Introduction
Discover the inspiring eyeliner business success story of Iris Smit, who built The Quick Flick from just $10,000 in savings to a staggering $15 million business by age 27. In this revealing interview, Iris shares how she created an innovative winged eyeliner stamp while studying architecture, navigated appearing on Shark Tank, overcame personal challenges, and developed a product-led business strategy that disrupted the beauty industry. Learn how she turned a simple problem-solving idea into a multi-million dollar brand through authentic marketing and relentless innovation.
Founder Success Story QnA
Take us back to the moment when you first came up with the idea for The Quick Flick.
The brand came to me in 2017 when I was studying architecture. I was in my final year and in my mid-semester break, which is crazy to think. So about six weeks over the course of six weeks pretty much birthed the brand. At the time I was running an Ecom business for my then boyfriend and really got a taste for business. The Ecom world was just popping off and I was like I would really like to do something for myself and create my own brand. I was really into makeup, always had been, very much into design obviously, studying architecture. And at the time winged eyeliner was just popping off in the world, everyone was wearing winged eyeliner, it was like every YouTube video would end with a winged eyeliner and no one could do it. So I decided to actually first look for something that would make the application easier, I couldn’t find it, and then pretty much ended up opening up my AutoCAD program which I was using for architecture at the time, creating a winged eyeliner shape, finding a manufacturer to model that up, and pretty much designed everything, the packaging, built the website, created all my social media, everything over like six to eight weeks in total, which was just wild.
Talk to me around how the launch went with your $10,000 in savings while juggling University.
So the first product was the winged eyeliner stamp, and then I launched that into a range of shades, different sizes. I would say it was probably easier to launch a brand back then because there was just less competition. It was also easier for me because it was completely unique and a first of its kind, so I ended up getting an innovation patent on the design. I think it was just right place, right time. Winged eyeliner was just the look everyone was wearing. But it wasn’t like overnight success. I kind of didn’t really know what I was doing, I was sort of learning as I went. The first day I launched I did like $800 in sales and most of that was just friends and family. It was a really slow burn, took about 4ish months until I really started to see some traction. I was also still juggling working full-time, going to UNI full-time, and then doing that in the evenings.
When you get a post from an influencer that has millions of followers, what kind of sales does that equal?
On the first day we did like close to $50,000 in sales when Huda Katan posted about us. At the time she had like 13 million followers. I remember opening my phone up and going what is going on, and I saw she had posted. It wasn’t a usual day of sales, I think around then we were doing $2,000 a day on average. So I could hear the Shopify ding ding ding ding ding ding ding, what is going on. But I think it’s a very different landscape now with influencers, I’m not sure if we would replicate that again.
You said that the Shark Tank producers actually reached out to you, so you didn’t apply?
No, I didn’t apply. One of the reasons I didn’t was just the headspace I was in at the time where I was like I had a lot of limiting self-beliefs and thought I’m a newbie, there’s no way I could go on Shark Tank. When I first got the email I actually thought it was a scam, I’m pretty sure I deleted it. Then I was like hang on maybe it’s real, undelete, and didn’t respond, didn’t audition in time. I had this voice in my head at 12:30 a.m. in the morning saying Iris just submit, just do it. So I got up, quickly filmed a video on my iPhone, it was so raw, it was like UGC before UGC was even a thing. Submitted it the next day, got a call from the producer saying we loved it, we loved how raw the video was. Long story short, ended up on the show.
You got an offer that you accepted for $300,000 but then decided to turn it down. Why?
I filmed Shark Tank in February 2018, it didn’t actually air until early June, so quite a few months later. When you film, there’s a large gap where I didn’t hear from the sharks for a very long time, and so much happened in such a short amount of time. Our sales were doubling month on month, we were approached by Priceline who had POS ready to go to range us. One of the main reasons I went on Shark Tank was to try and find an investor to help me with retail because I knew that I wanted to be in retail, I knew the cost it was going to take to do that, and I was navigating a space I knew nothing about. So when it came to actually sitting down and going through the deal, the valuation had completely changed by that point and it just didn’t feel like the right deal at that stage because so much had changed. Decided to go our separate ways and not go through with that.
What happened next when you hit rock bottom after Shark Tank?
I started hitting rock bottom around the Shark Tank period, which again I know some people would say is so bizarre because on paper everything looked amazing. I was on Shark Tank for God’s sake, and my business is doing exceptionally well. I had a growing team, I was ticking all the boxes, but I think it was coming from an unhealthy place where it was like well when I do this and when I hit this milestone, then finally I’ll feel happy. And whenever I then reached those milestones, the happiness didn’t come. It felt really exhausting. I hadn’t faced everything that had happened to me growing up, I was just living in denial, hadn’t processed any of it, had never gone to therapy, hadn’t really spoken to anyone about it. I really hit rock bottom and I remember driving home really late at night one night going I just wish there was a reset button on my life. That was a big wakeup call that I really need to take my mental health seriously and go get professional help.
