Owner/CEO's Name & Business's Name
Alexis Wolfer, TheBeautyBean.com
Year Established
2010
Why is your business unique and what's your pitch?
TheBeautyBean.com is a unique and new online women’s magazine and e-mail newsletter that gives readers an intimate and expansive look at beauty, fitness, fashion and wellness, but with the underlying goal of promoting better body images and preventing eating disorders. Through the elimination of weight loss content and body-altering airbrushing, we work to show women that beauty isn’t a number on a scale, but is instead about beautifying, nourishing, pampering, sweating, and lusting (the categories covered on the site). Ultimately, we give women a place to get their beauty fix, healthfully.
What led you to start the business?
I’ve always been a magazine junkie but, after suffering with disordered eating and subsequently writing my Master’s thesis on the role some women’s magazines have in promoting negative body image, I became increasingly concerned with the focus many beauty magazines and websites place on unrealistic body ideals and weight. Drawing as much from my background in the fashion and beauty industry as from my Masters in Women’s Studies from Columbia University, I decided to create The Beauty Bean in order to provide women with a glamorous beauty site with an unparalleled focus on inner beauty and health. I knew that there had to be a better way for women to get their beauty and fashion fix, without being inundated with impossible-to-meet standards of beauty.
While I nevertheless remain a fan and reader of many of the women’s magazines available today, I wanted to present another option, one in which beauty was not as often defined as dress size. I believe that real, diverse and realistic beauty and wellness should be celebrated and hope that by doing our part at TheBeautyBean.com, we can help to broaden the concept of what beauty truly is.
Lessons Learned
- The biggest lessons I’ve learned are not to be afraid to ask for help and to outsource. While it’s taken time, I’ve learned that all successful business owners needed favors to get where they are and that the worst thing they can say is, "No," and that's okay –- someone else. Outsourcing has been even more challenging. When investing not only your money and time but also your sweat, love and tears, outsourcing is extremely difficult. That being said, it’s impossible to be great at everything and I’ve needed to figure out what I’m best at and put my focus on those things while outsourcing the rest.