Origin stories

Not Origin the cosmetics company, but cosmetics and nail-polish companies in general. Where'd they come from?

OPI was a dental-products company called Odontorium Products Inc. - thus OPI. I googled the original name (because it's sort of comical and I don't always entirely trust Wikipedia) and found this fascinating short CNN/Money story from 2004 that tells how they went from dental products to nail products, so I won't repeat that part, but once they did, OPI spent most of the 80s selling acrylic supplies to salons, before then adding nail polish in 1989.

I knew Revlon was much older, but didn't know that much otherwise except the name of the founder - which is not RevLon, but RevSon (without the caps in the middle, that was just me). It was founded by Charles Revson and partners in the very early 1930s. One of his partners was his brother; another was a chemist named Lachman, which is who the "l" in the brand-name is in honor of. Their only product for most of a decade was nail polish - a then-new formula which was pigment-based, instead of dye-based as previous polishes had been. Modern cosmetics are so pigment-heavy that it's pretty easy to see why this was a hit, to my mind! Revlon was already a multi-million dollar company by the time they added their first lipstick in 1940. (So don't let anybody tell you that nail polish is a fad.)

I adapted the little stories above from Wikipedia and other sources - but they don't have entries for even all of the biggest companies. Where's Sally Hansen, for goodness sake? At times like this I always think that you can tell Wikipedia is mostly run by boys. Anyway, if I get around to doing some more research later, I'll make this a series. I don't know if it interests anybody else, but it interests ME.

(I said I wasn't going to do a Sunday entry, but I think I will after all - this one has already been sitting around for a week as it is.)