When a Second Semester Brainstorm Becomes a Full-blown Business

 

Lynda Peralta with The Pocket Palette
Founder and CEO Lynda T. C. Peralta, GWSB MBA ‘17, with The Pocket Palette.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then The Pocket Palette—a full face makeup kit for women on the go—is a baby conceived on a train ride.  Some years back, The Pocket Palette’s founder and CEO, Lynda T. C. Peralta, GWSB MBA ‘17, didn’t want to wake up early enough to do her makeup before boarding an early morning train from DC to New York. So, she put some of her cosmetics into a sandwich bag, did her makeup on the train, and threw the bag away.

Fast forward two and a half years to Peralta’s second semester of business school at GW. She overheard some of her MBA classmates talking in the bathroom on the sixth floor of Duquès Hall, bemoaning the inconvenience of carrying cosmetics from home to school in order to do their makeup before each job or internship interview.

“I popped out of the bathroom stall and asked if they would be interested in a travel makeup kit with a one-time use,” says Peralta. After hearing a unanimous “yes,” Peralta went home to develop some prototypes.

“When I got to the point of choosing products for the palette, I held focus groups at the business school after class with some of my classmates,” she says. “They were instrumental in what I selected.”

Peralta says that she didn’t start business school with a strong interest in cosmetics. “While I have always had entrepreneurship as one of my lifetime goals, I didn’t know how to start or what to start,” she says. “I always thought that there was an invisible checklist I had to accomplish before I could be an entrepreneur.”

That changed with the encouragement of the entrepreneurship ecosystem at GW. “I have had amazing support from the business school and the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” she says. “Lex McCusker (director of student entrepreneurship programs) has supported my growth through a lot of the office’s programs.” Peralta says that her support system at GW has seen her idea “go from me blubbering about it to my winning competitions.”

One of those competitions was the New Venture Competition in which Peralta placed as the  4th place winner in 2017. “That was a turning point for me,” she says. “I won up to $20K in cash, services and credits. Having those resources made me want to kickstart my business and think it could be viable.”

Other competition successes include Peralta’s win at a Microsoft entrepreneurship competition, a people’s choice award in a Google competition, and placing in a number of student pitch competitions. “One of the reasons I was able to succeed in those competitions is because I can tell a good story,” says Peralta. “I learned those skills and principles in (professor of marketing) Lynda Maddox’s class.”

Peralta says that the global and experiential education focus of the business school was critically important. During the consulting abroad program required of all full-time MBA students, Peralta traveled to South Africa to study innovation.

“While I was in South Africa, I watched people pitching their businesses and I felt that I could do that,” says Peralta. “At a dinner there with my classmates, I pitched The Pocket Palette for the very first time.”

But it wasn’t just GW’s business school classes that helped Peralta further her business. “Outside of the MBA program, I took classes at GW’s Graduate School of Political Management in digital marketing, grassroots outreach and speechwriting, all of which I was able to tie into The Pocket Palette’s development,” she says.

The Pocket Palette, which includes mascara, lipstick and BB face cream, is not meant to be a replacement for a makeup bag. “Sometimes you’re caught off guard or you’re traveling and your makeup gets left behind,” says Peralta. “I’d rather someone use The Pocket Palette to hold them over instead of buying a whole new set of makeup. The Pocket Palette is designed to be a tool that women can have metaphorically and literally in their back pocket for when they need it.”

The Pocket Palette package featuring mascara, lipstick and BB face cream.
The Pocket Palette includes mascara, lipstick and BB face cream.

After a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $55K in October 2017, Peralta launched her online business in May 2018. “We have found our little corner of the Internet where we are succeeding,” says Peralta.

“We are now transitioning from direct-to-consumer sales to business-to-business,” she says. “We are looking to do partnerships with airlines, hotels, trains, gyms – any place where you would need travel makeup.”

“I’m proud of how far I have come and what I did to get here, like choosing manufacturers, designing the packaging, marketing and all of the other things required to start a business,” says Peralta.

“It’s cool that people from my GW class as well as current students and other alumni ask me to review their pitch deck or help them with their entrepreneurial idea,” she says. “Just knowing that my story is relatable is one of the things I am proudest of.”

 

-Michele Lynn

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