What happened next when you had to rebuild the business from the ground up?
What happened next was I ended up finding a really good therapist and pretty much did almost two years of very intense therapy twice a week. Through that birthed a completely different person, I became a completely different person. So the business that I had created, the structures I created, the people I hired, the way I was running my business from that old Iris no longer aligned with the new Iris. There was a real shift in my entire life to be honest, and that forced me to sort of restructure the way I was running my business, the people I was hiring, my entire approach to my business completely changed. Like a lot of entrepreneurs when they start, you hire friends and family and friends of friends, and you’re not necessarily hiring the right people for your business with the right talents. So I changed a lot of the people who were in the business. I completely restructured how we worked. I was very set on we have to have an office and everyone has to be based in Perth and all of our fulfillment has to be out of here. Once my mindset started to change, I was like well actually I can run this remote and open this up so I can hire people from anywhere and everywhere.
When did you launch The Beauty Fridge, your second business?
I launched The Beauty Fridge in late 2019. It was just like right product, right time. Skincare was popping off and then COVID hit and everyone was buying products for their home and rearranging during COVID because they had nothing to do. They were buying products to help with storage and organization. I launched it just before COVID hit and then it really took off in 2020. I also did a split model with that where went in store, was stocked in Target, Priceline, and then also sold online as well.
How fast did The Beauty Fridge brand grow?
I don’t like to touch on the numbers too much, but it did grow exceptionally well. With that business though, I realized it started to become a little bit of a distraction to Quick Flick. I started to spend a lot of time in that and I realized this is not really a long-term brand for me, it was more just by a trend product, just strike while the iron’s hot, go as hard as you can. It came at the perfect time because Quick Flick when COVID started to hit was very much a cosmetics focused brand, eyeliner stamps, lashes. I very quickly realized COVID was having an influence on consumers to shift away from wearing very heavy full glam makeup and become more focused on their skin health, natural looking makeup. Sunscreen started to become big. So during the time where I needed to really double down and create new products and innovate Quick Flick and move it away from just being a cosmetics brand, I had Beauty Fridge on the side doing exceptionally well and almost carrying Quick Flick through that transition period.
How do you creatively market Quick Flick and stand out in a crowded beauty space?
One of the main strategies is really honing in on the founder profile and messaging. If you go on my socials, you’ll see that I’m very active on there and show a behind the scenes angle to the business, really focus on storytelling, taking consumers behind the journey of what goes into running a business. How do you develop a product from scratch, which I know sounds like a lot of people do that, but I started doing that before a lot of people were doing it. I’ve become really well known for taking people on the journey, saying to our customers these are the 20 different shades we’re trying to choose, which one would you like, really involving them in the process. The other one on our branded socials is really honing in on problem solution because that’s what our brand is all about, problem-solving beauty products. Give me a problem, how do you reapply sunscreen over makeup? Let’s show the problem, which is let’s go and spray white sunscreen on our face, put on the screen. That’s like a good hook, people are hooked. The problem, oh my God, what is that? It’s a good visual hook, and then the next clip the solution, applying our product. You can see straight away how it works, it doesn’t leave the white cast like the previous clip. It’s short, like a 10-second video.
Did this founder-led marketing approach come naturally to you or was that a strategic move?
It just came naturally to be honest. I think after I went on Shark Tank, I was kind of just forced to promote myself. People would ask like where’s Iris, how’s she going, can Iris do this tutorial, what lip liner is she wearing in this video. I just started to see people were taking an interest to me. Around 2020 when TikTok was sort of starting to rise, that’s when I got more heavily on TikTok and sharing the behind the scenes. It was a real challenge for me because it felt unprofessional at the time. Back then it was all about this nice polished front, you wanted to look like a huge professional brand, you didn’t want to show them how you were designing your products, it felt like you were a small time brand if you were doing that. But I just started testing and posting and doing little things here and there, and I would see the interest people would have. One of my videos I was just sketching out a shelf ready tray for our retailers, people are fascinated by a cardboard tray that sits in grocery. No brand’s ever spoken about that. When you start showing the behind the scenes on that, it’s interesting to people and they don’t feel sold to.
How do you find new product ideas since you’ve moved into many different categories?
