The Lipstick Lesbians are starting a brand.
The wife-and-wife creator duo, Alexis Androulakis and Christina Basias Androulakis, have taken their social media personas to entrepreneurship with the launch of Leaked Labs, a brand that will “leak” formulas directly from suppliers and garner consumer feedback before either being archived or launched in a larger capacity.
“We started to identify gaps in the industry from both of our vantage points: mine from the education side and Alexis’ from the product development side,” said Basias Androulakis, who holds a PhD in education technology and previously worked as an English teacher. Androulakis, on the other hand, worked in product development for a handful of conglomerates. The two, on their joint Instagram account, now boast 551,000 followers.
“We would go into stores and we would document our experience in the stores, and I would document Alexis’ high level product development knowledge, which was, at that time, never before seen on platform in that way,” Basias Androulakis said. “Alexis brought this new level of awareness to product development.”
Androulakis herself described her job as bridging the gap between chemistry and marketing, which she’s parlayed into the last 18 months working on Leaked Labs. And though their joint social media moniker would suggest an obvious starting point, they aren’t starting with lipstick.
Leak 001: Amplify Flexy Powder, the brand’s debut product, is a water-activated pigment disc that can tint eyes, lips or cheeks. It will debut on the brand’s website March 6 for $34.
“It’s basically been a documentary we’ve been shooting the last 18 months,” Androulakis said. “We’re going to package and consolidate it, but if the community wants to see it, they’ll be able to see inside the contract manufacturer with us. You’ll see me with the chemists in the lab, it’s not sterilized, it’s not polished, it’s real.”
The first product from Leaked Labs is called Leak 001: Amplify Flexy Powder.
Courtesy of Leaked Labs
Androulakis also thinks the brand launch coincides with more democratized knowledge around the beauty industry. “Talking as product developers, the language we use is used more widely,” she said. “Like, for componentry, a doe foot. People use these words, marketing has shifted, brand founders have started to leverage this.”
Leaked Lab’s launch comes at a time of general lack of innovation in beauty, as reported. “Leaked Labs is for everyone who feels tired of sameness,” Basias Androulakis said.
Each product will be sourced from different suppliers. “For the first year, we’re focusing heavily on Italy. Then we will expand and continue again, listening to our feedback loop. I call each of these products ‘innovation orphans,’ and we’ll bring them to market,” Androulakis said.
“Sometimes it’s the new raw [material] that’s unlocked in a base and would take a brand 18 to 24 months to launch, but because we’ll have speed to market, we can launch sooner,” Basias Androulakis said. “We’ll get that feedback loop, improve upon it, iterate before we make it a core product.”
The ambition is to get the brand’s leaks to happen at a monthly cadence once the core collection launches. “We popularized consumers’ awareness and seeing where the label says it’s made, educating on different regions and their specializations — Italy being really strong in powders, Germany being really strong in pencils, Korea being known for sensoriality and texture.”
