We were lucky to catch up with Francesca Eales recently and have shared our conversation below.

Francesca, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I started making makeup over 10 years ago when clean beauty was relatively new and I had trouble finding products that worked for me. Back then I mostly stuck to loose mineral eyeshadow and lip balm. I did that on and off for years just as a hobby. I tried a few Etsy shops here and there but nothing ever stuck. Then in around 2018 I decided to get serious and start a business. I found a business partner and we launched a super small handmade makeup company. But from the beginning that company struggled with its messaging. I wanted everything to be sustainable but we were not there yet. The partnership soon fell apart and I decided to leave. It was heartbreaking and for a while I wondered if this was really what I was supposed to do. I struggled with my confidence and self esteem and took a huge mental health break. But then the pandemic hit and we were all home. I decided that with the time I had to try again. I started experimenting with paperboard lip balm containers because I couldn’t stand the thought of little plastic lip balm tubes floating around the ocean from products I had made. I also went back to the drawing board with the formula. I wanted to simplify the lip balm base, make it the least amount of ingredients as possible and create a line that was soft and buttery – not greasy and really really pigmented. Once I had that figured out I started to build the brand. It has not been an easy ride. I don’t have any experience running a business so every step of the way has been a lot of trial and error. But I have met so many amazing and wonderful people along the way and I have been so great full for this experience and opportunity.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hello Wink is named after a small gesture. A hello or a wink is just a small thing that can be an act of kindness or just to make someone’s day. Our motto is “small things make big changes” and it’s about how doing lots of little things add up to have a larger impact. With makeup we feel this way too. The makeup industry produces 120 billion units of makeup waste every single year. And it would be impossible to ask every single person to give up every single plastic product that they use. But what if we just switched out one small thing, like lip balm. If we all just ditched our plastic lip balms for zero waste we could see big changes in the makeup industry and a positive impact on our planet.

At Hello Wink we create lip balms and tints. Our current line consist of two types of lip balm products. Our Tinted Lip Balm Pot – which is a tinted lip balm in a pot. And an All Over Color Stick. Our All Over Color Sticks are uniquely formulated multi use sticks for your lips, eyes and cheeks. You can use them interchangeably to create your look – as a blush, lip color, eye color, bronzer, contour and even highlight. We have 6 shades in our Lip Balm Pots and 12 in our All Over Color Sticks. We also have a seasonal line of lip scrubs.

All of our products are packaged in zero plastic sustainable paperboard containers. These containers can either be recycled or can biodegrade. It’s also super important to us that the whole experience from packaging to the tape on your mailer is a plastic free experience so when you make a purchase from Hello Wink you are helping end makeup waste.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Like a lot of small businesses I actually am the only person that works at Hello Wink and I make all the products myself. It sometimes can feel overwhelming especially because I know I’m scaling and growing but it’s also satisfying at the same time.

In the beginning I thought about contract manufacturing and even reached out to a handful of manufacturers. And although there is nothing wrong with this route, I felt really compelled to being hands on with the whole process. I think because I had spent so much time perfecting the formula and making the lip balms over and over hundreds of times, I just didn’t want to trust anyone else. And I wasn’t sure that they could know the product as intimate as me. So in the end I chose to create the products myself. That did prove to be challenging at first. But once I set up my space everything seemed to fall into place.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest lesson for me at Hello Wink is that it’s a journey not a sprint. I think a lot of people like myself are impatient and comparative. I compare myself and my business to a lot of other really successful brands and I don’t realize that this is their moment – and that’s beautiful – but I’m seeing their final form. Not from the beginning. I have to remind myself that we are all flowers and flowers don’t compete but we bloom in our own time. I think for me this goes back to being in school. I didn’t think I was as smart as the other kids. Or I couldn’t read as fast or as soon as they could. So I’m always comparing myself and my business to what everyone else has. But I think realizing that we are all on a unique journey and there is no time stamp on that helps put things in perspective for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hello-wink.com
• Instagram: hello.wink.balm
• Facebook: hellowink

Image Credits
The images are all taken by me except for my Portrait photo which was taken by Maddie K Photography in St. Louis.