How This Cool Eyewear Brand Won Over Beyoncé—and Became an Instant Celeb Favorite
The co-founders launched with just $1,000 to their names.
We know how daunting it can be to start a new business, especially if you’re disrupting an industry or creating an entirely new one. When there is no path to follow, the biggest question is, where do I start? There is so much to do, but before you get ahead of yourself, let’s start at the beginning. To kick-start the process, and ease some of those first-time founder nerves, we’re asking successful entrepreneurs to share their stories in our series, From Scratch. But this isn’t your typical day-in-the-life feature. We’re getting into the nitty-gritty details of launching a business, from writing a business plan (or not) to sourcing manufacturers and how much founders pay themselves—we’re not holding back.
Photo: Courtesy of Coco and Breezy Dotson
The lightbulb moment for the eyewear brand Coco and Breezy came during the co-founders’ formative years, well before they had the funds to turn the concept into a company. “We originally found our love for eyewear from the personal experience of being bullied as kids,” Corianna and Brianna Dotson, the co-founders (and identical twin sisters) behind the brand, told Create & Cultivate. “We would wear glasses to avoid eye contact with people.” But Corianna and Brianna will undoubtedly have the last laugh.
The entrepreneurs launched Coco and Breezy in 2009 at 19 years old with just $1,000 to their names. Since then, they've grown the brand into a coveted eyewear company with celebrity fans ranging from Beyoncé and Ciara to Nicki Minaj and Lady Gaga. This month, Los Angeles locals can shop the brand’s sought-after frames at Create & Cultivate’s Small Biz Pop-Up. Angelenos can visit the IRL pop-up at Platform for a contactless window shopping experience, thanks to Square, or place an order for contactless pick-up or delivery through Postmates.
Scroll on to learn more about the celebrity-beloved brand Coco and Breezy, including how Corianna and Brianna Dotson learned how to “be comfortable being uncomfortable” during those early founding years.
CREATE & CULTIVATE: Take us back to the beginning—What was the lightbulb moment for your business?
CORIANNA DOTSON: We originally found our love for eyewear from the personal experience of being bullied as kids. We would wear glasses to avoid eye contact with people. It started off super scrappy with DIY glasses; we were taking safety goggles and embellishing them with studs and spikes. When we moved to New York with less than $1,000 at 19, we knew we had something. Once we landed in N.Y. from Minnesota, we had people from Nicki Minaj and Ciara to Kelly Osbourne wearing our glasses within the first three months of us arriving in N.Y. As hot as our DIY frames were, it was as fast as it started to die down.
BRIANNA DOTSON: We then learned how to vertically integrated and how to create original designs from start to finish. Our co-founder, Duane Baker, is an architect and had experience in sourcing and manufacturing. Once we added optical to our collection, that was a lightbulb moment that we started to know our product-market fit and we were creating something that was very scalable.
Did you self-fund the company, and if so, how did you bootstrap it? If not, what financial path did you take to fund the business?
BD: We have been self-funded from the beginning until now.
Did you work full-time at another job while building your business or did you just dive straight into it?
CB: We dove straight in. We started working when we were 15 years old and had three part-time jobs each by the time we were 17 so we always had the hustle mentality. By the time we were 19, we quit those jobs and moved to N.Y. to start our business and have not worked for anyone else. We were very frugal in the beginning, lol.
BD: But we put all of our time into our business and sacrificed a lot of our social life since we were building our business and didn’t have any comfort. We did not have the privilege of asking our family for money if things didn’t work. That was our inspiration to make it work and be comfortable being uncomfortable.
How big is your team now and what has the hiring process been like?
BD: Our team is still pretty small—we have about six main people. We also work with a lot of amazing freelance talent.
Can you share the biggest learning curve or challenge since starting your business and why?
CD: In the beginning, we were so young and unaware of scaling. We had a challenge in the beginning when we were just creating product but we weren’t necessarily creating products with the idea of understanding our product-market fit, our true customer, or how we were going to scale. Now that we know all of that information, we have seen a lot of growth.
Do you have a business coach or mentor? How has this person helped and would you recommend one to others?
CD: We have had some awesome mentors and just amazing people around us. One particular woman is Sharifa Murdock who is such a powerful woman! She saw something in us in the beginning and gave us opportunities but yet was always hard on us and gave us her honest opinion.
BD: When you have a mentor or business coach, always know that no question is a dumb question.
What is your number one piece of financial advice for any new business owner and why?
CD: From a bootstrap perspective, find ways to be creative and scrappy.
If you could go back to the beginning with the knowledge you have now, what advice would you give yourself and why?
