Melissa Butler: The Lip Bar’s Revenge on Shark Tank

In 2015, Melissa Butler walked onto the set of Shark Tank with a suitcase full of bright, bold lipsticks and a dream. She walked out with nothing but rejection. “I just felt like I was watching someone dismiss everything I’d worked for,” she’s said of the experience. The Sharks called her business “too small” and told her they didn’t see the market.

Good thing she didn’t listen.

Butler grew up in Detroit, graduated from Cass Technical High School, and was working as a Wall Street financial analyst when she started mixing lip colors in her kitchen. She wasn’t happy with what she found in the beauty aisle — lipsticks that were either too drying, too expensive, or not made for deeper skin tones. So she made her own. In 2012, she founded The Lip Bar, a vegan and cruelty-free cosmetics brand built on the radical idea that beauty products should work for everyone, not just a narrow slice of the population.

After the Shark Tank rejection went viral (the episode aired and people were mad on her behalf), Butler channeled the attention into growth. She didn’t just keep going — she scaled. The Lip Bar landed deals with Target, Walmart, and Ulta Beauty, proving that the Sharks had miscalculated in a big way. Today, the brand is a multimillion-dollar company carried in thousands of stores nationwide.

Butler’s mission goes beyond lipstick. She’s vocal about the beauty industry’s history of exclusion, about the way Black women and women of color have been treated as an afterthought by legacy brands, and about the importance of ownership. “It’s not just about making products,” she’s said. “It’s about changing the narrative of what beauty looks like.”

For Butler, the Shark Tank rejection wasn’t a failure. It was fuel. And the beauty aisle is better for it.

Photo: Melissa Butler, founder and CEO of The Lip Bar, via melissarbutler.com

Quick Facts

• Brand: Founder & CEO of The Lip Bar (est. 2012)
• The origin: Mixing lip colors in her kitchen as a Wall Street financial analyst
• Shark Tank: Rejected in 2015 — the Sharks called her business “too small”
• The revenge: Got the last laugh — landed Target, Walmart, and Ulta Beauty
• Made in: Detroit — Cass Technical High School grad
• Mission: Vegan, cruelty-free beauty that works for every skin tone