Main one would be just listening to what customers are saying. People aren’t afraid to share what they’re struggling with, what problems they’re experiencing. With the sunscreen one, I was seeing a lot of people searching online and coming to me saying could you create a way that you can easily reapply sunscreen when I wear a full face of makeup, there’s nothing like it out there. Then thinking of the solution in an innovative way. When I think of the solution, I also like to think how am I going to market this, how’s it going to be visually appealing, how can I show it in the first two seconds and hook people in. I’m almost thinking like good product, good visual hooks on marketing, and also making it look good on Tik Tok and on Instagram, rather than designing all the product and then sitting down and going okay how are we going to market this. With our sunscreen, we went for a domed lid. When I went into market looking on shelf, there’s no other brands sitting in grocery with a domed lid, it’s different, it’s going to stand out, it’s going to spark comments. I developed a tanning mousse, I made the applicator look like whipped cream because I knew when I marketed it, spraying out a product that looks like whipped cream that’s tan is going to hook people in.
Talk me through how you bring products to life and source manufacturers.
People would be shocked to know that the product is all done by myself and I’ve become really good at it. It is very lean, I could definitely bring someone in to come up with all of those ideas, but I’m so quick and I know it so well now, I’ve become really good at designing a product that will go viral. No, I don’t work with agents, I do all of the sourcing myself, finding a suitable manufacturer. I do source cosmetic chemists to help with the formulas, and then I will basically work alongside them to create the formula to where we want it to be. Some projects will just need one chemist and we’d get it done in 10 iterations, some will need like the mousse products, we had to have three cosmetic chemists on it and it took like over 100 samples, it was very tedious. Our manufacturers are based all over Australia and I find them based on their specialty. The manufacturer who does our mousse is specialized in making aerosol products. Same with the chemists, finding chemists who have experience in making sunscreen is going to be very different to a chemist who’s experienced in making color cosmetics.
Do you have advice for dealing with minimum order quantities when starting out?
There are definitely MOQs and over the years they’ve gotten larger and larger. My eyeliner stamps, the first PO was 800 units, and that was after I negotiated it down from 1,000 units. Now if people could start with 1,000 units would make it a lot easier. We tend to see MOQs anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000, or sometimes minimum spend requirements like your PO has to be $100,000. Those MOQs are more so when it’s like a custom formula, your own formula in your own packaging that’s all been customized. If I was starting out again, I would probably look for manufacturers who do lower MOQs, I’ve come across some that will go down to 5,000. I would probably do it in a savvy way where you don’t necessarily have to go buy 5,000 bottles or customize, opt for a sticker, it doesn’t have to be perfect the first go. Once you’ve proven it, then you can go and invest in 5,000 units with a sticker on it. Also just have an honest conversation with your manufacturer, say to them I’m just starting out, 5,000 is a lot, is there any way you could accommodate a smaller run just for the first time, 2,500 units, and this is what my forecasts look like going forward. They’re obviously a business and they want to make money, but I do find when you have those honest conversations, a lot of times the manufacturers are happy to work with you.
How do you know when to double down on growth versus launching new products?
It’s a mixture of things. In the past, our retail has actually come to us. Last year I did a whole series launching some new SKUs into Kohl’s, and during that series we got an email from our buyer saying we’re looking for products in new products in the tanning category. They loved what we had done in the sunscreen category, we really shook up the sunscreen category coming in, we were very disruptive, and they were looking for a replicate of that in tanning. So it’s having opportunities come to us. There’s also just listening to what consumers are saying and trying to be the first to jump on it. The sunscreen spray just changed the game for us, had we not jumped on that and been like the first to really set the scene for how sunscreen applications could be different, we would not be where we are now. That just opened the door to so many different things, and that really came about just listening to what customers were saying, but not giving them exactly what they were asking for. They were saying could it be like a clear stick, you don’t have to do exactly what they’re saying, that’s why when you create something, do it in an innovative way. We did the clear sunscreen spray, we built in the other elements of it being a spread and a hydrating facial mist, adding extra value. Currently we’re honing in on expanding into new markets with the products that we’ve already got. We’re not going and creating completely different products for these new markets, we’re picking our best bets that we know work and are transferable.
Talk me through your remote work lifestyle and what your work life looks like.
I love to work, I really do. I know some people would say it’s unhealthy but I genuinely just love what I do, it lights my soul up. If I had too many days off work, I just want to go back to work, I get all these ideas. I pretty much work from I normally start around 8-9 and probably finish about 6-6:30, which isn’t terrible, it used to be worse when I was starting out. The whole fully remote came from me seeing how others had made it work. A good friend of mine owns a very successful fitness brand, she lives in Bali, mostly US based, very big on Amazon. When I first met her six, seven years ago, she was fully remote, and I said you’re crazy, I don’t know how you do it, I could never do that. Once I started opening myself up to it, I found myself hearing stories from other founders and listening to podcasts of other entrepreneurs who’d built very successful businesses and they had a team of five fully remote and they were doing like $100 million in revenue. I set myself the challenge, I’m going to apply the same mentality when I approach every product, how can I do it different, how can I make it better, and applied that to my level of thinking in terms of how I could structure my business and my team. It works really well, I couldn’t imagine going back to an office.