BD: To be honest, I wouldn’t go back because the way we learned everything was through trial and error. We are so grateful for all of the challenges we went through as they made us the founders we are today.
To discover, support, and shop all of the brands featured at the Create & Cultivate Small Biz Pop-Up, head to our C&C Small Biz Pop-Up hub.
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How This Artist Turned Her Love of Product Design Into a Cool Accessories Line That Makes People Smile
Steffi Lynn Tsai just wants you to have a nice day.
We know how daunting it can be to start a new business, especially if you’re disrupting an industry or creating an entirely new one. When there is no path to follow, the biggest question is, where do I start? There is so much to do, but before you get ahead of yourself, let’s start at the beginning. To kick-start the process, and ease some of those first-time founder nerves, we’re asking successful entrepreneurs to share their stories in our series, From Scratch. But this isn’t your typical day-in-the-life feature. We’re getting into the nitty-gritty details of launching a business, from writing a business plan (or not) to sourcing manufacturers and how much founders pay themselves—we’re not holding back.
Photo: Courtesy of Steffi Lynn Tsai
Naming a business is no easy task. The right one is not only memorable but also embodies your values and conveys your distinguishing characteristics to potential customers. For artist Steffi Lynn Tsai, inspiration came from an unlikely source: a plastic take-out bag. “I literally decided on the name the day I decided I wanted to open up my shop and was eating take out from a bag with a have a nice day design on it,” Tsai tells Create & Cultivate. “I thought of Have a Nice Day because I wanted something cheerful, easy to remember, and just overall a happy saying.”
Known for her quirky, colorful work, the name was a perfect fit. Have a Nice Day boasts the artist’s signature smile-inducing designs on everything from stickers and stationery to socks and T-shirts. Although her glass mugs and water bottles are sold out on online, you can snag the sought-after Have a Nice Day Glass Water Bottle at Create & Cultivate’s inaugural Small Biz Pop-Up in Los Angeles where locals can safely shop via Postmates or via contactless shopping, thanks to Square, when visiting the IRL pop-up at Platform. During times like these, who couldn’t use a reminder to “have a nice day?”
Ahead, Tsai takes us behind the scenes of her career as a freelance artist and tells us how she turned her love of product design into a cool accessories line that makes people smile.
On launching her online shop…
“Honestly, it started because I loved seeing my work on items and was experimenting with hand making a lot of my products. It came to a point where I was just hoarding all these handmade goods at home! I posted a bunch of my work online about all the little things I was making and people seemed to like them! So one day, I just decided to start selling them!”
On writing a business plan (eventually)…
“I definitely fell into ‘starting the business’ because my original thought was just to create work and share it with the world! I loved experimenting and just seeing what my illustrations or lettering could look like on a product and selling them helped fund that hobby and it turned into something profitable. I didn’t create a business plan until much later on, when I realized I had to make a plan in order to expand. It definitely helped a lot for me to think and reflect on where I wanted to see the business in five years.”
On coming up with the name “Have a Nice Day”…
“I literally decided on the name the day I decided I wanted to open up my shop and was eating take out from a bag with a have a nice day design on it (the classic plastic bag). I thought of Have a Nice Day because I wanted something cheerful, easy to remember, and just overall a happy saying. It was perfect and simple, and people say it almost every day to at least one person. I loved that. I don’t believe in forcing something to happen. I may be a very persistent person, but I think things should come naturally. Be observant, look at everything around you, listen to everything around you. You might hear or see something that just ‘clicks,’ y'know?”
On setting up the business logistically…
“I had a really hard time with this because I thought everything would be super easy. I started off on Etsy and it was just ‘an Etsy Shop.’ To me, I thought that was good enough. It is really difficult for me to not have control over every aspect of my life, so asking for help was not an option I wanted to explore. That being said, my biggest advice is asking for help and not to be stubborn about it! Your resources are all right in front of you and your biggest resources are your peers. Ask fellow business owners questions!”
On finding the look and feel (and audience!) for the brand…
“I kind of fell into starting a business so I didn’t do this right off the bat. But what I did, later on, was: make a mood board, make lists of your market, and research your demographic.
Mood board: I am a very visual person, so I like to take photos and collect items that I catch my eye. Making a mood board is so important because you can see everything you like in front of you and find the connections between everything. This will help you with your brand colors, aesthetics, etc.
Lists: Make a list of all the shops that you admire, that you shop at, that will be your peers. See what they are doing and what is successful for them
Research your demographic: What kind of age group are you looking to sell to? What are they into? What is trending for them?
