Tisha Thompson had 15 years of beauty industry experience, a concept for a clean makeup line, and exactly zero finished products when she decided to pitch Sephora. She found executives on LinkedIn, guessed their email addresses, and sent her deck to about a dozen people with a letter that basically said: change requires action, and I’m ready to be part of it.
Sephora said yes. LYS Beauty launched online on February 14, 2021, and hit retail shelves one week later. Thompson had bootstrapped the entire operation with $500,000, partly from an inheritance from her father and some early angel investments. No venture capital. No safety net.
Four years later, LYS Beauty has crossed $10 million in sales, secured a $15 million Series A led by Encore Consumer Capital, and expanded into more than 800 Kohl’s locations through the Sephora at Kohl’s partnership. The brand’s viral No Limits Cream Bronzer Stick alone has racked up over 1 billion TikTok views.
The Gap That Nobody Was Filling
Thompson’s path to founding LYS Beauty started at PUR Cosmetics, where she led the development of 100 foundation shades. The work taught her something the beauty industry kept ignoring: clean beauty and inclusive beauty were being treated as two separate conversations. Brands marketed themselves as clean, but their shade ranges were narrow. Brands that offered diverse shades used ingredients that didn’t meet clean standards.
Thompson saw the gap and decided to close it herself. LYS, which stands for “Love Yourself,” became the first Black-owned cosmetics brand in Sephora’s “Clean at Sephora” category. Every product meets strict clean beauty standards, free of sulfates, parabens, and phthalates, while offering shades designed for every skin tone from the start.
“My mission was to diversify clean,” Thompson told Glossy. That wasn’t a marketing tagline. It was a business thesis. The clean beauty market was projected to reach $22 billion by 2024, and the customers being underserved within that market represented massive untapped demand.
How $500,000 Turned Into a $10 Million Brand
Most beauty founders assume they need millions in venture funding before approaching a major retailer. Thompson flipped that assumption entirely. She went to Sephora first, then used the retail partnership as proof of concept to grow the business.
The bootstrapped approach forced discipline. Thompson couldn’t afford to launch 50 products at once. She focused on a tight lineup of hero products, each formulated to solve a specific problem that existing clean brands were ignoring. The No Limits Cream Bronzer Stick became the breakout hit, achieving the kind of viral traction on TikTok that brands spend millions trying to manufacture.
The numbers tell the story. LYS Beauty achieved 150% year-over-year growth. Direct-to-consumer sales jumped roughly 200% year-over-year in 2024. The brand’s Instagram following grew to over 144,000. All of this happened before the Series A round closed.
“Besides some early angel investments, Thompson has bootstrapped the business since its founding,” Fast Company reported. That’s rare in an industry where most founders chase venture money before they have revenue.
The Cold Email Strategy That Landed Sephora
Thompson’s approach to getting into Sephora is a masterclass in what founders call “warm cold outreach.” She didn’t have a warm introduction. She didn’t have a finished product. What she had was 15 years of credibility in the beauty industry and a pitch that connected her personal story to a market opportunity Sephora couldn’t ignore.
She identified the right people on LinkedIn, reverse-engineered their email addresses, and sent a deck with a personal letter explaining why clean beauty needed to look like its customers. The timing mattered. Sephora was actively expanding its commitment to diverse founders, and Thompson’s pitch aligned perfectly with that priority.
The lesson for founders in any industry: you don’t always need a finished product to land your first big customer. You need a clear problem, a credible background, and the nerve to reach out to people who can say yes.
What the $15 Million Series A Changes
When Encore Consumer Capital led the Series A in early 2025, Thompson had options. Encore previously backed Tarte Cosmetics and Supergoop, two brands that scaled from indie darlings into mainstream powerhouses. The firm understood beauty, and more importantly, understood how to grow a brand without losing what made it special.
The $15 million is going toward three areas: staffing up the team, building inventory to support the 800-plus Kohl’s store expansion, and laying groundwork for international distribution. Thompson has been vocal about wanting LYS to become a global brand, not just a niche player in the U.S. clean beauty space.
The expansion into Kohl’s through the Sephora at Kohl’s partnership is strategic. It puts the brand in front of a customer who might not walk into a standalone Sephora but still wants clean, inclusive beauty products. It’s the same approach that helped brands like Fenty Beauty reach mass-market scale.
The Playbook Other Founders Can Steal
Thompson’s story offers a blueprint that works well beyond the beauty industry. She identified a gap between two growing trends (clean beauty and inclusive beauty), built a product that bridged them, and used a bold distribution strategy to prove demand before raising outside capital.
She didn’t wait for permission. She didn’t build a massive following before approaching retailers. She used her industry expertise as her calling card and bet that the market was ready for what she was building.
Four years in, the bet is paying off. LYS Beauty is on track to become the kind of brand that other founders study when they’re trying to figure out how to bootstrap their way into a market that everyone assumed required millions in upfront capital.
