Have you always wondered how products get in the hands of celebrities? Even if you're not personal friends with them, or don't have friends who are friends with them and generous enough to do you a favor?

It is called "celebrity gifting," and there are many ways in which...

I nurtured Purple Lab, my baby, for way longer than nine months. I felt it kick to get out. I suffered through morning/afternoon/evening sickness. I gained weight. But one early morning, the last week of April, I finally gave birth.

Purple Lab's Huge Lips Skinny Hips shipped to...

In a small company, you have no choice but to do everything yourself. Everything!

Let me bring you back to April. 'Twas the night before we shipped Huge Lips Skinny Hips shipped and we had 1,000 baby size glosses to use as retailer samples (P.S. there are no...

I talk about our office, which is Todd's and my apartment, all the time. So I thought I'd give you a looksy. Though there's no Dwight, Creed, Pam, or Michael, it's pretty insane.

The lay of the land: The apartment is split on three levels, but there are no doors...

Before I go on, I must say how sorry I am for being so M.I.A.

I have been in product formulation world -- five newbies in February. And in the Purple Lab business story, there have been leaps and bounds ... partners, smoothing out every kink in our manufacturing process,...

We were finally approaching a ship date! Of course, many a road bump slowed us down, and the stress level was nowhere near low yet. Do you see a recurring theme here?

But we were... so close... I could... ALMOST... taste it...

After almost two years of insanity, we finally did it! Huge Lips Skinny Hips by Purple Lab - my babies, thousands of them - were ready to ship! (I actually heard Barry Manilow's "Looks like we made it" buzzing in my head all day!). When you send to...

This whole thing - starting a business, becoming a manufacturer, raising money, balancing it with a day job, overseeing back and front end of all operations... it's war, I tell you. WAR!

At times, it was war with the accountant.

At times, it was war with the bank - or...

I'm taking you back to the last week of April, 2009. It was (FINALLY!) time to actually assemble our product and get ready to rumble (i.e. ship to stores). Purple Lab was coming to life! Huge Lips Skinny Hips - the baby Todd and I worked so hard...

Just want to pause for a minute to tell you about Sharon Hirsch.

She is Purple Lab's Communications Director and she kicks ass!

She didn't technically come into the picture on staff until late June, but I have known her -- and been wanting to hire her -- for...

So... I've been giving you the scoop on the launch event (even though product missed the shipping date - sorry... not yet over it!).

It went exactly as I had hoped it would. The girls were great - and so into it, even the pole dancing! They...

Although we weren't in store yet, we had a launch planned for some of my fave bloggers (bloggesses as I call them because they are like the lionesses - they rule the jungle online).

While I wanted to postpone the event - and do it when we had...

Desperately trying to catch up and doing so by video seems like the quickest way to get there.

This part of our journey was right after a moment of success - and it was a moment of... oh... let's just say not so much success! And then another moment of...

Back to the action of production and getting the business up and running.

In the last piece of the story, we had just received 30,000 damaged components -- and I was suddenly suffering from severe acid reflex, brought on by stress.

After going through weeks upon weeks of debate with...

Fashion's Night Out was a huge, massive, amazing success -- I couldn't have asked for a better experience.

The day started at 10 am, with schlepping our stuff to the Scoop Street store, which is luckily not for from my apartment/Purple Lab HQ. That meant: a platform for...

A reprieve from the story to focus on something au current.

Fasion's Night Out!

On September 10th, Anna Wintour, fashion's high priestess, and Mayor Bloomberg are sponsoring an all night event to bring retail and the spirit of shopping back. Every store in NYC (LA) is hosting some kind...

Before I go on, note: Everything I'm blogging right now happened a while ago (at this time, the product is actually in stores, but I want to give you all the background to catch you up on how I got to today).

Business plan? Check.

Investor meetings? Check. (Yet...

I thought raising money to support Purple Lab would be easy. I really envisioned that I'd be talking to some uber-sucessful executive (I don't know... say... Warren Buffet) about the idea, my vision for marketing and future products, the brand image and he/she would just be so impressed, a check...

I must come back to Space.NK -- it's a loooong story -- but that's for later. Now, I was able to finish my presskit.

PR 101: Editors, writers, journalists, media types, bloggers... they get hundreds of press kits and product samples every week. When you're in their position, everyone wants...

I was saying earlier that my other goal -- after Scoop -- was to be in Space.NK. In the UK -- the prestige chain originated in London -- it is "the" place to go for beauty. Sophisticated, white, gleaming, modern, the store is a jewel box of faceted brands --...