Melbourne woman uses $50 to create $1.2m beauty business Kester Black

The Melbourne woman’s mum knocked her back when she asked for a $30k loan, so she used the only cash she had to back a “winner” idea.

A Melbourne woman managed to turn her company on the brink of disaster into a booming business amid the Covid-19 pandemic because of a bizarre reaction from shoppers.

Anna Ross, 33, launched ethical beauty brand Kester Black in 2014 with just $50.

It has since expanded to have nine staff members at its peak and sells to customers in Australia, New Zealand and also a few European nations including Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

However, Kester Black was decimated at the beginning of last year because of the Black Summer Bushfires and then the nationwide lockdown.

“We couldn’t do any advertising that month because of the bushfires, it would have been super insensitive, so January was our worst month ever,” Ms Ross told news.com.au.

And things took another turn. When Covid-19 hit, “we pretty much overnight lost 90 per cent of our wholesalers,” the entrepreneur recalled.

But a little known trend called the Lipstick Effect pulled her business out of struggle street.

Essentially, desperate shoppers turn to small luxury items like lipstick and nail polish during an economic crisis, buying smaller items instead of more expensive ones because of financial uncertainty.

Ms Ross’ business definitely felt the impact of this trend, with customer numbers increasing from 10,000 to 17,500 to bring in a total of $1.2 million in sales in the 2020-2021 financial year — its best year ever.

Anna Ross started the company when she was fresh out of uni.

She started the business with just $50.

Ms Ross said lipstick alone makes up 30 per cent of her revenue.

Her nail polish collections also raked in the cash, with her observing: “Most of the salons were closed most of the year, so people used that opportunity to start doing manicures at home. People wanted to feel special.”

In 2020, Kester Black’s e-commerce sales grew by 127 per cent. Overall, the entire business increased by 53 per cent during the pandemic. 

With Melbourne back in lockdown and Sydney on top of that, Ms Ross has noticed new interest in her wares.

In fact, she said August 2021 has been her best month to date.

Ms Ross is now in the process of drumming up interest in a new crowd-funding initiative, with customers able to dip into $2.5 million in shares to help scale up the business.

The beauty founder started the business by initially buying $50 in jewellery and selling it on.

The “Lipstick Effect” brought the business from the brink.

Originally from New Zealand, Ms Ross jumped on a plane in 2008 to come over to Australia after finishing a university degree.

A fashion student, she wanted to start her own fashion label. She asked her mother for $30,000 to get it off the ground.

“Absolutely not,” Ms Ross recalls her mother saying.

Instead, she decided to make something of herself in Melbourne.

“I couldn’t afford to bring my sewing machine over,” Ms Ross said.

“I got a full-time job in retail, went to a jewellery supply store, went in and asked how do I start a jewellery label, they pretty much told me everything I needed to know to start my own business.

“The invoice came at $50.”

She made $200 by selling the jewellery.

“Then I bought $200 worth of jewellery, reinvested it.”

Kester Black made $1.2 million in sales during the last financial year.

She decided to launch a nail polish line as an add-on product to offer alongside her jewellery business.

Making an ad on Gumtree, she sought a chemist to help her develop her own nail polish.

She wanted to create her own ethical line of “clean”, vegan-friendly beauty products.

When she learned that fish scales and crushed up beetles were used in cosmetics — to create textured, iridescent effect — she vowed not to use them in her own products.

Ms Ross spent a year developing an initial range of six colours.

Soon she realised that nail polish was a fair deal more lucrative than silver jewellery.

“We tripled our turnover in three months, so I knew we were onto a winner,” she recalled.

The rest, as they say, is history.

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