What’s your vision for the future of Quick Flick and any final words of wisdom?
The vision is to just continue on the trajectory we currently are, continue innovating new categories. The list is endless, I get problems every single day from our community. I’ve had a lot of requests recently for hair though, hair care is popping off at the moment and a lot of people have problems in hair, so maybe hair will be next. Definitely continue to revolutionize sun care, I’m very passionate about sunscreen and sun care, especially in Australia where the rates of skin cancer just keep going up and up. My biggest takeaway is don’t feel like you have to subscribe to one way of doing things, whether it comes to your product or how you approach your business, how you want to run it. What is your vision and is that really your vision or have you been too influenced by someone else? Is it your ego that’s leading that vision? What do you truly want, what do you truly value as an entrepreneur? What employees do you want to attract that have similar values to you?
Iris Smit Business Stats
Iris Smit built The Quick Flick from a $10,000 investment while studying architecture into a $15 million beauty empire. Her innovative approach to product development and marketing has transformed her business from a simple idea into a multi-million dollar brand with global reach and distribution in major retailers.
- Started The Quick Flick in 2017 with just $10,000 in savings
- Generated $800 in sales on launch day, primarily from friends and family
- Reached $2,000 daily average sales before major influencer exposure
- Achieved $50,000 in single-day sales after Huda Katan featured her product
- Grew the business to $15 million in annual revenue by age 27
- Expanded from online DTC to major retailers including Priceline, Target, and Kohl’s
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Initial Investment | $10,000 |
| Year Founded | 2017 |
| Launch Day Revenue | $800 |
| Post-Influencer Daily Revenue | $2,000 |
| Peak Single-Day Sales | $50,000 |
| Current Annual Revenue | $15,000,000 |
Iris Smit Method
Iris Smit’s approach to building her eyeliner business success combines innovative product design with authentic marketing strategies. Her method focuses on solving real problems while creating visually appealing products that naturally attract attention on social media.
- Identify common beauty problems that lack existing solutions
- Design products with marketability in mind from the start
- Focus on creating visual hooks that work well on social media platforms
- Involve customers directly in the product development process
- Leverage founder storytelling to build authentic connections with the audience
- Balance innovation with expansion into existing retail channels
Iris Smit Tools
Iris utilizes a combination of design software, manufacturing partnerships, and digital platforms to bring her product ideas to life and market them effectively. Her lean approach focuses on using the right tools for each specific task rather than overcomplicating her tech stack.
- AutoCAD – Used for initial product design and prototyping
- Shopify – Powers the e-commerce platform for direct-to-consumer sales
- TikTok & Instagram – Primary platforms for founder-led marketing and customer engagement
- Specialized Manufacturers – Partners selected based on specific product expertise
- Cosmetic Chemists – Experts hired based on specialty areas like sunscreen or color cosmetics
Key Notes
The journey of building The Quick Flick offers valuable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs in the beauty industry and beyond. Iris’s experience demonstrates how personal growth and business success are interconnected, and how authentic marketing can create a powerful competitive advantage.
- Success doesn’t automatically bring happiness – addressing personal challenges is crucial for sustainable business growth
- Founder-led marketing creates authentic connections that can drive significant sales without large advertising budgets
- Product design should consider marketability from the earliest stages of development
- Remote work structures can enable hiring the best talent regardless of location
- Trusting your gut instinct, even when it goes against conventional wisdom, can lead to better business decisions
- Listening to customer feedback while innovating beyond their exact requests creates breakthrough products
Get Started in Just 5 Steps
Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from Iris’s journey and apply these key steps to launch their own successful product-based business. Her path from architecture student to beauty industry success shows how identifying problems and creating innovative solutions can lead to remarkable business growth.
- Identify a common problem in your area of interest that lacks existing solutions
- Develop a minimal viable product using your existing skills and resources
- Start building an audience by sharing your product development journey authentically on social media
- Engage directly with potential customers to gather feedback and refine your offering
- Scale strategically by balancing new product development with expansion of existing successful products
Conclusion
Iris Smit’s journey from architecture student to founder of a $15 million beauty brand demonstrates the power of identifying real problems and creating innovative solutions. Her success with The Quick Flick wasn’t just about creating a better eyeliner application method—it was about building an authentic brand story, engaging directly with customers, and having the courage to trust her instincts. By sharing her personal struggles and transformation, Iris shows that true business success comes from aligning your company with your personal values and vision. Her approach to product development, marketing, and company culture offers valuable lessons for any entrepreneur looking to build a meaningful and profitable business in today’s competitive landscape.