Get Like Me: Ginger and Liz

Entrepreneurs Ginger Johnson and Liz Pickett have transformed shared values into shared success. The best friends and business partners used financial literacy, marketing savvy, and organic relationships to their launch their luxury nail lacquer line Ginger & Liz. Available in a variety of vibrant colors the Ginger & Liz brand is committed to making sure women understand why they have right know what’s in their cosmetics. They’re also dedicated to providing safe beauty options that are affordable and accessible in the future from pigmented polishes to luxurious lip scrubs. Find out how these two women turned a non toxic lifestyle into a lucrative company below and don’t miss your chance to check out their product with a complimentary mini manicure at #ShopLoveBrownSugar!

Name: Ginger Johnson and Liz Pickett

Location: New York, New York

Personal Style in three words: Liz -“Comfortable, Modern, Minimalistic” Ginger -“Bohemian, Rock, Chic”

Favorite Designer(s): Ginger: “Haute Hippie, Free People and Balmain” Liz- “Chloe, Vince, Elizabeth and James, the white Elizabeth and James fragrance is my favorite and Diane Von Furstenberg”

Must Have Accessories: Ginger- “I can’t leave the house without my handmade coco head gold Trinidadian bangles, my hexagon gold studs and my Ash boots” Liz- “The Cartier love ring my husband gave me, our hand cream-I’m addicted to putting on hand cream, and simple clean bracelets”

How did your previous work experiences prepare you for entrepreneurship?

Ginger- My background in marketing and advertising prepared me to present and come up with multi-marketing platform ideas to launch brands and ideas. It also prepared me to knowing how to multi-task, get your to-do list together and attack your priorities. Those and time management would be my big takeaways from my previous work experience.  

Liz: For me my background in entertainment and marketing prepared me to be extremely flexible and not completely rigid in planning. It equipped me to be calm in the face of conflict and adversity. Ginger and I have a lot of resources and connections that really helped, especially when we started. Connections in entertainment, magazines and television really fast tracked a lot of our press opportunities.

How were you able to build those relationships and connections?

It was just always organic. These were people we had organic relationships with, or we grew up with, or we knew through work I think it’s important to have authentic real relationships and not always have an agenda.

You made a concentrated effort to build your business with minimal debt. Why was that important to you?

Ginger- It was really important to us because we both take finances seriously and know that when you get in over your head financially it stifles you in more ways than you can imagine. With us being young women and big dreamers we didn’t want to do anything that would affect our financial well-being. When we started the business we wanted to make sure that we had all of our personal ducks in a row,  had some money saved, and were in position to start a business  really focus on the business and not be stressed over finances.

You weren’t just financially responsible you were also ethically responsible. Why did you choose to use non-toxic ingredients in your polish formulas?

Ginger: We chose nontoxic ingredients because it’s largely a part of our lifestyles, how we were raised and as adults what we chose to embrace. I’m vegan, Liz is vegetarian and we are very conscious about what we’re putting into our bodies. Processed food, creams and preservatives things like that we try to avoid to the best of ability. With our take on beauty we’ve embraced kind of a clean beauty sort of mindset and our mission was to share our views on health and beauty with our customers and by doing that we have to make sure that anything we put on the market is non-toxic.

What do you wish you knew before starting your business?

Ginger -That it is a 34/8 type of situation. You work all the time, all day every day.  It’s a full-time job.

Liz- Your life becomes your business.

Ginger- Yea your life is your business.

What do you most appreciate about your partnership and friendship?

Liz-I think Ginger and I have a great working relationship. We know one another’s strengths. We have always been like minded and had similar goals and similar vision early on. We valued clean beauty and a non-toxic lifestyle so when we started we knew the brand had to have that value. Us being like-minded and having a long term vision of where the clean beauty movement could go really helped because our long term vision was completely in line. I think it also helps that we’re friends who are both passionate about the business. We treat the business like our baby and we tend to it and take care of it every single day with passion and with love.

Ginger-I appreciate that we respect one another and one another’s views and know that there is validity and something to be taken from each other’s opinions. We weigh that in our final decisions. I think mutual respect is very important in staying on the same page and maintaining a friendship at the same time.

What’s been the greatest moment in your journeys so far?

Ginger- I suppose the biggest wow moment for me would be the day that we received our opening order for Ulta Beauty and it was for 1,000 locations. That absolutely hands down was the best moment. That’s what we worked so hard for.

What’s been the biggest setback that your business has overcome?

Ginger-Probably when we had a last minute change of manufacturers on our caps at a time when we had a huge purchase order due. It was going to set us back eight weeks to have to find a brand new manufacturer. Luckily one of our contacts and mentors in the business was able to point us in the right direction and call in some favors so that we still made the deadline.  What we learned from that experience was to never put all of our eggs in one basket. From that day forward in all aspects of our manufacturing we have more than one vendor that we can go to.

What three pieces of advice would you give to aspiring beauty entrepreneurs?

1)      Have a clear plan before you begin. What does your business look like five years from now? Write that out don’t wait. If you’re serious about your business have a plan. Also have a financial plan.

2)      Do the research. Don’t just jump in without doing the research because even after you’ve done research you still hit hurdles and have things come up that you weren’t anticipating. If you don’t do the research you’re really just setting yourself up for potential failure.

3)      Value your customer. You have no business without your customer. We have a really hands on approach with customer service and the people who handle our customer service are the some of the nicest people you’ll meet because nothing is worse than bad customer service. We love talking to our customers on social media and on the phone. Value the customer and treat them with respect.

What can we expect next from the Ginger and Liz brand?

Liz- We just launched our hand toning cream with Tamanu oil and our all natural lip scrub are the first two products that are our entree into the beauty space outside of nails. Every product we release from here on out will be part of our clean beauty philosophy. We have products coming down the pipe in the next year that are also in alignment with that.

What are in your handbags right now?

Ginger – I’ve legit got two makeup bags which is kind of ridiculous, the hand toning cream, a red dum dum lollipop, my daughter’s Kray-z Crayons one red, one yellow and one green, I also have a pen from Tobago that has a dolphin hanging off of it and a couple of bobby pins. I usually have way more in here.

Liz- My phone charger, my iPhone 6 with a big old heavy duty case because my daughter likes to chuck my phone sometimes, a little mini makeup kit, my hand toning cream, a sample we’re testing out of a new foot cream formula, a diaper, wipes, eye remover wipes, FedEx labels, stamps, and then this cute little notebook I got from Marshalls that says “Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful”. It’s black and white and it says “perfect” in gold writing. And I have a SELF magazine; it’s one of my favorite magazines because it’s health and beauty.

Read more about the origins of Ginger & Liz here.

-Keyaira N. Boone

Photo Credit: Well & Good