By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
August 27, 2003
When Chicago businesswomen Sandi Hwang Adam and Noreen Abbasi decided to form Maven Cosmetics, they had a common goal–to create a makeup line that was user friendly for all women, not just white women.
“There are a lot of foundations on the market that are pretty good at addressing the peaches and cream complexions, but the range of colors that were out there for us wasn’t quite right,” says Hwang Adam, who is Chinese American.
Adds Abbasi, whose heritage is Indian and Pakistani, “A lot of people think Asia is just one country and we’re all one variation of yellow. So what we started doing was to pull women of all ethnicities off the street, study their coloring and get their input about what they felt was missing from their cosmetics. From that experience, we came up with foundation shades that pretty well cover the spectrum.”
They came to the realization early on that it wasn’t feasible to create hundreds of different colors for every skin tone. Instead, they relied on a method that would flatter the greatest number of women.
“Many of our products utilize a process called micropigmentation [where the tiniest particles are colored], which allows you to really layer the colors you’re using,” Abbasi says. “What we found was that fair-skinned women were telling us their colors were going on too strong. Darker women were saying nothing was showing up no matter how much product they used. So we based our formula on a layering concept that can be used no matter how light or dark your skin is.”
If the pair have a pragmatic approach to business, it’s because each has an MBA. Because they wanted to understand every aspect of their new careers, they quit high-paying consulting jobs and worked retail for half a year.
“Sandi worked as a makeup artist at Sephora and I worked at Bobbi Brown,” Abbasi says. “It was a whole different world from what we were used to doing, but it was fascinating. Being in the field like that was great experience for us.”
Today, the duo is getting ready to enter a different kind of field–Marshall Field’s. Maven makes its debut at Field’s Water Tower store on Monday.
Hwang Adam and Abbasi met three years ago at a Chicago Women in Technology meeting. At the time, Hwang Adam was a management consultant working with Fortune 500 companies, and Abbasi was an independent consultant for the luxury goods industry.
“We’d see each other at ChicWit and talk about what we’d do if we could change our careers,” Hwang Adam says. “Something seemed right, and we kept talking about it each time we saw each other.”
“I came out of the womb wearing makeup,” Abbasi says. “I was the girl who tried all my mother’s makeup, so the idea of starting a cosmetics line was intriguing. The first time we met, we complained about how the makeup colors never matched us. I remember having to blend three different foundations to get something that even resembled my own skin color. We thought it was ridiculous that you couldn’t just find the right color at one makeup counter no matter what color you were.”
With Maven, Hwang Adam and Abbasi–both 31–are offering a line of cosmetics that won’t clog pores and will treat the skin as much as it will enhance a woman’s features. The powder ($26) is talc-free and has skin softeners. The concealer ($28.50) is designed like an artist’s wheel, with a variety of colors to mix and match as needed. And there are 15 foundation colors ($28.50), from pale to rich mocha.
While the Maven line includes everything from eye shadows ($15) to blushes ($18.50) to lipsticks ($19), there’s no mascara.
“Maven is committed to not introducing a new product unless it’s better and different from anything on the market,” Abbasi says. “There are so many great mascaras we don’t think that’s something our customers need from us.”
Right now, both women are so obsessed with Maven that after Hwang Adam gave birth three months ago, her pediatrician jokingly warned her not to put makeup on her infant daughter.
“She had a small baby rash and I was tempted to put a little powder on her to cover up the redness,” Hwang Adam teases. “But I would never do that, obviously. Now penciling in her eyebrows, that’s another story.”
But of course. Everyone knows that babies aren’t born mavens.
