Lora Arellano

Lora Arellano co-founded Melt Cosmetics in 2012 after noticing that highly pigmented, ultra-matte, bold shades of lipstick were missing from the cosmetics world.

Committed to filling that void, Arellano and her business partner, Dana Bomar, took their combined decade of experience in the makeup industry and retail work and invested their life savings in creating five shades. The product became an instant success and sold out as soon as they launched it online in May 2013.

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Lora and Dana’s marketing instinct and unique industry perspective allowed Melt Cosmetics to quickly bridge the gap between social media-centric and professionally acclaimed makeup brands, setting the bar for the independent brands that followed.

Today, Melt Cosmetics is one of the biggest independent brands, embodying the freedom of expression through makeup while empowering its cult following to be unapologetically themselves – just like its co-founders.

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From highly pigmented lipsticks to innovative eye shadow stacks and highlighters, Melt’s razor-sharp focus on creating cutting-edge products that are missing from the market continues to push the boundaries of what quality cosmetics should be.

“We were really scared to put it out there,” Arellano told ET in 2018, during an interview at the Melt Cosmetics headquarters in Chatsworth, California. “There had been other production companies that came up to us to try and start a show based around makeup artists, or the business, but we never wanted to be put out there in the wrong way.”

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“ We weren’t going to do catfights, we weren’t going to talk s**t about each other behind each other’s back, that’s not even what we do,” Lora assured. “We just wanted it to be fun and inspiring for other girls our age, or for women who feel stuck in their job that have a dream to do something bigger. We’re proof that your dreams can come true.”