An exciting new company has planted its flag in the Old City. I met with Charles Brandon, Co-owner and CEO of the company. He’s originally from Memphis where he lived until last year. When his start-up company, Blank Beauty, became very involved with APTUS Designworks, an engineering company in Alcoa, he and his wife made the move to Knoxville. “We were driving six hours to Alcoa and on one of the trips I took my wife to Knoxville, and she said, ‘This is nice!’ The transition was easy after that.” He said it just made sense for the business, and the bonus was that they love the city. They are also joined in Knoxville by Tanner Reichard, Chief Data Officer, and Jenny Lam, Chief Science Officer (and longest-term company employee) who moved here to see the idea through.
Charles attended the University of Mississippi, following many generations of his family who have done so. His studies in General Business underway, he’d taken classes in marketing and finance when the idea for the company was born. He thinks the wide-view focus of the degree helped him not get overly focused on a business career, but rather to look for opportunities. The company started when, at age nineteen, he had an idea as he walked through the local (small) Walmart in Oxford, Mississippi.
“To the right was the paint mixing section and to the left was the beauty aisle . . . I thought, ‘Interesting. Has anybody made a paint mixer for cosmetics?'” He said it sort of married his long-term fascination with paint mixing with his understanding that a lot of new brands were making waves in the cosmetics industry at the time, thanks in large part to influencers on social media. “Also, around 2016, Keurig ruled the world, so I thought, ‘Someone could make a Keurig or a paint mixer for cosmetics!”
He’d always thought of ideas, but wasn’t really looking for something new, though “I never saw myself working for someone else for the rest of my life.” Some of the ideas he’d had earlier, but never acted on, went on to be sold for large sums of money as others had similar ideas. He never forgot that and when the light struck him in the cosmetics aisle, he knew he could act. “Unlike other opportunities where you can test things out, in cosmetics, everything kindly has an ingredients list.”
He bought nail polish, lip gloss, makeup and typed all the ingredients into an excel spreadsheet, realizing as he went that “whether it’s a hundred-dollar product or a five-dollar product, red nail polish or blue nail polish, they are always the same ingredients. Pigments are also listed. “It revealed that no matter the brand, no matter the color, the pigments will drive the end result of the product. So, if you have a stable base product and you add pigments to it, you can change it into 40,000 colors or 100,000 different colors with one base formula.”
He identified a supplier with whom he could work to get the base and began developing a system. “I was working thirty hours for school each week and forty hours on the idea.” As he brought on partners to realize the vision, he had to sell them on the idea and offer equity in the company as he had little-to-no start-up capital. “You have to sell them a bite of the future. There were no ‘friends and family on my end to have a windfall.’ He’s happy to see the business taking off and looks forward to paying those who believed in both him and the idea.
Along the way he met Kateryna, his future wife, while on a business trip to New York City where he was meeting with a major cosmetics company. She’d moved to the city from her native Ukraine after attending a Model UN event there as a delegate. Their connection worked out better than the one to the company he met with. He said he’s so grateful she’s expanded his world.
He explored conversations with other companies. By this time, he’d worked with an engineering friend from high school to develop a 3-D printed, functioning, counter-top prototype of the machine that would execute his idea. He emailed Walmart and told them about the idea of creating “custom cosmetics.” He got a phone call inviting him to Bentonville, Arkansas, to the headquarters of the massive company. The company said there was no way that machine would work in Walmart, telling him, “There are no coffee makers in Walmart, there are coffee vending machines. If you want this to be in Walmart, it needs to be six feet tall, needs to make 250 bottles in a row, needs to have a robot arm that can pick up and drop the product.”
He could have seen that as a rejection that killed the idea. Instead, he took it to Aptus and told them, “Hey guys, we’ve got about six months to take this from a counter-top device to a full-size kiosk’ . . . We made it in less than six months, and it drops the color in the bottle, mixing it to match any color you want, like a paint mixer.” It will take any color offered by the consumer, mix it, and deliver it immediately.
Six months later, in August 2023, they met with the same group from Walmart who he said were expecting a power point detailing plans to build the kiosk they wanted. Instead, Charles and associates strapped the finished machine to the back of a truck, carried it to the meeting and demonstrated it live. “They used it, we got a lot of feedback and had it in the store by October.”
For Blank Beauty, he thinks Walmart is a perfect partner. He points out that if you bring just another product to Walmart, they already have lots of others. A new ketchup on the aisle will have to compete with many others. A company like theirs that brings a new experience to the company can build an entirely different relationship. “If it makes people happy and makes them want to come back to the store, I think it offers lots of opportunities for companies.” He sees the company as innovative (they launched their own satellite to monitor inventory) and feels they are interested in new technology and experiences.
They are now in three Walmart stores as the company tracks sales and contemplates a larger roll-out. Based on early results, he expects the machines to rapidly appear in many other stores in the coming months. And that isn’t all—the company is now offering the product on their website (there is also an app) for direct purchases. Upload a sample of the color you want, click, pay, and get it in the mail. A larger version of the prototype the built, named Dolly, is now taking orders, making the product and dropping it for shipment, and will soon be doing so right inside the Old City. It can deliver 46,000 different colors and each bottle takes about a minute. It doesn’t require monitoring, so it can take orders and make polish all night, with bottles ready for shipment when the humans arrive the next morning.
“We can make Knoxville a top five exporter of nail polish in one-tenth the floor space, one tenth the labor requirement, and still the same quality of product.” It’s also a unique process in that the equipment doesn’t have to be cleaned with changing from one color to another as most batch polish makers are required to do. For that reason, they are forced to make large color runs before shifting to another color, making it very labor intensive.
Since they don’t require as many humans (they currently have five full-time employees), the basement beneath the JFG building, which they found with the help of Taylor Thompson with SVN Wood Properties, has proven to be a perfect spot for what they do. Since the polish is mixed one bottle at a time and there are no large containers of product, odors will be limited to one bottle at a time, the process is nearly soundless, making the building a perfect fit. It also returns manufacturing to the Old City where it was once more common. “We can take that property and have it be one of the largest exporting locations of nail polish in the country, despite being 4,000 square feet.” They have room to bring on more machines as needed.
He doesn’t see this as the ultimate product or project for the company, and he’s already excited about what comes next. Software developments related to AI and photography are currently being developed as the company builds on its tech side. For now, they remain a tech company selling beauty products, and nail polish is the focus. “We can build an American-made, Knoxville-made brand of cosmetics with lower prices and the same or better quality to the currently known brands.”
He plans to permanently grow the business here, citing the availability of great engineering, the University of Tennessee, great infrastructure, and great people. “It seems like every week we find a new reason to fall in love with the town.”