The big thing I wanted to focus on in this conversation is this amazing brand that you have launched. Eyes Are The Story is a wellness-meets-beauty brand blurring the lines between beauty and pharma. I have so many questions but give me your breakdown of Eyes Are The Story, what it is and who it is intended for.
Eyes Are The Story, even the name has a story behind it. What is the entire focus of this new brand? The eyes. That's why I created it. When I first started with the whole TFOS movement, I needed to educate myself about the ocular surface and eye health, and be able to process as much information into my brain and translate it into my human speak. I started asking a lot of questions and then I was thinking, “Maybe there is a larger prevalence of dry eye in women because of eye makeup. Is that possible?” I started researching the different chemicals in eye makeup and skincare, and realized there's a lot more to learn. That was how it started.
I've been fortunate to be involved in a few different little ventures and startup-related types of things. I look at this and I'm like, “There's so much to know. I wouldn't even know where to start.” For example, how do you know which labs and manufacturers to work with? What was the process of figuring that out?
That was not easy either. When I first thought about doing this, I said, “How do I do it?” I'm not going to knock on the door of a big beauty brand and say, “I have this idea. Do you want to work together?” They’ll steal it and run with it. It doesn't work like that. Because of all my years working with TFOS, I have a lot of relationships in the ophthalmic pharmaceutical space so I started asking around, “Do you know any laboratories?”
There was one laboratory that I wanted to work with that I said, “We could create this whole product line and everything.” They told me, “This sounds wonderful,” but then they said it would take at least two years to get authorization to start doing some dabbling in the laboratory because they have their protocols in the laboratory. You can't just whip up a new chocolate cake because if you've always been making vanilla, you can't do chocolate. It doesn't work like that and I don't want to go into science.
They couldn't do it without the authorization so they said, “We can but we need to file for the authorizations first.” I said, “Let me get back to you on that one.” I started cold calling private label companies and then I said, “How do I do this? If I can't go to a laboratory and ask them to make products for me, let's do private label.” I realized with private label, after calling so many companies that I lost count, I don't want to say there isn't quality control, but you can't control what's in the bottle.
You can call them up and say, “I love that.” You pay them, slap your new logo on it, and put it on a shelf. I said, “That's not what I want.” The whole point is I don't like the chemicals that I'm finding in the products. I need to be able to create my own. Once again, creating a monster. I went through my network and one of my contacts had a contact with a laboratory in Canada that only works with big-name cosmetic brands.
They said, "We do not look at startups so we don't care but your idea sounds interesting. It's the whole sensitive eyes dry disease. Do you mean that the chemicals can actually impact this?" Somebody in the business development department had a dry eye so they said, "We want to hear more information." I started with them in terms of the formulation and it was amazing because then they introduced me to another laboratory, and then I ended up working with another laboratory.
I am collaborating with one ophthalmic pharmaceutical company. Those products will be known later. They're helping me with some things. I have a laboratory in Canada that at this point they do the mascara and eyeliner. I have a laboratory that I'm collaborating with in the US and they're the ones that do the face wash, cleanser and serum.
There are different laboratories for different products.
It's not easy because unless you're a multi-billionaire that can set up shop and say, “I have my own laboratory,” you can't do it. You might want to be a specialist for everything but you can't. It's the same with laboratories because if one laboratory is authorized to do one thing, they can't do the other.
That's an amazing perfect example of perseverance. It's like what you touched on before. When you have a vision, you believe in it and stick with it. On a much grander scale, I would normally be talking to young optometrists or optometry students about that. I often will tell people, and it sounds old school and not technologically advanced enough, “You pick up the phone and start calling people.”
You might have to call ten people but somebody is going to be like, “I like where you're taking this initiative. Let me see if I can put you in touch with someone else.” From there, another door opens. Somebody might think, “Amy got lucky and she had somebody who knew somebody. ” You had to call how many people before you connected that?
I'm like, “Pound the door. There must be someone.” It took years. It wasn't something that I did overnight either. I started in 2015. I had been thinking about it for a long time. I started doing the research about all of this back in 2002 when I had the idea. It wasn't until 2015 that I said, “Maybe I should try to do it.” I had mentioned it to Leslie O'Dell. I said, “I need to try. I'm not sure what I'm getting myself into.”
I wanted to ask you, from inception to launch, what was that? Officially, you made the decision in 2015 that you're going to do it. Would you say that’s roughly five years from when you decided, “I'm going to do it?”
I incorporated the name at the beginning of 2016. In 2016, that was when I started speaking with all the different companies and laboratories, and just started. I didn't start doing formulations until maybe 2017. I did about two years of pre-work and self-funded everything. I didn't start asking anyone for money until 2020 because it goes back to the story of, “Aren't you cute? Are you baking cookies in your kitchen?” No. It was several years of pre-work before I even had any products or laboratory relationships that I could move forward with. There were lots of due diligence and legal works. I have so many attorneys for everything. It was a lot of due diligence.
That's incredible that you're able to manage and handle all of that. On top of all of that, you ended up launching amid a pandemic, another global crisis like in previous launches and endeavors. Did Eyes Are The Story launch in March 2020?
It was supposed to launch during Vision Expo at the end of March 2020 in New York. It launched in May.
What was the new approach? You took a month or so to recalibrate and then what did you do?
It was tricky because it took so long to have a product, even the company or anything like that. Even the final branding and everything, it was like, “Let's launch.” I had wanted to launch in 2019 but then I said, “I can't launch in 2019. I have to launch in 2020. It's the year of vision. This will help my investor story. I'm doing everything in a year of vision because Eyes Are The Story.”
