MICHELLE TOMA OLSON
FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, ‘TINI BEAUTY
Like so many little girls, Michelle Toma Olson loved to play with her mother’s cosmetics, and at age eight, she developed a special passion for eye shadow. Undaunted by the fact that she wasn’t allowed to use makeup, she was found a barely-there peach shade that she delighted in wearing, undetected, at every opportunity she could find.
In high school, thankfully by then able to wear makeup without any subterfuge, Toma Olson became known as much for the giant palette of eye shadows she kept in her backpack as for her academic aptitude. At lunch each day, she would use this palette, her most prized possession, to do all of her friends’ eyes, often replicating looks from covers of Vogue. She went on to do the makeup for her school’s plays, even inspiring a visiting awards committee to create a new category to award her an impromptu “Oscar” for her work on the production of “Cinder-fella.”
Through college and beyond, Toma Olson never lost her passion for playing with beauty products, routinely altering products to her liking, sometimes by combining or mixing them to get a specific look. In fact, when she married Loren Olson in 1998, she concocted a custom nail color for her day – a soft, shimmery lavender-mauve.
Today, Toma Olson combines beauty sense with business acumen as the founder and president of ‘Tini Beauty and its Nailtini and Liptini brands. A native of Whittier, California, Toma Olson graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California in 1991 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree in business and finance and a minor degree in French. After working in the marketing department of a community bank, she returned to USC on a Carl Reichardt fellowship, obtaining her MBA in 1995 with a concentration in marketing and entrepreneurship, knowing that a career as an entrepreneur would be the ideal way for her to nurture and utilize both her creative and logical sides.
After graduation, Toma Olson spent several years in brand management, an experience that prepared her well to head her own company. “A boss once told me that being a brand manager – responsible for every aspect of a brand – was like being a mini CEO,” she says. Her first position in brand management was at the Dep Corporation, where she co-managed the Dep brand and eventually launched the Theorie hair care line, a trailblazer in what would become the “mass-tige” category. She then accepted a position at Renaissance Cosmetics’ Cosmar division, where her work as brand manager on Nail Fetish and on the launch of Fetish Cosmetics with Christina Aguilera earned her a promotion to senior brand manager on Nat Robbins, a $22 million mass color cosmetic brand. Toma Olson was then tapped to become Director of Marketing at Advanced Research Labs with a $125 million brand portfolio including Citre Shine and Thicker Fuller Hair. While there, she spearheaded the conceptualization of Got2B, and at only 30 years old, was promoted to Vice President.
Toma Olson then took her first step toward entrepreneurship and began working as an independent consultant. This also gave her greater flexibility to start a family, and she and Loren welcomed daughter Natasha in 2001. It was during this period that Toma Olson started fleshing out concepts in hopes of launching her own brand. Having always been intrigued by the notion of “cocktailing”– using more than one product to create the desired effect – the idea of building a brand around it struck a chord with both the beauty lover and the businesswoman her. Thus, the ‘Tini Beauty concept was born.
“Nail polish was not a high interest category at the time, and I thought that should change,” recalls Toma Olson, who poured the very first Nailtini polishes in her kitchen. She had enough experience to know what ingredients she wanted and didn’t want, and access to the resources she would need to produce a product line. She launched Nailtini Cocktails for Nails in June of 2004 as one of the first premium polish lines free of formaldehyde, toluene and DBP, and her timing couldn’t have been better. Allure and other magazines quickly featured the line, and Toma Olson went out knocking on doors. Soon retailers and consumers were knocking on hers. The line now encompasses more than 40 SKUs, including Straight Up Color and Mixer lacquers, special-effect Topper top coats and a collection of indulgent at-home mani-pedi products.
It wasn’t long before Toma Olson was ready for the natural progression to a largest segment of the beauty category, lips. Liptini was launched in 2006 with a full range of Straight Up Color lipsticks, Mixer lip color and base pencils and Topper glosses, along with the now best-selling, long-wearing, non-drying Lip Liqueur lip and cheek stains and has since been expanded to include Lip Cordial shimmering tints. With more exciting new products on tap for Nailtini and Liptini , as well as an entire line of unique cocktail-inspired eye cosmetics under the Eyetini brand name, the sky is truly the limit for ‘Tini Beauty.
Today, Nailtini and Liptini products are sold online and in selected boutiques, spas and salons across the US, and are among the featured “indie” brands in the new Beauty 360 specialty store chain where consumers can receive mini-services while they fall in love with the cocktailing concept. ‘Tini Beauty is also spreading out globally, soon to be available in the UK among other European destinations, as well as South Africa and the Middle East.
