The beauty industry has its secrets, but exposing them and showing the truth behind the scenes is what allowed the founders Lipstick lesbiansAlexis Androulakis and Dr. Christina Basias Androulakis went viral when they decided to bring their honest approach to beauty to Instagram. As a former product developer and teacher respectively, who knew the ins and outs of makeup development and asked all the right questions to learn, this duo is a powerhouse in both business and life. So when Lipstick Lesbians decided to create their own line, Leaked Labs, it wasn’t going to be any ordinary beauty brand.
Lipstick Lesbians is no ordinary beauty brand – she founded Leaked Labs to bring true innovation and transparency to the beauty industry, putting the power in the hands of consumers: “We want to change the way this brand exists in the market and allow people to act as if they were in the development of the product.”
As and the first open source beauty brandLeaked Labs represents the essence of Lipstick Lesbians: bringing authority and honesty to an increasingly crowded beauty sector. Leaked Labs is a completely new and original beauty platform through which they will launch innovations created in the lab directly to consumers. before traditional cosmetic brands have a chance to catch up and launch advanced technologies on their own.
The founders of Lipstick Lesbians have frequented beauty shows around the world, but due to the confidentiality agreements they signed, they couldn’t share their incredible innovations on social media. Androulakis predicted that the new technology they saw would never come to market, and Dr. Basios Androulakis was disappointed that he was always right. Because what? “Fear has completely taken over this beauty industry and this culture of deception,” Androulakis says. “It’s a bigger risk because it’s less likely that someone will take the risk of doing something incredible, even if it could potentially change the world.”
Dr. Bassios Androulakis continues, “This is something that the beauty community doesn’t see. Behind closed doors, when you get down to it, many product development teams are afraid to show founders these innovative products because at the same time retailers are asking them to release a lot of products that they know will work. After a year of visiting these exhibitions, this problem remained. We know it will never be released, which is a shame.”
Learn the science of beauty
Shortly after attending the exhibition, Dr. Bassios Androulakis was taking a shower in June 2024 when she had a moment of discovery and Leaked Labs came to her. “It’s a completely different concept: to produce these products straight from the laboratory,” he says. “These are laboratory samples in small quantities, an innovation that really exists. The idea started with these orphan products that brands didn’t pick up, but it’s turned into an engine of direct-to-consumer innovation.”
What will really set Leaked Labs apart are the educational programs they will create around each release. “These manufacturers have invested so much time and energy in these innovations, but then no one uses them, so they are forced to make their own decisions, because despite the competition of the market in terms of brand, in Italy there are now new manufacturers trying to attract new customers thanks to the large number of brands available,” says Androulakis. To stay competitive, they must innovate. Their innovation is improving, but brands are increasingly risk-averse and unsure of where to invest their time and resources. The root of all this lies in the problem that no one knows how to educate in the beauty industry. If we can’t teach lip balm, how are we going to teach anyone what it is? I’m talking about the mob that runs influencer communities and it’s not their fault because they were never taught to do that. This is pure science. This is what it takes to pull back the curtain and bring a new innovation to market: education.
“Lipstick Lesbians was an educational platform that we created by accident, and we’ve long used beauty products as a textbook to talk about, but Leaked Labs will be a new program that we teach, and that’s going to be really exciting for us,” says Dr. Basios Androulakis.
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Accelerate the emergence of innovations
Traditional cosmetics companies will usually take years to perfect new technological developments, create packaging, test the waters with focus groups, find retail partners and create a marketing strategy. By the time the innovation hits the shelves, the technology is often already outdated and not so innovative after all. Leaked Labs eliminates all of these steps by reaching out directly to buyers to stop this cycle and put the power back in the hands of consumers.
“We do everything we can to make these leak cycles work,” Androulakis says. “After all, they can spend four to eight weeks leaking information from the lab. Something needs to be done to keep it interesting, which means lots of photoshoots, lots of content, and lots of learning. It’s a continuous cycle. The idea is to really understand those leaks, or that’s what the market wants.”
Leaked Labs is essentially the beauty world’s version of Oz, where consumers will understand how scientific advances work seamlessly, making beauty fresh and exciting. Have you ever walked into Sephora and wondered how multiple brands can simultaneously release brightly colored lip balms or moisturizers that release niacinamide? This is because brands simultaneously jump on trends, too nervous to forge a new course because the risk is too high. Or innovative products can get trapped in an endless loop of development cycles and never see the light of day. Typically, “new” beauty products are conceived 18-36 months in advance of launch, and the priority of each launch is often optimization for retail rather than true innovation.
Instead of traditional releases, Leaked Labs will “pitch” new product through limited releases released directly by partner labs and R&D teams around the world. Consumers can share their feedback on performance, which will influence the final product, which will be rolled out on a larger scale after their feedback is taken into account and the product potentially adjusted. But if the leak doesn’t have the expected impact, it can be permanently archived. IEssentially, they make the beta phase public and involve real-world usage rather than fine-tuning product development behind closed doors. For the creation process before filtering, Androulakis will work closely with chemists, artists and laboratories, often on new innovations or materials that have yet to be commercialized.
Powder that emulsifies with water
The first release from Leaked Labs is Leak 001: Amplify Flexi Powder, water-activated pigment discs that come in a simple silver case.. They change shape when activated with water or makeup setting spray. Includes a paddle where you can place discs and play with them. Once wet, they are no longer powder and can be used as blush, eye shadow, lipstick or highlighter.. Available in four colors (rose gold, silver, copper and gold), its complex formulas can transform from a thin layer of color to an intense color result. It’s essentially a deconstructed quartet.
Amplify Flexi Powder was sourced from a supplier with exceptional baking technology. “It’s an evolution of that, where it takes even more water, even more baking — that’s the next generation,” Androulakis says. “Mixing them should make you feel like you’re in a lab. It is a two-phase emulsion powder. Its dry phase, which is dehydrated, has a texture and will be more transparent. When we add water or setting spray, it hardens and becomes more gelatinous because we’ve activated the emulsion. It has glycerin in it, so it’s very moisturizing. You can basically make it liquid metal and it can have a watercolor-like vibe when it dries. It becomes your game to experiment with the product and you can literally do whatever you want. If you are not afraid to experiment, this is an invitation to re-examine makeup.“.
Once the Amplify Flexi powder has dried, it can be returned to its case. They chose it as their debut product because it is highly innovative, versatile and a conversation starter. “There is no powder on the market that dehydrates, emulsifies and returns to its dehydrated form,” says Androulakis.
While it is easy to use, it also requires training from Lipstick Lesbians, which is the basis of Leaked Labs. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching Alexis on her journey to becoming these accidental influencers, it’s that I’ve been able to see how disconnected everything is,” Androulakis says. “There’s a beauty community, but there’s also a content-watching segment of the beauty community. Then there are those who don’t watch content, and there are beauty industry experts and editors. But there are people who work in manufacturing enterprises. There is a disjointed understanding of how things work. Consumers are more thirsty and hungry for information than ever, but so are they Some content creators are more desperate than ever to go viral. Sometimes they say the wrong thing to get clicks, which happens a lot more often with micro-influencers. – It’s chaos.
Ultimately, they hope their new type of brand will bring more transparency to the beauty industry as a whole and improve integration. “The success of Leaked Labs translates into new awareness, the goal of the expanded training program: for people to learn how the industry works behind the scenes in a way that has never been seen before, all at the same time,” says Dr. Basios Androulakis. “You can speak a more normal language and get excited about makeup and innovation again. Success also means more innovation in the market than ever before.”
This article was originally published by Forbes USA.
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