I was literally making
hundreds of lipsticks a day.
The most I've earnt in a week
since beginning my business
So today I am working on
developing some new shades
for our collection.
I've got my ingredients ready
If I'm making like, a colour I always
make its super quick.
Today I'm basically starting from scratch
so it just takes as long as it takes,
especially because it's a new colour.
I'd say we're selling about
but by Christmas I want us to be making
I'm measuring out the castor oil,
which is the base for my listick.
I only got two ingredients so far
so castor oil and our Candelilla wax.
And I feel like I run my brand this way
because I'm a cosmetic scientist.
But I feel like there's not many other
people who run beauty brands
that actually make the product.
I started MDMflow
in 2013 when I had just graduated
from university.
I studied cosmetic
science at the London College of Fashion
I had worked for so many
different makeup brands.
And I still didn't think that there was
a brand out there that represented
me and my personal values.
This is Murumuru butter.
So just waiting for my hot plate to heat up
and then
I can start to melt my base.
When I decided I wanted to start a business,
I needed the space to, like, formulate
and create this product.
I took out a five thousand pound loan,
bought the equipment that I needed.
And I just like essentially created my own
lab environment at home in my dad's shed.
A huge thing for me is making sure that
my colours are made for your skin tone.
I always at least test it on myself first.
This is a nice colour, but it's not,
I feel like it needs a little bit of brown
because it just doesn't look natural.
It still looks a bit, like chalky.
Yeah, this is more like it.
We had our big feature in the New York Times,
which is what really kind of catapulted
the business.
It's always been important for me since the beginning
that my products look incredible on all women.
I actually think it's quite embarrassing that
there are still brands in the beauty industry
now that have products that aren't
suitable for black women or darker skin tones.
My customers,
tend to be
younger women like so
from Gen Z teenagers to millennials.
Our three main
revenue streams is
our online sales
pop-ups like store events,
and brand partnerships.
So we poured it into our mould,
scraped off all the excess so that
we can remelt it
and make a lipstick out of it later.
And we're just waiting for the lipsticks to dry.
And there you are.
I'm very pleased with this colour.
It's nice no?
My meeting today is with Jeni,
who is the editor of Black Ballad.
So I'm just going to show her some of
the new nudes we've been working on.
Hey! How are you? How is it going?
I'm excited to see these new colours.
We have been working
on a collection of nude lipsticks.
That is really nice.
What about if we did like a masterclass online?
Oooh If people get the lipstick
ahead in advance, then you can do like a tutorial.
That would be good. That's a good idea.
So that was a really good meeting,
I feel like we are going to have some fun
putting this event together.
My main motivation behind doing this is that
it's really important to me to do something I love.
One of my biggest goals
is to be the fastest growing business in my industry.
Would you like to get richer?
I absolutely would love to get richer.