Cosmetics brand Urban Decay evolves from rebel roots


Cosmetics brand Urban Decay evolves from rebel roots

Wende Zomnir is the co-founder and chief creative officer of Urban Decay, a Newport Beach company that has been bought by several investor groups over the years and was acquired by French beauty giant L'Oreal in December.


Wende Zomnir burst onto the cosmetics scene in 1996 with blue-black and green-black polish on her fingers, lavender and blue on her eyelids. Like a punk princess crashing a debutante ball, the hues of her Newport Beach company, Urban Decay, were an antidote to conservative cosmetic colors at the time.

Sandy Lerner, the woman who co-founded tech firm Cisco Systems, brought in Zomnir as a partner. The startup debuted with the advertising line, "Does pink make you puke?"

Seventeen years later, Urban Decay has passed through the hands of a luxury-goods conglomerate (LVMH, 2000), a duty-free company (Falic Group, 2002) and a private-equity firm (Castanea Partners, 2009). Last December, Urban Decay was sold to cosmetics giant L'Oreal. Under CEO Tim Warner, its revenue rose to $140 million in the year leading up to the L'Oreal acquisition, triple what it was in 2009, according to Castanea Partners.

Zomnir, 44, is now Urban Decay's chief creative officer. She sat down with the Register to talk about her indie roots, lessons learned and adapting a rebel brand to corporate ownership. Here's an edited version of that conversation.

Q. What was Urban Decay like when you joined it?

A. It was really Sandy Lerner's brainchild. But she wanted to do philanthropic things and other adventures. She brought me on as her little helper/partner person to help launch this business. It was something that really spoke to me, I've always loved makeup. I'm from Texas. When you're a girl born in Texas, makeup is in your blood.

Q. What was the premise of Urban Decay?

A. In the mid-'90s, the beauty front was kind of beige, red and pink. It was really boring. There wasn't a lot going on as far as color in high-quality prestige cosmetics. And so our idea was to really knock down the door of cosmetics department and say, "We are here with high-quality cosmetics in bold greens, purples and blues and experimental color that you can have fun with.'"

The only place you could find that before was at a drugstore and when you put those colors on, it was junk. You picked up a blue and you put it on and it wasn't the blue in the pan.

We wanted to be able to swipe that blue, put it on your eyelid and get exactly the color that you see in the pan. That was a really new and innovative idea.

Q. How did you sell that idea?

A. It was a very tough start for us because the beauty departments were really entrenched with the big brands. And we really said, we want to do it differently. They loved the idea, but they didn't really know how to embrace it.

Then along came Sephora, shortly after we started. And that was really the thing that launched some of these indie brands. It was a great platform for us and, not too long after, Ulta started carrying prestige beauty and we jumped right on that.

Q. Did anyone tell you then that the concept was not going to work?

A. No. People love the idea of it. But the question was "how do you put into in this environment and make it work when there are all these companies that have a machine." The beauty industry is really a machine. It's a marketing machine.

More from Business


Join the conversation

Comments are encouraged, but you must follow our User Agreement
