939, Tom Lyle was at the top of his game. He was the most important executive in the cosmetic business. He never became selfish, egotistical, or self serving and his kindness and spirituality never ceased to exist.  Maybelline became known as "The Little Company that Could!"



1933 Maybelline Ad.

Tom Llye Williams, Maybelline's founder believed that a woman’s greatest asset was her ability to capture a man’s imagination through her expressive eyes.

Empowered for the first time since the Victorian era, women discovered a passion for imitating stars who exuded sex appeal on the screen.

Maybelline provided an inexpensive eye beautifier that enhanced a woman's sex-appeal while movies mirrored  celluloid forgeries professing  nonconformity with old world standards.  As Movie stars became models for America's changing values, Tom Lyle threw Maybelline in the dime stores in 1933 and as little cosmetic companies fell by the wayside or were bought out by Maybelline, The Maybelline Company went on to be the undisputed giant in its field during the Great Depression.