From Banker to Beauty Visionaire

Celeste Lee, co-founder of Caire Beauty

Although Caire Beauty co-founder Celeste Lee showed an entrepreneurial spirit while running the school store in elementary school, the path to creating a beauty company was not a direct one. While at the University of Pennsylvania, she found that “they have their own track, they want you to go work for an investment bank, or management consultancy or a PHA these were the three obvious avenues.” Her first job was with a bank and she knew right away that it was not for her, so she switched to advertising and then moved to Japan. However, with limited job options there, she ended up in banking once again.

Back in America, Celeste bid farewell to the finance world and swore off any finance jobs. She found a position with AMC Entertainment that combined her business sense with her creative side. Celeste ran the editorial for the slide program shown before movies as well as East Coast operations. From there, she ended up moving more towards marketing when a college friend tapped her to help develop a fragrance concept. The work kept coming and she joined Givaudan, a manufacturer of flavours, fragrances, eventually becoming a vice president.

Searching for more, Celeste realized she wanted to do something for herself. “After doing this for a few years, I thought, you know what, I'm tired of coming up with marketing ideas,” said Celeste, “and I thought I can do this on my own as a consultant.” So she started her own consulting company and continued coming up with creative ideas for her clients in areas such as beauty, beverages, and jewelry.

Even with her own consulting business, she still wasn’t completely fulfilled. “Over the years, I thought all these people that started these indie beauty brands, why isn’t that me?“ explains Celeste. Although she had developed many successful concepts for others, she never did for herself. “I had a lot of fear because again, that's just not the way that I was raised. And I think that for Asians, we're really raised to be not necessarily goody two shoes, but it's more about following patterns that are in front of us. And you just keep going. And eventually, you're going to achieve, hypothetically, a measure of success.” says Celeste, “But the truth of the matter is, it's a little bit soul-shattering. If you have any interest in creation; if you want to do something different.”

It wasn’t until her best friend, Lorrie King, told Celeste that she needed to act on her ideas. “She's like you got to stop talking, we have to do something. And she is a lot more motivated than I am.” recalls Celeste, “And she said the next time you have an idea, at least write it down on a piece of paper. Let's think about it.” The ultimate result was the creation of Caire Beauty.

Both Celeste and Lorrie realized that the focus on skincare was mostly targeted at women under a certain age. Products were available that helped slow down skin damage while you were young, there wasn’t anything that addressed the changes that happen around menopause, which is the day when your period has stopped for one year. “For every woman, one of the first signs is skin change, they just don't know.” explains Celeste, “They have no idea that it's being caused by this because there are multiple causes of aging, and what most anti-aging skincare deals with are pollution and UV rays.” She goes on to say, “ We have this really interesting concept around what we call hormone-defying science.” Using tiny hyaluronic acid (HA) molecules that are better absorbed, Caire Beauty products work to replace the HA your body loses and to help increase skin production.

So while Celeste and Lorrie knew what they wanted to do with the product they created, they needed to figure out the best way to go about it, particularly when it comes to funding. “It's known that women don't get funded. That's a fact and that everybody acknowledges it. I think, depending on whose numbers you're looking at, 3% to 5%, of just women's company's get funded. But when you look at African American, Asian American, Latin American, it's far less,” says Celeste. She also notes “One thing that we have observed is that we had meetings with every major VC company, no question that we had a meeting, but it's almost as if they're ticking a box off, oh, here's my partner's African American, she's Asian American, let's talk to them.” Celeste goes on to say, “I think getting beyond the first meeting is even harder than it would be if we were just regular women or regular founders. The expectation is so hard because, at most, they will find one company, if any.”

Even with their business and financial backgrounds, there has been quite a learning curve. However, the knowledge they gained as part of the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerators’ (ERA) program and the support ERA has provided have helped Celeste and Lorrie more easily navigate the process. And while it’s still nerve-wracking to pitch their company and seek funding, Celeste has gotten more comfortable with it and realizes that it’s not necessarily a bad thing. As she puts it, “you’ve got to use that nervousness and that energy back into everything you do.”