We were lucky to catch up with Samantha Jax recently and have shared our conversation below.

Samantha, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

It’s interesting how the whole idea for our new fleet of beauty vending kiosk came about. As you know from our previous interview in Voyage ATL and Shout Out Atlanta, Seven Lips and Lashes LLC had already been thriving in business with wholesale mink eyelashes. We had thought of expanding to vending briefly but the idea never stuck. I had take a trip to Georgia the early part of 2022 and stayed in a hotel for about six days give or take. During that stay I must have made trips to the beauty supply and other stores for additional personal and beauty products more than 8 times.”Very inconvenient I thought.”

My hotel even had a washer dryer that was accessible with no detergent… during my ride home I was thinking of how my trip could have been more smooth in terms of lodging. Once I got home, I formulated an idea in which is which it would help not only the business but he consumers, shared the information with my team whom I have used prior with our custom travel lash case. I let them know my vision and within a three month time frame it had come to life. Our fleet of beauty kiosk is not your normal vending that you would come upon.
Our beauty vending kiosk was designed to cater to every one every where and follows our motto as we have had from the beginning for all to “Experience beauty 7 days a week”.
They are easily accessible and offers over 120 stocked items, and is equipped with a pandemic friendly 19″ flat screen for selection and 12 large side lockers for larger items such as detergents or fabric softeners or hair perms and flat irons.
We wanted to keep all consumers in mind when formulating our kiosk. Our first of many location is in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan’s Woodland Mall. We always knew that we didn’t want any limits put on kiosk location or our brand. But being in our home town for our first launch happens to be such an honor. We are currently in talks with a multi hotel chain and major nationally notarized university at this time. Once that information can be shared, we will be glad to updated, or you can always head to our website at anytime for any updates @ www.7lipsandlashes.com

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?

For those of you that are not aware of who I am, My name is Samantha Jax Author, Owner and Founder. I’m a six time amazon author and founder of mental health non profit REAC Foundation and owner of wholesale and beauty vending fleet Seven Lips and Lashes Beauty&Vending.
I got into the beauty industry at the early age of 13 with doing braids from home. That grew into graduating from cosmetology school and following my career as being one of the top beauticians in my city at the time. After retiring from the chair but staying in the entrepreneur world I began to publish urban fiction novels while building my seven lips and lashes brand on the back end. Once things with Seven was finalized we launched in Spring 2017. Since then we have grown from individual sales to wholesale mink lashes. We have helped multiple business owners launch their mink lash line and we have helped business owners secure custom packaging for their products and much more.

With the success came expansion and we felt that Seven needed to be more abroad with our sales, marketing and reach to our consumers. As our team worked out the kinks, I had an experience at a hotel that made a light pop on for our next venture under the Seven enterprise. Seven L&L Beauty and Vending. Which leads us to where we are now. We currently with our new fleet of beauty vending kiosk. We consign five spots inside of our kiosk to small business owner that would like to expand their reach to consumers as well as advertisement on our 19″ flat screen monitor. So weather you would like to add products or not, you still have the opportunity for your product to be seen in Michigan if you live in Virginia. That’s a far reach I’d say… Also we added our own person lockers on the side for large item like beauty packages, flat irons, and manikin heads. For our hotel clients they will add things like laundry detergent, additional towels and toiletry packets. We were thinking full convenience with this project.

Because of the demand from entrepreneurs wanting to tap into the vending industry, Coming late fall ’22 My team and I will began to teach a course that can be found on my website under downloads.

You can no longer say vending is just for a passive income. Vending can be very lucrative making upwards of six figures in a year with the right plan and strategy.

Our first location is in my home town of Grand Rapids Michigan. What an honor, to have a vending kiosk in Woodland Mall. We are currently working on other contracts at this time as well for multiple other locations. If you can get it in the health and beauty isle you can get it in our kiosk. Each kiosk will be custom for its individual location. So make no mistake we are making waves and everyone is benefiting from it which is what we wanted to focus on.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Back in 2019 Seven Lips and Lashes had a vendor booth at the Live in color health & business knowledge expo in Charlotte NC. There was an amazing line up of speakers, self made millionaire Rasheeda Frost of LHHA, Supa Cent both of whom I was able to meet that weekend, Jessica Harris-Dupart (Judy) in which I mentored under just a year prior and other women who are making waves in their industry. I had come to the event about an two hours before however, I had issues with getting checked into my room. With doing that I wasted a lot of time. I didn’t have my table cloth, one of my isles had broken and I was missing a piece. What ever could have happen happened at that time. The way I had my table set up in my head for marketing purposes was going to be A1 had I had all the necessary things I needed. Although I may have missed many sales due to appearance of my table cloth, I was still able to communicate with Rasheeda’s husband and security and ask if I may have a moment of her time (she was speaking with someone else at the time) in just that second she turned around there was little old me saying hey girl! as if we were bussom buddies lol just my personality, then off I went into presenting to her and her spouse our custom seven travel lash case. They were floored at the design and uniqueness of the product. Those were words directly from Kirk Frost. Rasheeda loved it as well because twelve hours later, waking up from a nap at home in SC from a long weekend I had more dm’s , messages and purchases than I had had since the start of Seven. Rasheeda Frost had flew home and from the her home she featured our case on her Instagram Story!
Now if that was not impeccable marketing….lol No but really, I believe in and stand on my product 100% and I knew that if I had the chance I would tell everyone about Seven Lips & Lashes! And that was my goal and it paid off!

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

Being and Entrepreneur for so long has definitely had its up honey, and I mean ups. But it also has it’s down in terms of mixing business with pleasure. Business is not always meant to be done with family and business is not always meant to be done with friends. There is a thin line between getting business handled and taking up space and pouring out negative energy. I thrive on having great relationships with the people that I am around and do business with. Good energy is a must. I have been at this a while, so I have seen and heard a lot. Winning a race of popularity is not my goal. This shows in our customer service through our team at Seven lips and lashes as well.. So all good vibes around here.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.7lipsandlashes.com
• Instagram: 7_lipsandlashes
• Facebook: @sevenlipsandlashes
• Linkedin: @samanthajax
• Youtube: @iamsamanthajax
• Other: TikTok @sevenlipsandlashes7

Image Credits
@Woodland Mall Grand Rapids, Mi @Rasheeda Frost of LHHA