LAMIK Beauty Founder Kim Roxie's Inspiring Path From Adversity to Success"

LAMIK Beauty founder Kim Roxie's journey started with an unexpected twist.

Kim was expelled from high school but she did not let that derail her. Instead, she saw it as an opportunity to help get her to the next level in her life.

She went on to work as a makeup artist at the mall, and that is where the vision for LAMIK Beauty began. Today, LAMIK is slowly becoming one of the best black-owned clean beauty brands on the market. Here is everything you need to know about Kim’s success story.

In 2004, LAMIK started as a small makeup shop in Kim’s hometown of Houston, Texas, and quickly became a community for makeup lovers of color. Unfortunately, Kim hit another roadblock when her first investor, her mom, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“After my mom passed in 2014, it became my mission to give women of color access to safe, natural beauty products,” Kim shared on her website. “I knew I had to get my paraben-free makeup to every woman who wears makeup routinely. We are a health and wellness brand just as much as we are a beauty company. I started to dream of more.”

Kim closed her makeup shop in 2018 and focused on making LAMIK, which stands for Love and Makeup in Kindness (it’s also her first and middle name backward), better than ever. She launched “LAMIK 2.0” in 2020 with an e-commerce website and the first product released was the brand’s Brow Kit.

“I struggle with hair loss. My brows don't grow on the ends. How could I be out here doing beautiful makeup for other women with no eyebrows? I created the Brow Kit to put the frame back on my own face and give me a natural-looking brow, that no one would even know I applied daily,” Kim, who has Alopecia, explained. “I've now given that power to other women and see it when they get their brows back.”

Now, you women can shop everything from custom blend foundations, mascara, and makeup brushes on the brand’s website, and in 2022, LAMIK became the first Black-owned, clean makeup brand to launch on Ulta.com.

One of Kim Roxie's defining traits is a big part of her success story, and that is her ability to transform setbacks into opportunities. She could have easily become a statistic, lost in the shadows of missed chances. But she saw an opening, ran through it, and did not look back.

LAMIK’s mission sends the message that beauty has no boundaries. Not catering to traditional norms is what the company is all about with products made for a range of skin tones and types. Kim ensures that diversity is never overlooked in LAMIK's products, as they reflect her experiences and her belief that beauty is not confined.

With LAMIK, I want people to understand that when I say I make makeup with women of color at the forefront, this encompasses every skin tone,” she told PopSugar. “My aim in this space is to not only make the beauty industry more equitable on all levels, but also to make diversity in the clean beauty space so normalized that it becomes something that people don't have to think about, but instead, come to expect.”