On an ordinary day, the cosmetics line sells thousands of lipsticks, and recently, Atomic sold out its entire inventory during a sale on Labor Day weekend. While this seems like an easy enough feat for a thriving indie brand, Atomic’s ability to achieve this is especially impressive given that her team includes only five people, including Navil herself.
It’s typical for sellers on Etsy and other online platforms to sell handmade products at a higher cost due to the time-consuming and laborious nature of creating them, but Navil keeps her prices low in order to be more accessible. She says, “It’s not so much about profit per lipsticks, it’s about how many lipsticks can someone enjoy within their budget?”
Creating such shades is essential to the brand, and Navil's personal experience as a woman of color made her hyper-aware of a beauty standard that favors light complexions. Of this standard, she says, “I think that the only way to get rid of it is working harder and bringing knowledge to everyone that it’s not just about what we grew up knowing as beauty."
Her upbringing made her conscious of the restrictive beauty culture which was everywhere she looked, from magazines to television shows and more. The Atomic founder says that in the predominantly Latino city of Santa Ana, California, many girls she knew tried hard to fit into that standard.
