What:
Glamorous makeup line
Who: Galit
Strugano of girlactik
Where: Los
Angeles
When: Started in
1999
How much:
$1,800
Galit Strugano saw stars when she and her mother watched the
1999 Academy Awards show, but it wasn't just the
celebrities. "All the stars were wearing sparkle [eye makeup]
down the red carpet, and it looked sophisticated and
flawless," recalls Strugano, 28. Back then, most women applied
the glitter to a makeshift base of ChapStick or Vaseline on the
eyelid-often with disastrous results-so Strugano's mother
encouraged her to develop something better. Strugano, a makeup
artist/food server, started girlactik with tip money she had
saved.
Strugano's mother persuaded a chemist they found through the
Yellow Pages to not only take a chance on the young entrepreneur,
but also to waive the expensive lab fees, charging only what
Strugano could afford. Turned away by packaging companies, she
bought jelly bean jars from a craft store, and her mother's
friend decorated the caps. Working on her own from home, Strugano
was able to place her sparkle sets on consignment at several trendy
stores in the Los Angeles area to see what kind of clientele would
be attracted to the product. Each store sold out of girlactik in
the first month.
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She's since expanded the redesigned product line to include
brushes, mascara, lip gloss, shimmering eye and body powder, and
more. Today, celebrities like Ali Landry and Kelly Osborne are
glowing with girlactik, which projects 2004 sales of $500,000 to
$600,000. Sold in boutiques and beauty stores across the country
and online at www.girlactik.com, Strugano has now signed a deal to
offer girlactik products in Japan. Even with little start-up
capital, she's succeeded in reaching for the stars.
-April Y. Pennington
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