On locating the right manufacturers to work with…
“Lots, and lots, and lots of Googling and asking for estimates and quotes. It is super scary and hard to invest money into a product, A) you’ve never made before, and B) from a company that you’ve never worked with before so make sure you look at all your options!”
On self-funding the company…
“I did a lot of freelancing jobs and saved a lot. I have always been super good at saving because I am in constant panic that one day there might be a crazy emergency and I will need a large amount of money for some reason? That paranoia definitely helped with saving. Obviously, this depends on the type of business and the product one is trying to make—because different products cost more or less. I personally think self-funding will always be my go-to because I feel like I am in total control.”
On making the mistaking of stocking too much inventory…
“Most production prices go down when you order in bulk, so it is appealing to order (for example) 1000 stickers at $0.25 compared to 100 stickers at $.75. But the worst thing is to have too much inventory that is not moving. It is basically just sitting money. There was one time where I thought I could move a lot of a specific product, and I didn’t. The product was not selling and just had thousands of dollars worth of products, sitting around in my apartment. And I don’t think I really ended up profiting from it.”
On freelancing from the get-go…
“I actually started freelancing in college and then started the shop right after I graduated. I have always been super eager to work. So I took advantage of all my downtime to freelance and save money because I knew I didn’t want a full-time job ever. And after I graduated, I immediately started my shop.”
On growing a team…
“I have an assistant that helps with some orders, but I personally like fulfilling orders myself. I like that I get to touch every order and add a personal touch. However, as Have a Nice Day grows, I will definitely have to sacrifice that detail since it will end up being not practical.”
On being transparent…
“I think it is important to be transparent and open about what goes on behind the scenes. People want to know the BTS! Show them!”
On her #1 piece of advice for aspiring small business owners…
To be kind of yourself, be open to learning, don’t be discouraged, and make sure you put love into what you are doing—it’ll show.
To discover, support, and shop all of the brands featured at the Create & Cultivate Small Biz Pop-Up, head to our C&C Small Biz Pop-Up hub.
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I Left a Steady Paycheck in Corporate America to Start My Own Future Fortune 500 Company
“Sometimes you need to jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.”
We know how daunting it can be to start a new business, especially if you’re disrupting an industry or creating an entirely new one. When there is no path to follow, the biggest question is, where do I start? There is so much to do, but before you get ahead of yourself, let’s start at the beginning. To kick-start the process, and ease some of those first-time founder nerves, we’re asking successful entrepreneurs to share their stories in our series, From Scratch. But this isn’t your typical day-in-the-life feature. We’re getting into the nitty-gritty details of launching a business, from writing a business plan (or not) to sourcing manufacturers and how much founders pay themselves—we’re not holding back.
Photo: Courtesy of Dorian Morris
As you may have gathered from the headline, Dorian Morris is ambitious. The Harvard Business School alumnae was busy climbing the corporate America ladder with her sights set on becoming one of the first Black female CEOs of a Fortune 500 company when she decided to take the leap and launch her own inclusive beauty startup instead. With an impressive résumé—which includes stints at CoverGirl, Sundial Brands, and Kendo—she was more than prepared to take on the competitive multi-billion dollar beauty industry.
Determined to disrupt the space, she founded Undefined Beauty, a clean, conscious, inclusive brand focused on democratizing beauty and destigmatizing what Morris calls "plant magic.” From manufacturing to marketing, she uplifts oft-overlooked communities by partnering exclusively with female-founded, minority-owned, or LGBTQ businesses. Needless to say, this is just one of the many reasons we’re proud to partner with Morris and Undefined Beauty for our inaugural Small Biz Pop-Up in Los Angeles where locals can safely shop the brand’s limited edition Glow Detox bath soak via Postmates or via contactless shopping, thanks to Square, when visiting the IRL pop-up at Platform.
Ahead, Morris talks us through her impressive career journey, from climbing the corporate America ladder to bootstrapping her own future Fortune 500 company. Trust us, you’re going to want to keep an eye on this space and add Undefined Beauty’s Glow Detox to cart, if you haven’t already.
On establishing a solid résumé…
“My background is a beautiful mosaic of retail, consumer packaged goods, and beauty, ranging from merchandising at Macy's, classical brand building at General Mills to learning the ins and outs of the beauty business while at Kendo, and continuing to evolve and master other beauty categories while at Sundial Brands and leading CoverGirl U.S.”
On building a future Fortune 500 company…
“While at Harvard Business School, I honestly thought my purpose was to lead a large Fortune 500 as one of the first Black female CEOs, but now, as I embark upon this startup journey, it's quite a different yet exciting adventure to be building my own future Fortune 500 company, from scratch. Each experience on my professional journey has built key tools that I can now leverage as an entrepreneur, including how I want to operate as well as how I do not want to operate, because actions are what determine your company values and culture.”
