Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bendiane Pierre Louis . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Bendiane , thanks for joining us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

In 2009, my mother got remarried, her event planner Maria had her picture up in her office and Maria’s future brides would inquire on who did my mother’s makeup and hair in the photo. At the time I was 18 years old never did anyone else’s makeup besides mine. I remember receiving the call from Maria about a bride needing her makeup done for her wedding and only charging her $25 for her makeup, which in today’s standard is extremely affordable. After servicing her, I really thought to myself that I truly enjoyed doing that and getting paid for it was the cherry on top. Since then I have serviced thousands of clients and absolutely love what I do.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Bendiane Pierre Louis AKA Bennie, and I am the owner of Bennie Cosmetics. Makeup and Skincare is my business!
I am an experienced licensed esthetician and professional makeup artist with over 15 years of expertise. I help fabulous women on a daily achieve their beauty needs, by providing quality beauty services and products they can safely use to achieve healthy skin and fabulous glam looks.

Bennie Cosmetics mission is to Empower fabulous women one face at a time.

Our goal is to create a safe space to help and make women feel and look like their fabulous self.

I started my makeup line in 2016, right when liquid matte lipsticks started becoming popular. I wanted to introduce something that would set me aside from other makeup artists in my area. That same year after I became an esthetician, my clients always asked me for recommendations on what they should use on their skin. That gave me the push to start figuring out how to start a skincare line. In 2020, during the pandemic, I had a dream where I saw myself making my own skincare products and thats what inspired me to create my handmade skincare line.

Since then it has been my goal to find new ways to stay relevant in this competitive beauty industry. I try my hardest to find new ways to grow my business and make it better to serve my clients.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

After high school, I did makeup as a side hustle whenever my clients would refer me to their friends and family. After I went away for college, I mainly did hair as a side hustle, but I did have the opportunity to do makeup for a fashion show and a few photoshoots.

After graduating and moving back home, I helped start a photography company, where we did a glamour package that included pictures and makeup. During that time I worked for a corporate company as a contract manager and after a few years I truly was not happy doing that line of work.

I was hired by MAC cosmetics as a freelance makeup artist, which was exciting but the schedule conflicted with my main source of income, which was the corporate positron. I also didn’t like the fact that they only wanted me to sell cosmetics rather than doing makeup because I was a newbie.

Still during that time I did makeup for my clients on the side, before work, during my lunch, after work and on weekends. During that time I found myself busier doing makeup on the weekends and sometimes during the week. It got to a point where I had to start using my PTO every other week because I would get booked to go do makeup for music videos, which required me to stay on set.

Once I started becoming busier doing makeup I started to pray and asked God to bless me with more and allow me to go to the next level because I realized there wasn’t much room for growth at the time in my company. I remember doing a vision board party with some friends and expressed how I wanted to get my estheticians license because I wanted something that would set me aside as a makeup artist. While I was in school to get my facial specialist license, I just knew I wanted to work for myself and thats where the seed was planted to start my very own liquid lipstick line. I was miserable at work and kept asking God when was the right time to put in my 2 weeks notice because i was so over clocking in everyday and could only think about doing makeup. One weekend I prayed about my business and decided to rebrand my name and officially register my business as Bennie Cosmetics. I kid you not that Monday, I came into work and my manager informed that I was being let go and it was the biggest relief I had felt because it was an answered prayer and now I was able to work on my business. Since then I have never clocked into a job that belongs to someone else and I am entirely grateful to God for that opportunity.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

What helped me build my reputation within my market is the referrals from my many amazing clients. I do my best by providing great service, being kind, respectful and providing a clean and aesthetically pleasing location to service my clients. These are some of the things that my clients always compliment me on and I am so grateful and thankful for all of the referrals, love and support they show me.

Contact Info:

• Website: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/BennieCosmetics
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/BennieCosmetics
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Benniecosmetics

Image Credits

The two pictures with the purple lipsticks were shot by: Loui Photography
Model: Annabelle