It was interesting because we said, “We can't launch in New York. We can't launch at Vision Expo. When are we going to launch?” As we all remember, in March 2020, that was in North America, when the lockdown happened. All the clinics closed. We were supposed to launch through the clinics. I said, “How am I going to launch if the clinics aren't even open? We don't know anything.”
John Dell has suggested and said, “Why don't we come up with a way to excite the doctors about this brand and maybe we can find a way that they can get some sort of return on it. If they can't sell it at the clinic, maybe they can do something. Is there any way that we can?” I said, “Wait.” The doctors can sell in their clinics but in that case, the clinics weren't open. We created an affiliate program so doctors could continue the conversation with their patients. They could still have an online presence and learn about products. People could buy online and the doctors could get a cut. Why not? It's easy.
That was how we did it because so many of the doctors were at home and their clinics were closed. They were on the sofa doing so many Zoom calls and going, “Where are my patients? Where am I? What's going on? When is the world coming back to normal?” Also, even with the Zoom calls, which is fantastic, creepy and bizarre. Everybody was in front of a screen, everybody was thinking about eye makeup. What better excuse to say, “Let's talk about eye makeup and beauty.” It was so amazing at the beginning.
Even more now, we are all wearing masks. I asked my wife about this. I was like, “Do you think that women are doing the eye makeup a little bit more than they used to?” She was like, “Yes. I'm pretty sure.” I feel like it's even more relevant, thanks to the masks and Zoom.
Scott Schachter made up a word. It was before our TFOS briefing in DC for Dry Eye Awareness Month. He said, “Think about it. Mask Era. It's like mascara as in eyelash thing. Mask Era meaning overly makeup while wearing a mask.”
That's what we would go to him for. It's smart things like that. With all of that and the new approach, how are things going? Doctors are back in the office. Are they starting to carry this product in the office as well?
It's interesting because it's such a sensitive time. I don't want to push people and say, “Buy our products. Sell our products,” because there are still people getting sick. There's still a bizarre pandemic above our heads. People are opening their clinics but in many cases, they're not restocking supplies that they normally would and not ordering new supplies. They're trying to get back to some sort of normalcy.
It's different in that sense because I even lowered the minimums for wholesale. Before, every clinic will order 100 boxes. No big deal. That's easy. With Bridgitte Shen Lee, we went over all of the pricing because she has a lot of traffic in her clinic and stocks a lot. She was like, “These are the prices. This is good. This will be great.” The pandemic hits. Clinics are closed. How are we going to do that?
The clinics are reopening and people are starting to get back into the swing of things but it's slow. The doctors are signing up. We have at least 100 wholesale and 100 affiliate link accounts set up. It's great but everybody still is hesitant. They're like, “I'm so afraid,” but then they think, “My patients are all using extra eye makeup and this is a great conversation to have.” There are a couple of doctors that have already done about five orders. It's starting to get more of a normal rhythm.
It's great because there's the option to buy from the clinic or you can get online. What's also cool with the affiliate link is you can embed it into your clinic page. If you have your own clinic, you can have a page. There are several of your colleagues who have done that. They will have a section on beauty and wellness and they will do Eyes Are The Story. They put in their affiliate link so they can sell it at the clinic but also sell it online. If they sell it online, they don't have to ship it.
One of your Canadian colleagues has her online site so she has the products with her in Montreal. It's easier for people to buy from her sites and she will ship in Canada instead of having to buy in the US. There are duties and all that. It's interesting to see how people are integrating it onto their websites or their clinics. It's a rhythm but it's disruptive and different because it's not an area that people were doing before.
It's different. Going back to what you were saying about looking for funding and stuff, it's hard to bring that up. It's like, “I'm doing something that hasn't been done before. Please trust me. I can make this work,” and then there was the pandemic and everything. It sounds like things are finally starting to come together and that's great. Can you give me a quick breakdown of the lineup of products that you have? How can somebody bring them into their practice?
First of all, everything can be found out via EyesAreTheStory.com. It's easy. In order to access the wholesale prices, you have to set up a wholesale account and that can be done through Info@EyesAreTheStory.com. It's simple. What we have for the first generation is a small collection and we did that intentionally because we want to focus the story on eye health. We have the basics that you will use in the morning before you go to the office, the clinic, or what you do at night before you go to bed. We have a face wash. Without going into all the reasons why but everything was developed because everything you use on or around your eyes can impact your vision.
The face wash is relevant because the ingredients in the face wash do not hurt your eyes. We have a face wash. It's a month's supply of face wash. There's a bottle of serum, which can be used around the eyes or on the entire face. I've also had people say that if they have flaky lids, they love using that because the flakiness goes away. It's called an Eye Proof Serum or Eye Proof Facial Serum. You can use it on your face and around the eyes.
I would not recommend the serum. Only doctors can tell their patients, “You can use it on your lids,” but I did not tell people, “You can use it on flaky lids.” Somebody said, “This is so good. Can I use it to lubricate my eyes?” I said no. There's a face wash, serum, and then we have an eyelid wipe or eyelid towelette, which can be used to refresh or cleanse the lids because hygiene is so important. They're also good for removing Eyes Are The Story eye makeup, which we have. We have mascara and eyeliner. We have black eyeliner and black mascara but we are soon to be offering as well dark brown or espresso.
Before we move on, the branding is something that I love. I love talking about branding, personal branding, branding for companies, products and things. You look at it like, “I want to buy it because it looks so good.” How did you come to that? What was the process?