Contributor

Poppy King

Founder, Lipstick Queen

Poppy King started her first lipstick brand at the age of 18 years old. Born in Melbourne Australia, she became obsessed with lipstick when she would use her mother’s to play dress up. By the time she finished high school and was old enough to buy her own lipsticks she didn’t like the look, feel, smell and shades that the major companies put on the market.

So she set about to create her own brand to bring to market the exact type of vintage glamour she was looking for in a lipstick but with modern touches. After finding finance and a lab to produce the lipsticks as she directed, her first seven lipsticks were released in March 1992 in Melbourne.

Since then Poppy and her story is legendary in the industry. That first year she sold over a million dollars worth of her “Poppy” branded lipsticks, the next over 4 million dollars. She went on to become Young Australian of The Year in 1995 a very high honor to acknowledge her business acumen, marketing abilities and the runaway success of her brand.

Barneys New York launched her brand back in 1993 and Poppy has been featured in magazines, newspapers and on television all over the world ever since as an expert in identifying opportunities and creating cult followings for the beauty products she creates.

In 2002 Estee Lauder Corporation relocated her to New York City to create products and identify trends, a challenge which saw Poppy close her own business in order to develop her skills even further within a big corporation.

In 2006 after 4 successful years at Lauder, her desire to create her own products once again took hold and she left the corporation to launch a new brand of specialty lipsticks called Lipstick Queen.

Today she lives, works and calls New York City home. She is the world’s leading expert in lip color and her latest brand Lipstick Queen is sold in upscale stores such as Barneys New York, Henri Bendels and Space NK.

Everything she does is so different to what exists and immediately develops an edge and credibility that only someone with such a true passion and depth of experience can create.

Poppy King’s first book “Lessons of a Lipstick Queen; Finding and Developing the Great Idea that can Change your Life” was released in hardback the USA by Simon and Schuster in 2008 and has become a well loved book for people everywhere looking to follow in her entrepreneurial footsteps.

For more information on Poppy King and Lipstick Queen please visit www.lipstickqueen.com.