What’s Next: 100% Pure wins big with Mark Cuban
They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and Susie Wang is far more inventive than most. Any struggling college student would mourn a $100 purchase that turned out to be a fail, but Wang didn’t just get mad, she got to work. Her investment in a lousy Vitamin C serum turned into a science project about figuring out how to stabilize Vitamin C in oil, which turned into a patent, which turned into a career. Ten years ago, Wang took what she learned from that career in cosmetics development and started 100% Pure.
The core values of 100% Pure line up with Wang’s personal goals of maintaining a vegan lifestyle and using science for good by harnessing the power of natural ingredients and eschewing harmful chemicals. The tremendous science behind 100% Pure is what made them stand out at the 2015 Beauty Pitch competition hosted by the Professional Beauty Association and won them a one-year mentorship with Mark Cuban. Cuban was impressed by the company’s ability to take 100% vegan ingredients and use them to their fullest potential. “100% Pure was actually more science driven than just marketing or sales driven,” said Cuban. “What they’re able to do to extract impurities has applications not just to the beauty industry, but potentially to other industries as well. The fact that they have a lot of sales was a great confirmation.”
Cuban is known for many things — he is a billionaire, an NBA franchise owner, and had a cameo on HBO’s “Entourage” — but most people know him from the hit NBC show “Shark Tank.” Wang and her co-founder Ric Kostick are both huge fans of the show who dreamed of the chance to meet Cuban. When a friend told them about the competition taking place at Cosmoprof North America, they went all in with their efforts to win a spot in the finals. They spent an entire weekend poring over the application and then made it to the Skype interview with several executives. They emerged as one of five finalists who would present to Mark Cuban at the show.
100% Pure was indeed quite successful going into the competition, but co-founder and CEO Ric Kostick is amazed by the leaps the company has taken since winning. “In the past, we would grow maybe 30% a year, 40% a year,” Kostick explained. “Now, since winning Beauty Pitch, in 2016 we are going to grow 70% this year.”
Much of this growth comes from the synergy of the Cosmoprof show. Presenting at the competition put the brand in front of more than 1,200 people who attended Beauty Pitch, where 100% Pure competed against 18.21 Man Made, Hair Construction, LightStim and Zenagen. The event created a lot of buzz for the brand. “Everyone in the industry knows about 100% Pure. These are people that I would need an introduction to meet. Now these people are getting introductions to meet me,” said Kostick.
One of those introductions was to the home shopping network Evine. Evine saw the company’s presentation and loved them, and 100% Pure is now available on their home shopping website. Cuban also has made introductions for the brand and given them guidance.
The icing on the cake was winning the $10,000 cash prize during the same Beauty Pitch event. The cash prize was meant to be separate from the mentorship, but the duo of Wang and Kostick won over those judges as well. The brand has plans to use their winnings as seed money for a new venture.