Denise Vasi has modeled, acted and influenced. Now, she’s adding another title to her resume: beauty founder.
On Tuesday, Vasi will launch Maed, which bills itself as “decadent lip care for daily wear.” The four-product debut lineup includes the $26 Reveal Lip Polish, the $36 Reset Lip Serum, the $32 Revive Day + Night Lip Balm and the $36 Signature Lip Pigment in Ritual Red, Vasi’s signature shade.
To help bring the brand to life, Vasi went through Sephora’s Accelerate program which provides mentorship to emerging founders.
The brand will eventually launch at Sephora, as a result. But Vasi said she wants to sell Maed direct-to-consumer for its first year. “That way, we can address any feedback from our customers,” she said. “Obviously, there’s a lot I need to learn as a first-time founder.”
In part, the brand was inspired by Vasi’s time starring in the VH1 TV show “Single Ladies.” “I wore a red lip, and every time [I made out in a scene], I’d have to take it off and put it back on in between the scenes. I was stripping my lips,” she said.
Though she acknowledged that the lip-care market has significantly grown since she started to work on Maed in 2019, she said her products are differentiated for their “skin care-first formulas that protect and enhance the lip skin barrier.”
Also, she said, “We offer a start-to-finish lip care routine, combining an elevated experience with a ritual-based approach to caring for lips.”
Vasi self-funded the brand with money earned and saved from her work as a creator over the course of five years — Vasi has 265,000 Instagram followers. Before it became the name of the brand, Maed was the name of her editorial site.
Vasi is the latest influencer to launch a beauty brand. Creator-launched brands have been met with mixed results. Some have been great successes: Summer Fridays, founded by Marianna Hewitt and Lauren Ireland, has a major hit on its hands with its Lip Butter Balm. And Naturium, founded by Susan Yara, was acquired by E.l.f. in 2023. Others, like Addison Rae’s Item Beauty, however, have disappeared.
She tapped community members — thousands applied, she said — to be a part of a month-long program, during which 60 people met for two hours each week, tested the products and created dedicated content.
“In between the testing, we shared our aspirations and goals as a community of mostly women,” Vasi said, noting that she plans to host more community events around the brand
“The products have got to be good. But at the heart of what I do is I create community, and I hope I inspire and encourage my community members to go out and do the things they want to do in life,” she said.
Vasi worked with Robyn-Melissa Watkins, now head of product development at Beyoncé’s hair care brand, Cécred, to develop the collection. At one point, when formulas were not turning out to Vasi’s liking, Watkins presented her with two options: launch and fix things later, or start from scratch, which would be both more time-consuming and more expensive. Vasi chose to start over.
“I’m not Lady Gaga, we only get one chance,” she said.
