It’s just in her makeup: Kim Roxie helps women look good, even in a pandemic
Kim Roxie knows her late mother, Loretta Wiggins, would be smiling.
She was Roxie’s biggest cheerleader, and she urged her to start her clean-makeup line, Lamik Beauty, for women of color in 2004, when the beauty industry was ignoring the market.
When Wiggins died of metastatic breast cancer at age 62 in 2014, Roxie’s life had a major shift. That next year, she got married and gave birth to her daughter, Loretta, named in honor of her mother. Then in 2018, Roxie closed her longtime store in the River Oaks area and took two months off, traveling to Hong Kong and South Africa. She returned to Houston energized and focused on taking her business to the next level — online.
So when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March, Roxie launched a program that allowed customers to try on her popular Celebrity Brow Kit virtually, before they purchase it. It was a major hit.
Even in the midst of a pandemic, women still want to look good, Roxie said.
“I was actually supposed to launch at SXSW in Austin, but when it canceled because of the pandemic, I decided to go ahead and launch,” she said. “It’s incredible that online business has been booming.”
It also helped that Roxie started hosting live Friday happy hours on Facebook, where she gives viewers makeup tips and talks with them about everything from motherhood to entrepreneurship. Her first live session was on how to put on lashes.
“It’s like therapy for women. I wanted to provide an escape. It also has been a game changer and helped me move products that I had just sitting on the shelves because of the pandemic. Clean products have a shorter shelf life than others because you don’t have all of the bad things in them that keep them preserved,” she said. Her “clean makeup” is nontoxic.
Roxie also wanted to be respectful to what was happening in the world, she said. Her own brother-in-law recently died at age 52 from COVID-19. She surveyed customers and found most of them were either essential workers or they were working from home. Many wanted to look professional for video calls.
A Houston native, Roxie was just 21 when she opened Lamik Beauty at Sharpstown Mall in 2004 with her own “green” formulas she made in her kitchen. Lamik stands for “love and makeup in kindness.”
A few years later, she relocated to a studio at Greenbriar and Westheimer near River Oaks. She also launched her line of lip glosses, foundations, makeup brushes and eye shadows at Macy’s stores in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia.
In the past few years, Roxie has been participating in technology accelerators in California and Austin, absorbing as much information as she can. Accelerators are designed to help small businesses hone their business models and e-commerce technology.
“This pandemic has launched Lamik Beauty 2.0,” she said. “The reality is 75 percent of beauty products marketed to black women are toxic. When I started 16 years ago, I just sounded like the crazy person talking about products with no parabens and other toxins. It’s hard to sell anything when people don’t get it.”
Today, her customers get Lamik, Roxie said. African American women spend 80 percent more on beauty products than other women, but products targeted for black women get only 10 percent of the shelf space at stores.
“I know my mom would be telling me to keep going. Keep trying. Lamik was her dream.”
Roxie has teamed with The Rose, a nonprofit organization that provides breast cancer screening, diagnostics and treatment services to women, regardless of their ability to pay. She has helped raised more than $300,000 for the organization. In 2015, she hosted a community baby shower for six expectant mothers residing at the Star of Hope Mission. The event was held at St. John’s Downtown Church.
“It’s important to me that I do my part to help where I can,” Roxie said.
That also includes fashion. She supports local boutiques and designers and is concerned about how fashion impacts the environment.
“I started to realize I only want to wear what I represent,” she said. “I want to wear things that have ethical value. I don’t want to own a closet full of clothes just to have clothes. I also still want to look cute. Makeup helps me.”