Thrive Causemetics: Karissa Bodnar. How a Beauty Business Made Millions for a Mission

Guy Raz (0:00)

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Karissa Bodnar (3:28)

I would have given you my left arm and I am left handed to be carried at Sephora, Nordstrom, Ulta, Anthropologie. I mean, I was pitching to everybody QVC and they didn't really see the vision of what I was creating. There were many days where we had no sales. Having a $150 revenue day, I felt like an absolute baller.

And so I was funding the production through working my full-time job, and I wiped out my entire life savings.

Guy Raz (4:09)

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Karissa Bodnar turned a purpose-driven side hustle into Thrive Cosmetics, a multi-million dollar beauty company.

The beauty business is huge, and it's incredibly crowded. There are thousands of brands selling mascara and eyeliner and lipstick, and lots of them are really good. So for a new brand to break through, you need to give people a reason to notice you. And for Karissa Bodnar, that reason came in 2013

Karissa had worked at a Sephora store for a few years, and then landed a job at L'Oréal working in product development. And while she was there, one of her closest friends from college died from cancer. She was just 24 years old, and that really shook Karissa.

And it got her thinking about what she really wanted to do with her life. And eventually, she came up with an idea for her own cosmetics company that would also give back to people in need. She called it Thrive Cosmetics, as in C-A-U-S-E, Cosmetics. Now, having a mission is one thing, but you still have to make something people actually want to buy. And for the first few years, Thrive struggled. Karissa couldn't get her products into stores. Sales were mainly online, and they were tiny. Like, a good day was $100 in orders. But then, something happened that changed everything. And yes, as you will hear, it was a viral moment. But Karissa figured out how to capture it, and helped turn Thrive Cosmetics into a much bigger brand. As for Karissa, she grew up on a small farm in Stanwood, Washington, just north of Seattle. There were chickens and pygmy ghosts, even a horse named Blue. And like a lot of little girls, Karissa loved playing with makeup. But she took it a little further than most.