LipLoveLine

Self-Expression and Makeup Minimalism

By, Hadia Moosvi & Tony Ward

Briana Williams is a VCU graduate alumna whose mission is to promote confidence and inclusivity through beauty. Her brand, LipLoveLine, includes lip care products to empower self-expression in the best and cleanest way possible: through the lips. No full face makeup is necessary. Check out this interview with Briana and learn more about her journey that brought her ideas to life.

Did you go to VCU?

I did. I went to Virginia State University for my undergrad and then VCU for my graduate degree.

What did you study?

Marketing, public relations, and mainly overall mass communications, but that was kind of my discipline.

At what point did you start to take an entrepreneur role?

I’ve always had that kind of spirit. Besides being in school or working at a job, I’ve always liked to create things. I had a podcast before. I’ve started many different things and worked for a lot of different organizations, whether it was nonprofit or for-profit, where I had to be really creative and create events and manage lots of different new projects that were kind of new to organizations, mainly because social media, too, was new. It’s the thing now. The younger generation gets it. But, when I was coming out of school, those were the first courses that people were really taking - about social media. A lot of the organizations that I worked for were still very hesitant to enter that space. I had to be very creative and innovative in a lot of different ways. My family, too, is very entrepreneurial. A lot of people have their own businesses, and companies and work for themselves and have since I was young, so it wasn’t really a thing for me to be like, ‘Okay, I want to follow a dream and create something.’

Have you always had a passion for helping people?

I would say whatever business I would create would always have a mission or a vision that gives back to the community in some way. The dream or the purpose behind LipLoveLine - I like to do things that I’m passionate about and I have a personal connection. I’ve always loved lip products ever since I was a young girl because I dealt with a lot of different health issues. One of the few things that made me feel beautiful when I was young was my lip gloss. I wasn’t wearing a ton I was 13 years old and my mom bought me my first lip gloss set it gave me so much personality and confidence. As I got older, I used lip products only because I was familiar with them. I have really sensitive skin so finding makeup was not the thing for me even to this day. I’ll go and get my makeup done professionally if I’m going to do something that needs me to wear makeup. I consider myself a makeup minimalist. So it’s kind of funny when I tell that story and everybody’s like, ‘But you created a beauty brand.’ But honestly, in the industry now that’s kind of the thing - cleaning beauty, makeup minimalism, skincare first kind of situation. So, it just happened to work well for me when I started the business too. But it was really about my love for the products and how they became a reliable way for me to feel beautiful and put together without having to go on YouTube and figure out how to put eyeliner on. And two - just connecting with young girls and women who feel the same way as me, uplifting them, and celebrating beauty and all its forms. We cater to both makeup minimalists like me, but then also to women who love makeup as an art. Makeup is an art… there’s a skill to actually applying it and making it come to life. So, we celebrate any and all versions and every moment, but recognize that it looks different for everyone.

How did you find out about Shift?

I’ve been a part of the VCU community since I was in grad school, but I first heard about Shift through the Jackson Ward Collective. They partnered with the da Vinci Center in the beginning. So, I filled out an application for Shift and was selected! I was actually the first one chosen, but I had neat connections to VCU already. I was a VCU alum and at the time, I was a VCU employee. Before I started and launched the business, I participated in VCU Ventures. It was called The Next Big Idea competition. It’s a whole other VCU program that supports staff and faculty in bringing to life a business. That’s how I kind of had a lot of new connections to VCU, and I think that helped me to be chosen or be a good candidate for that position.

When you became a Shelfie and you had a finished product, was your company already printed and pretty much rolling at that point?

We had just launched our products a couple of months before, but yeah, in essence, we did compared to the others, which was cool, because we could get a little bit more feedback for the actual product versus the prototype. Technically it was still our prototype, and it still is to this day because I only just hit a year into having a product on the market in August. But in the beauty industry, that can either be very slowpaced or very fast-paced. I haven’t put out any new actual product. We have some products in development. But for me, I was taking the time to get that feedback because, again, it’s a smaller business - getting it into the right hands or to enough people to get a good amount of credible feedback about your product and then be able to have the room to change it or better it for the future. So, you’re not five years down the line and find out people don’t like this about your product. And you’re like, ‘Well, why didn’t anybody say that in the first place? And why didn’t you try to change it?’ So Shift really enabled me to kind of get in front of folks to try the product, get feedback on what they thought about the product, that I had products they wanted to see in the future that came from the line, even brand feedback… just a lot of feedback on many different areas of the business.

How do you like to relax?

I’m going to a yoga meditation class tonight. My sister is a yoga therapist here in Richmond, and she has a studio downtown, so they’re having their First Friday event. I definitely try to find my time it’s stressful having a company and a business and it’s exciting at the same time. I was just telling someone the other day, it’s a whole bunch of buckets of emotions when one second in the day, you can be super happy and excited the next you could be anxious, the next… I just need silence. So, I definitely try to find time for myself to not focus on the business - so do my regular self-care things, whether it’s going for a walk or watching my favorite TV show,,, but I think it’s different for everyone. I recently went on a trip that got postponed after a while, and I like to travel to just find time to do the things that make me happy outside of the company.