On leaving corporate America…
“After leaving corporate America, having built successful brands for other people, I felt it was my time to create something special and powerful for myself. As a beauty junkie, I'm always dissecting ingredient lists and realized there are a lot of less-than-ideal ingredients in our everyday products that aren't necessary. As the industry shifts towards greater transparency, I felt there was an opportunity to focus on clean, non-toxic beauty but do so in an accessible, approachable way.”
On discovering the benefits of cannabis…
“I discovered the beautiful benefits of cannabis, specifically CBD, via a former colleague. As I started my product development research in 2018, I found there wasn’t an efficacious yet fun and accessible CBD brand, focusing on the destigmatiation of cannabis while elevating conscious capitalism in the process. I created Undefined Beauty to fill this void: clean beauty meets adaptogens (CBD) meets social impact.”
On democratizing beauty…
“Undefined Beauty is a lifestyle brand focused on changing the narrative around clean, nontoxic living, democratizing beauty and infusing social impact in the process. I believe in plant power and the role adaptogens play in helping us individually become our best self, both inner and outer beauty, with CBD being for the first adaptogen I chose to highlight in my first collection, Indigo Rose. I want to empower women and men everywhere to explore, embrace, and celebrate their own unique beauty while also giving back to the community: purposeful beauty, unleashed.”
On tapping into conscious capitalism…
“I expanded the concept of conscious capitalism by launching Undefined Collective, a disruptive retail platform that is focused on elevating female-founded, minority-owned, LGTBQ, local and CBD brands because one plus one can equal five when indie brands come together. I have over 50 brand partners that have come together around this aligned vision and have executed a successful physical brick-and-mortar pop-up in Oakland, California, and more importantly, we have been able to educate the community on the amazing benefits of cannabis and demystify its internal and external benefits. Undefined Collective is continuing to evolve and I'm working on something special in the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles that will launch very soon.”
On destigmatizing and elevating CBD…
“The cannabis industry was built off the backs of the Black and Brown community, which are being denied access to the commercialization opportunity now that the regulatory landscape has shifted. Undefined is focused on destigmatizing and elevating CBD and taking it one step further. My goal is to infuse social good and purposeful impact into my business model to drive sustainable impact.”
“First, across my supply chain, I exclusively partner with female-founded, minority-owned, or LGBTQ businesses, from my labs to my warehouse to my designer—it’s all about business empowering business. Secondly, once I scale, I would like to focus my social impact lens on female incarceration, given the unfortunate situation that many in jail are there because of cannabis. As the daughter of law enforcement (my mom is one of the first Black female California Highway Patrol sergeants and is now a cannabis evangelist as the store manager of Undefined Collective Oakland), I’ve seen the broken law enforcement system and have family members that have been incarcerated for drug offenses (and some that are still in jail), so I’ve seen first-hand how difficult it is to reacclimate post-release.”
“I want to bring positivity from something that once was negative. I operate by the model ‘do good, be good,’ and Undefined can be the bridge by providing employment opportunities and forging strategic partnerships to be part of the solution. As one of the few bootstrapping, Black female-founded CBD brands, I feel representation matters both in showcasing we are here in the space as leaders and also in helping write the future of this dynamic, evolving industry.”
On taking the leap without a business plan…
“I didn’t create a formal business plan because I felt that in the ever-changing, evolving beauty space, sometimes you need to jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down. Where many founders stumble is getting caught up in analysis paralysis and you hesitate and miss key moments to drive the trend. Timing is everything. In addition, you have to be adaptable, fluid, and flexible because, ultimately, it’s the consumer who decides what brands win and what brands flop. I think you will never have all the answers and the best approach—especially when building a bootstrapped brand like Undefined—its to embrace an ‘iterate the great’ mindset, be strategic about staging risk, and continue to listen and evolve based on learnings and consumer shifts.”
On landing on the name Undefined Beauty…
“Finding the right name was a fun process. I traveled to Atlanta to have an ideation sesh with my best friend who is a former indie beauty founder as well (she has a successful beauty line in Ulta) and has been an invaluable confidant on my startup journey. We went old school, with large poster boards and markers, brainstorming words and ideas that captured the vision I had for Undefined. The concept is really about challenging the status quo, changing the narrative, breaking the rules, and approaching beauty and wellness through a clean, conscious, inclusive lens. It’s about redefining, reframing, and rejecting what beauty and wellness have historically stood for; there’s more than one way to be, live, love, consume, appreciate, vibrate. It’s about celebrating the beauty of choice.”
