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The Journal News, February 5, 2008
By Heather Salerno
It only took cosmetics queen Laura Geller 30 years to become an overnight success. She spent the 1980s as a makeup artist to Broadway stars and movie legends. The '90s were marked by her launch of an Upper East Side studio and a namesake line of products.
But it was just in the last few years that Geller's brand began to boom.
Now, the Spring Valley native runs a $40 million, privately held company, with a high-profile presence at Sephora stores and on QVC. The home shopping channel ranks Laura Geller Makeup as one of its top cosmetic sellers, right along with more widely known labels like Bobbi Brown and Bare Escentuals.
Geller's innovative and cleverly named products - like Spackle, a makeup primer, and Caulk, a concealer - have inspired a near cult-like following, with converts including Paula Zahn, writer Nora Ephron and Audrina Patridge of MTV's "The Hills."
And Geller's as surprised by her so-called sudden success as anyone else.
"Nothing happened because I planned it out. And nothing happened quickly," she says, leaning back in a lipstick-red leather chair at her Lexington Avenue studio.
"Part of me is glad that everything took its time and went the course it did. I wouldn't do it over again."
The list of makeup artists who've transitioned to cosmetic company founders is a long one: Bobbi Brown, Sonia Kashuk, Laura Mercier and LORAC's Carol Shaw are just a few.
Yet what distinguishes Geller most can be summed up in a single word: Education.
She's a teacher, of course: Her QVC demonstrations - described by the channel as fun as well as informative - are wildly popular.
But Geller is a student, too, using her makeup studio as a working lab to help perfect her easy-to-use, hard wearing products. It's also where she studies the wants and needs of her customers. Who, she points out, are real women - not Hollywood's most glamorous.
"I don't think every makeup artist has the luxury to do that," says Geller, a single mother of a 7-year-old son, Daniel. "Because they're only working on the most beautiful of faces, and they're not in the trenches."
Take the evolution of Geller's latest concoction: Brow Marker. A soft-tipped marker that gives brows a fuller, natural look, yet glides on like a Sharpie pen, the item took five years to develop.
Geller introduced the $20 marker in October on QVC, which has a one-year exclusive. It became an instant hit, selling more than 100,000 in three months.
The marker has inspired such a frenzy, that when one of the two shades sold out on QVC, one New York woman trekked to Geller's studio one evening in desperation. (Even the studio didn't have it.)
"The woman was crying, literally crying, because she couldn't get it," says Geller.
She got the idea for the marker from working with cancer patients who'd lost their hair, including their eyelashes and brows. They needed a product that was long lasting, but didn't look painted on.
That inspiration also turned into a partnership with Joan's Legacy: The Joan Scarangello Foundation to Conquer Lung Cancer. Geller donates $1 from the sale of each pen to the charity.
Susan Mantel, executive director of Joan's Legacy, praises Geller for helping to raise awareness of lung cancer: It isn't usually thought of as a women's issue, though the disease kills more women than breast, uterine and ovarian cancers combined.
"Laura thinks outside the box," says Mantel. "She's not about playing it safe."
Growing up in Spring Valley, Geller says she was a "makeup diva" like other teen girls. Yet at an early age, she saw beyond the shimmer and sparkle.
"I was just fascinated with how beauty can transform someone," she explains.
So Geller went straight from Ramapo High School to Nanuet's Capri School of Hair Design. From there, she moved to Broadway, working on productions like "Annie" and "The First."
By the early 1990s, she'd established herself in television, working with network talent and making up famous faces like Audrey Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Ginger Rogers for special appearances. She'd also become a favorite of Manhattan brides, who still thank her years later for her work on their special day.
In 1993, she opened the Laura Geller Makeup Studio, which offers makeup applications ($95) and lessons ($150) by a team of trained artists. (Geller herself no longer handles individual clients.)
The studio is where Geller dreamed up products like the best-selling Spackle. She sells the basics, too, such as eye shadows and lip glosses. But Geller says her passion is really multi-use items that downplay a woman's problem areas while enhancing her assets.
"When I promote my products on QVC, I'm promoting solution-based products," she says. "A foundation that acts as a concealer that acts as a finishing powder that also helps correct pigment problems. Those are my hero products, and continue to be."
It was a chance meeting with a QVC executive, Betty Broder, at a cosmetics conference that transformed Geller's business.
In her first appearance on the shopping channel in 1997, Geller needed only six minutes to sell out of her Face Structuring Kit, used to highlight cheekbones.
She recalls filling that order with a big laugh, admitting that she was so naive about the business, she had a crew of her mother's friends in her studio basement assembling each kit.
Then the orders got bigger and bigger, and QVC kept asking Geller to come up with new products to sell. By 2002, she was hosting her own one-hour program. (And Broder now works for Geller; she's responsible for product development.)
"QVC's opportunity was life-changing," says Geller.
Michele Tacconelli, QVC's beauty buyer, predicts that Geller is on her way to becoming the next Bobbi Brown.
Tacconelli says Geller's secret is simple: She's not interested in imitating the industry's latest trend. "She's about translating those things so they're accessible to real women."
QVC offers Geller's line in the United Kingdom, too, and she'll soon debut in Germany. Sephora jumped on board at the end of 2006, offering the brand online and in 85 stores (including the Palisades Center and The Westchester mall).
This year, Geller will expand to another 80 Sephora locations.
So, with her 50th birthday approaching in August, Geller is at an age when many entrepreneurs could consider early retirement. Instead, Geller is just gearing up.
"I see major things happening now," she says. "I was saying that all those years, but I really see it happening now."
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