Lilly Ghalichi Talks Shahs of Sunset And Overcoming Startup Fears

In March 2013, Lilly Ghalichi launched her second company, Lilly Lashes, to offer her namesake line of all human hair eyelash extensions — and to compete in an industry that “increased by 6.2 percent to $44 million” in 2010, according to WWD.

I was filming season two of the Shahs of Sunset and I was using a lot of eyelash extensions, because my character is this over-the-top, larger-than-life glamazon. But the lashes felt a little too extreme.

“I did everything myself, and with that being said I made a lot of mistakes… I did go to business school (and … law school), so that foundation helped … but I had no experience and it doesn’t really take experience. You can learn as you go…”

Either they were super fake looking (i.e. synthetic); something you would wear on Halloween, or so natural looking that you couldn’t even tell they were on — and they were super expensive. I thought to myself, “I’m paying $30 for pair of lashes that you can even tell [I’m wearing].”

I figured that there had to be a better solution, so I went straight to the source. There are three major factories in the world that produce lash extensions for [retailers] (i.e. MAC to Shu Uemura and every brand you can think of). I went directly to the source and worked with them to find styles that I love, made of 100% human hair so they look natural.

With market expansion plans ahead, and new product launches to follow suit, Ghalichi plans to grow her budding swimwear and beauty empire.

• At Have Faith Swimgerie we will release our 2014 collection this July and expand into other markets. Also a maternity line for bikinis is a strong possibility because my business partner is currently pregnant. We’re also looking into men’s bikinis. So we are really excited; just to try new things and expand our horizon.
• At Lilly Lashes we are designing custom stack lashes––pre-stacking our styles to offer super glamorous styles for girls that love to wear two or three pairs of lashes and create unique looks.

Best Success Story

The best success story is just seeing your product on people and hearing that they love it. With my lash line and my swim line, we’ve been on every celebrity on the planet from the reality show’s stars to big movie stars, two models.

It’s really rewarding to not only to see [our swimwear on celebrities…] in magazines and things like that, but on the everyday girl. To get an email saying how we made somebody’s wedding day spectacular because she loved her lashes, or that we made a woman’s honeymoon or her birthday party amazing because she had the best swimsuit there. It’s just so rewarding to get positive feedback from people who use your product and love it.