“In ideating names, Undefined was the clear winner. I personally hate rules and being told what to do and Undefined embodies this mindset that rules are meant to be broken, especially when the rules were set up by a patriarchal system that did not (and still does not) want diverse and underrepresented community to thrive. It’s about taking our power back. Not conforming. Embracing individuality, quirkiness, duality, fluidity, and uniqueness. Not putting limits on yourself and moreover, recognizing you are not alone and you are more than enough.Beauty starts in your head, not in the mirror, and Undefined is about reinforcing and celebrating this new and important approach to beauty and wellness.”
“As a Black, queer, female founder, leading with purpose is part of my brand DNA, and it shows up in how I personally lead—focused on radical transparency—and it also shows up in how I communicate, inspire and educate my community, a.k.a. my Undefined Crew. My advice would be to find a name that represents your vision but also ensure from a business perspective, you can secure a URL—mine is a bit nonconventional since the basic version wasn’t available so I use un-definedbeauty.com—as well as social handles that embody the name. Sometimes you have to get creative and that’s ok. For example, my socials are @UndefinedBeauty_Co and @Undefined_Collective given some iterations were already taken.”
On setting up the business…
“My first step was selecting a brand name then securing URLs, social handles, applying for trademark protection. Next, I started to build the Instagram community—since I was starting from scratch months ahead of brand launch, it was about setting a tone for the type of content and community I wanted to create. Next, I started to build out briefs on the product parameters and innovation I felt was missing in the marketplace, which helped inform which types of manufacturing partners made sense to engage. Next, I started to work on the brand DNA which included creating a logo, color palette, and communication tonality. Closer to launch, I created an e-commerce site—very scrappily—using WIX and eventually moved to Squarespace—but if I was to start over, I would build off Shopify from the beginning which has a lot of integral functionality built-in.”
On differentiating the brand in the market…
“Understanding your unique value proposition is important because this will help clarify your differentiation in the market as well as provide parameters and boundaries as you build and grow. You have to understand who you want to target because if you want to target everyone, you’ll end up actually connecting with no one. Understand and research your category, competitors, ingredient benefits and trends and understand where the whitespace is that you can authentically compete.”
On finding the right manufacturers and production partners…
“This has been an important learning. Given I was a corporate beauty vet, I understood who the large manufacturers players were across categories but most have a very large minimum order quantity (MOQ), so I opted to work solely with female-founded, minority-owned, LGBTQ-founded suppliers which actually ended up being a competitive advantage as they typically have lower MOQs, allowing me to move faster to test innovative concepts.”
“It’s a win-win as conscious capitalism model is close to my heart and I’m helping empower communities that have been historically left to the fringes. Honestly, finding the right partners is a bit of trial and error but tapping into events and forums like Indie Beauty Expo, CosmoProf, MakeUp in LosAngeles, and Expo West, which bring together the business-to-business (B2B) suppliers has been invaluable. It will be interesting to see how these in-person events evolve in the post-COVID world.”
On building a financially stable foundation…
“As a bootstrapped founder, I self-funded launch and leveraged pitch competitions to help provide some financial fuel to the business. It’s definitely a slower build, but for me, it felt right, and I can build a sustainable foundation instead of driving growth to appease investors. I was lucky to own real estate in San Fransisco that I purchased while at Sephora and Kendo which allowed for Airbnb income to help me cover my living expenses, but I’m still in a place where I don’t pay myself so every dollar of profit is invested back into the company.”
On being strategic and getting creative…
“I’ve been very strategic with every dollar I spend, and I actually don’t think of things as mistakes; they are all learnings to help you do things better going forward. My advice is to stage your risk by keeping your MOQs low and find creative solutions if you end up with packaging overstocks, which actually given the current supply chain disruptions, for me, has been actually a blessing in disguise.”
On working another job while building the business…
“I was consulting for a previous employer, General Mills, in the beginning of the Undefined exploration process, but as it started to take over my mindshare, I gracefully bowed out of the consulting engagement to fully commit to Undefined.”
On getting out of your own way…
“Self-doubt and imposter syndrome are real—don’t believe it, get out of your own way, and remember that the universe always has your back.”
On valuing collaboration over competition…
“I lean heavily on my network of fellow startup founders to find creative solutions to challenges, information share, and help uplift one other. It’s truly collaboration over competition.”
To discover, support, and shop all of the brands featured at the Create & Cultivate Small Biz Pop-Up, head to our C&C Small Biz Pop-Up hub.
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