She was the original ’90s Girl Boss, a teen with nothing but a good idea and the gumption to turn that into a multi-million business before it all came crashing down.
The dizzying rise and startling fall of Poppy King is a well-known and widely accepted Australian success-turned-horror story, but is the tale all it seems?
WATCH: Hailey Bieber’s lip products revealed. Article continues after video.
In 1995, the entrepreneur was made Young Australian of the Year as the cosmetics company she’d started four years earlier at just 19 made a massive $6.5 million profit. But by 1998, she says, radio broadcaster Alan Jones was calling on her to give the accolade back when Poppy Industries went into receivership.
In 2002, her company closed its doors and Poppy was branded a failure as she moved to New York after being head-hunted by Estée Lauder to take on an executive role.
“[Poppy Industries] went global and was thriving for six years before it had any issues so it’s far from a failure in terms of a business,” Poppy, now 51, tells WHO. “And truthfully, there’s no such thing as being a failure or a success, they go together in varying degrees. When a company looks successful, there are lots of failures that have gone on behind the scenes to get where it is today.”
Two decades later, that generation of Aussie women still can’t forget the name they wore bright and bold on their lips.
“So many come up and tell me about the experiences they had while wearing my lipstick,” Poppy reveals.
“Women who had their first kiss, or got married wearing my lipstick. Women who felt empowered to take on the world through the magical transformative power of wearing the right lipstick.”
Poppy also hasn’t lost her love for lipstick or entrepreneurship. So, she’s getting back in the game. Having launched her new self-titled venture, Poppy King, she is kicking off by releasing a metallic matte lipstick called Original Sin in her signature shade. It is, she says, “the perfect red”.
“I set out to make an apple red and then put a metallic matte snakeskin finish on it, and as I started to give it out and see it on people, it’s universal,” she explains. “It suits every skin tone and lights the whole face up.”
It is also a homecoming of sorts. While continuing to live in New York, the products are made at her original Melbourne manufacturer.
“It means the world to me to be selling an Australian-made product to the world again,” she says. “After all, I have to earn that Young Australian of the Year award right?”
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