Diane Ranger, a pioneer of mineral makeup, is on her second coat.
In the late 1970s, Ranger started San Francisco’s Bare Escentuals Inc., which went public last year with a recent market value of $2.5 billion.
Ranger saw her creation blossom without her. She left in 1990, after Bare Escentuals unwound in a bid to grow as a retailer.
“I think I might’ve just been ahead of my time,” Ranger said. “I never thought I’d see mineral makeup be-come what it is now.”
An investor who bought Bare Escentuals in a foreclosure built the company by selling through infomercials and later stores.
Now Ranger is back with Colorescience, a Dana Point-based mineral makeup company. She’s the founder, president and chief executive.
Colorescience makes foundations, powders, blushes, eye shadows and other products with micronized minerals, vitamins and polypeptides.
The company is privately held and doesn’t disclose revenue. A source familiar with Colorescience said it does $30 million to $40 million in yearly sales.
Ranger has 16 workers at a 7,000-square-foot headquarters. There are 25 independent sales representatives and 35 workers at a 10,000-square-foot plant called Body Chemistry Manufacturing Inc. in Houston.
|
|
Colorescience products: company has estimated $30 million to $40 million in yearly sales |
Colorescience’s selling point: natural ingredients.
The makeup is made from minerals such as bismuth oxychloride, iron oxide, micronized titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. Dermatologists, plastic surgeons, spas and upscale hotels sell it. Ranger said she’s not interested in selling through stores, like Bare Escentuals does.
The company targets women with wrinkles, fine lines, acne, pigmentations and rosacea. Older women who get Botox injections, chemical peels and laser treatments are Ranger’s target audience, she said.
Ranger started Colorescience in 2000. It’s her second stab at the natural makeup business after early success,and then failure,at Bare Escentuals.
Originally a kindergarten teacher in Texas, Ranger said she found solace after a long day at a local beauty store that sold natural products. Eventually she became friends with the owner and opened her own store.
At 25, Ranger moved to Northern California in the late 1970s to set up shop. She settled in Los Gatos because it was small and quaint.
She called her business Bare Escentuals because of the name’s natural connotations. She stocked natural soaps, shower gels, scrubs and lotions from various makers.
Ranger worked part time as a high school teacher and as a waitress to support her struggling startup, she said.
She had to learn about natural body products,what they’re made of, where they come from and how they’re made. Ranger also had to learn how to be a businesswoman. She constantly struggled to manage her sales, rent, utilities and inventory, she said.
“I didn’t know the first thing about aloe vera or managing sales volume,” Ranger said.
She got a Small Business Administration loan and started taking classes on how to manage a small business. It helped, she said.
Within a year, word got around about her shop. Ranger started to see a steady stream of shoppers, from local hippies to high school students.
Ranger’s business got a boost with the Cosmetic Ingredient Review in 1976, which assessed the safety of cosmetics ingredients.
She read books on ancient civilizations and how Egyptians would use kohl and colored minerals such as iron oxide to decorate their faces.
In 1977, Ranger started selling minerals such as a reddish-brown shade of iron oxide called Indian Earth. Women wore it all over their face, on their cheeks, eyes or lips.
Customers started asking Ranger if she could make lighter versions of Indian Earth that they could wear as powder. Ranger started working with chemists to help her create blended mineral powders in light, medium and dark shades. It became the store’s top selling item, she said.
The store became a Northern California favorite for its mineral makeup, lotions, scrubs and glycerin soaps, said Mary Gottschalk, a former style writer who covered fashion and beauty for the San Jose Mercury News.
“Diane was very much a pioneer,” she said. “Her business became very popular because she carried things that you just couldn’t find any where else.”
Ranger met with department store buyers to try to get them to sell her makeup. Some scoffed. Others didn’t understand her products, she said.
“Before, it was considered kind of weird,” Ranger said.
She brought in business partners and opened four stores and two franchises elsewhere in the Bay area. The stores generated about $2 million in yearly sales.
In 1988, Ranger and her partners sought venture capital to help grow Bare Escentuals’ stores. Venture capitalists invested $1 million.
The company quickly burned through that and then some, spending $1.8 million in two years. The company was in debt by 1990, she said.
“I built it up and lost everything,” Ranger said.
She said she was na & #271;ve about bringing on venture investors, calling it the “dumbest thing I ever did.”
“I didn’t even have a lawyer,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about negotiating stocks or contracts.”
Ranger started looking for a buyer for the troubled business.
In 1990, investor John Hansen bought Bare Escentuals in a foreclosure. He paid $160,000.
“The company was going through a distressed financial situation,” Hansen said. “It ran into financial difficulties, ran out of cash and then the VCs just gave (Ranger) the keys back.”
Ranger left the company two weeks after the purchase, Hansen said.
“I thought she would’ve stayed,” he said. “I would’ve liked her to stay.”
Ranger said she felt pushed out.
“It seemed like a very sad situation,” journalist Gottschalk said.
Hansen brought in investors and hired cosmetic industry mogul Leslie Blodgett as chief executive in 1995. The company came out with its own version of mineral makeup called bareMinerals.
Bare Escentuals started selling the makeup line through infomercials and home shopping channels. The products now are sold at Mo & #235;t Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA’s Sephora stores.
Bare Escentuals had sales of $395 million last year.
Ranger said she didn’t know what to do after leaving the company. She considered going back to teaching or even becoming a waitress again.
“You don’t even want to know what that time was like for me,” she said. “It took me a long time to get over everything and start over.”
In 1990, Ranger decided to take another try at the beauty business. She opened Body Chemistry Manufacturing Inc., a retail and wholesale business that made custom-blended mineral makeup and body products. It attracted some customers, but not as many as Bare Escentuals, she said.
In 1993 she met her husband, Chet Ranger, a retired investor from Houston. The two married and moved to Houston a few years later.
Ranger brought Body Chemistry with her and started making mineral makeup for cosmetic brands such as Jane Iredale and La Bella Donna.
By 2000, Ranger was itching for her own brand again. She created Colorescience and had all of its products made by Body Chemistry, which she still owns.
In 2002, Diane and Chet Ranger moved to Orange County to be closer to his children and grandchildren. Color-science came along, while Body Chemistry stayed in Texas.
The couple settled in Dana Point because they liked its “small, beach town feel,” she said.
Colorescience is attracting attention from private equity investors, especially since Bare Escentuals went public, Ranger said. She said she’s open to bringing in investors or taking the company public, but only if she can have a say on how things are run.
“A few years ago I would’ve said ‘no way,'” Ranger said. “But if that kind of opportunity came to me again and I got another chance to be a real player in this industry, I would have to consider it.”
