Diana Peinado and Vanessa Costa

Lip Lab: The Ultimate Lipstick Experience

Diana Peinado and Vanessa Costa of Lip Lab joined Lipstick Economy to talk all things lipstick, particularly the custom lipstick retail experience which recently opened their tenth location in Nashville’s 5th and Broadway.

Diana Peinado, VP of Lip Lab, is a respected leader with some 30 years experience in retail cosmetics with industry leaders Origins, Chanel, Sephora and Kendo.

Vanessa Costa is the head of marketing for Lip Lab, bringing one of a kind buzz to a one of kind experiential brand.

What is Lip Lab?

Lip Lab is a place where you can come and get your custom-made lipstick, spend time in the store with your friends and have color experts on tap to help guide you through your color journey, picking your perfect shade, finish and flavor. The experts make the lipstick in front of you and then engrave it with your name. It is a completely personalized to you.

Is Lip Lab a social experience?

Guests are not only excited about lipstick, but they’re excited that Lip Lab is a place you can go socially. The average guest booking includes more than three people, up to six people or a planned party. What that means is a guest is going to rally some friends, plan a time together and really enjoy it as a social experience. The experience lasts from 45 minutes to an hour. And add-ons can include drinks, snacks and decorations.

Why is Nashville a good location for Lip Lab?

The new retail experience has varied locations from Paris to Las Vegas to Nashville. Lip Lab is a fun, custom lipstick experience. Nashville is fun, custom boots, custom parties, custom bachelorette events. It felt like such a great place to have our brand represented. And not only have locals enjoyed our experience, but tourists come as well. We’re really excited about this location.

Tell us about the ingredients of your lipsticks.

The ingredients are clean, vegan and produce a high quality, high performing lipstick.  Because we specialize in lipstick only, we have customized shades from the lightest nude to the deepest dark purple. Our employees learn how to use color theory to find and blend the right colors. And our consumers can come back and get the same color again. Or have a whole wardrobe of lipstick colors.

What is your marketing strategy?

The biggest role of marketing right now is building awareness. We are growing our awareness through brand storytelling. We’re trying to bring our brand to life mostly on social media because it is such a social experience and really creates that FOMO, that feeling I have to do this right now. Social lets people know what it is we do, and that it really is inclusive for all. Local influencers are important to our brand, and our retail interiors are built to engender social sharing, as well as the experience of mixing of the colors. We also focus on influencers beyond just beauty influencers because women from all lifestyles and all ethnicities can enjoy a lipstick experience.

Is diversity and inclusion important to your concept?

Yes, we put a lot of focus on providing a range of colors for all groups of people. We are constantly looking at new pigments to provide the colors we need. And we also are very focused on hiring people of diversity, men, women, non-binary, and people with different backgrounds.

Resources and Links

Lip Lab website

Instagram @LipLab

Tik Tok: @LipLabBoutique

Diana Peinado on Linked In

Vanessa Costa on Linked In