San Francisco based makeup brand, lilah b., was founded by Cheryl Yannotti Foland in 2015 under a philosophy she truly lives by, “With less, you are more.” A maximalist turned minimalist, Foland traded in her fast-paced life in New York for the healthy, laid-back West Coast lifestyle of Northern California. Moving West forced her to slow down and appreciate what she really needed in all aspects of her life. Foland spent over two decades with a financial firm focusing on acquiring, building and selling businesses with a key group of executives. In 2004, she found herself focused on a new acquisition in the beauty industry, Arcade Marketing, where she worked with big beauty brands such as Urban Decay, Too Faced and Benefit to design their product launch strategy.
During this time, it was obvious to Foland that the color cosmetics world was excessive, cluttered, and confusing when it really didn’t have to be. So she created lilah b. – a streamlined, clean collection of color made up of luxurious, multi-purpose products providing the modern-day woman with only the tools she really needs. “I encourage women to be thoughtful and mindful of their purchasing – and to declutter, minimize and simplify their beauty routine with purposeful products. Beauty should be about quality, not quantity, and so I set out to create a healthy, ‘good for you’ collection that offers a finished look with ease," says Foland.
Over 120 billion units of plastic containers are produced every year in the beauty industry with most units unrecyclable. The declutter program at lilah b. was started to encourage women to think about what was happening to all the empty containers and packaging they would throw away. "We wanted to help declutter, minimize, and simplify. We were trying to encourage women to think about what they have in their makeup bag or in their vanity that they no longer use or want and don’t know what to do with it," explained Foland.
Lilah b. found a solution to help the industry's every growing problem of waste with its declutter program. Anyone whether or not they are a lilah b. customer can email declutter@lilahbeauty.com to receive a prepaid return shipping label allowing them to return any unwanted beauty products. lilah b. then works with a dedicated partner to process and recycle unwanted goods. "We fill up bins of the product that is sent to us then once or twice a month our recycling partner in Southern California picks up the product. Our partner has a rather extensive recycling process which includes disassembling, breaking apart, cleaning and separating everything so all items can be recycled in the most sustainable way," says Foland.
Foland has seen a surge in her declutter program, especially after the Marie Kondo craze, " Although this program has been around for almost four years, we went from filling up one 5-foot x 3-foot bine to over three of those bins after Marie Kondo's show began airing on Netflix."
Foland hopes that the industry from legacy brands to new indie brands keep sustainability in mind when making, marketing and selling their products.
