Toni Ko’s experience working at her parents’ beauty store gave her the knowledge and confidence to create a $500 million brand that would disrupt the industry.
Toni Ko built a makeup brand that would force change throughout the entire beauty industry.
Born in Daegu, South Korea, Toni Ko immigrated to Los Angeles with her family when she was 13. When she arrived, she learned English quickly working at her parent’s cosmetics store after school where she developed an early understanding of the beauty market. By the time Ko was 20, she made the conclusion that high-end and brand name cosmetics were too expensive for most people and drugstore dupes were low quality.
In 1999 Ko took a step that would democratize quality beauty products. With $250,000 loaned to Ko by her parents, she founded NYX Professional Makeup, personally creating and managing every part of her business. NYX launched with 18 different eyeliners and lip pencils which were long lasting, pigmented, and priced far below brand name competitors. Immediately NYX sold out and generated millions during its first year proving that Ko’s approach was working and it was something the industry hadn’t seen before.
But what really put NYX in everyone’s makeup bags was how Ko marketed. She didn’t rely on traditional advertising and instead perfected influencer marketing before influencers were even a thing. Ko sent products to YouTubers, makeup artists, and bloggers hoping that authenticity would outperform actual paid campaigns and she was right.
NYX became one of the first beauty brands to dominate digitally and consumers realized that quality makeup doesn’t always have to break the bank. Ko closed deals which got NYX into major retailers such as CVS Pharmacy and Target making it one of the fastest growing cosmetic brands in the country. In 2014 NYX was acquired by L’Oréal for a whopping $500 million, one of the most notable exits for an Asian American founder in beauty.
Ko didn’t stop there as she began exploring other entrepreneurial paths, launching Perverse Sunglasses in 2016 and Bespoke Beauty Brands, a platform that partners with creators to develop their own cosmetic lines, in 2019.
Through BBB, Ko helped launch viral beauty brands like KimChi Beauty and Jason Wu Beauty, strengthening her legacy in the cosmetics industry. Toni Ko chose to understand consumers, redefining what “affordable beauty” can really look like and opening the door for Asian American representation in a space where it was limited.
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