Esme Mancia, an immigrant from El Salvador who helped create some of American beauty brands’ most iconic products such as Smashbox’s Photo Finish Primer, Stila’s Kitten Eye Shadow Compact and DuWop’s Lip Venom, is now working to create iconic products for her own makeup brand.
“This is my last ride. My goal is to leave this behind and have my son and daughter run it. I want to leave a legacy,” says Mancia. “It’s always been my dream to own a brand. I have worked with so many brands over the years.”
Launched in February, the brand, Libertad Vida, has entered the eyes and lips products categories, which put Mancia on the beauty industry map for cutting-edge innovation, with Glamour Eyes, a $24 liquid eyeshadow in 12 shades, Kiss Me, a $23 lip gloss in 10 shades, Mixed Metals, a $24 metallic lip gloss in 10 shades, PH Perfection, a $23 lip oil in four shades, and $21 Ur So Juicy Lip Plumper. Bundles with lip oil, lip gloss and liquid eyeshadow are $52.
Mancia envisions Libertad Vida expanding to concealer, foundation, mascara and more, covering every essential in customers’ makeup bags. “The focus is on formulations. I know what works,” she says. “The liquid eyeshadows, they don’t come off unless you use makeup remover. I want the products to perform, especially for Latina skin. I’m very oily. I come from a country that’s humid and hot, and I want my makeup to last all day.”
Ur So Juicy Lip Plumper incorporates peptides in a preview of the brand’s skin-centric approach to complexion products that will be infused with skincare ingredients to tackle concerns like wrinkles and puffy and dark under-eyes. “You are going to see a difference from them,” says Mancia. “Not only are you wearing makeup, but your skin is going to be helped under that makeup.”
Christian Dior fashion is an inspiration for Libertad Vida’s packaging, and Mancia strives to provide consumers a taste of it at cheaper prices. Her mother is an important inspiration, too, and the packaging features flowers in a nod to her. She’s an avid flower lover and her garden is brimming with pink flowers. Pink is a prominent color in Libertad Vida’s packaging.
The packaging also conveys Mancia’s roots in El Salvador. It features Torogoz, the national bird of El Salvador, the nation’s flag and the text, “Made with love from an El Salvadoran girl.” Spanish instructions for the products are in a packaging insert.
“I want to send a message to the younger generation that, if you have a dream, it can happen if you work hard,” says Mancia. “I have worked really hard to be where I am today.”
“I want to leave a legacy.”
She’s poured as much as $250,000 from her personal savings to get Libertad Vida off the ground, but she can be lean with ongoing investment by producing limited numbers of products for it—100 units at a time, for example—in response to demand because, along with the brand, she operates a beauty manufacturer, Esme Beauty Labs, in Sun Valley, Calif. Aimed at Latina consumers and sold in direct-to-consumer distribution in the United States, Mancia aspires to sell Libertad Vida outside of the U.S. in Central and South American countries such as El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica.
From La Libertad, a coastal town in El Salvador, Mancia followed her parents to the U.S. in 1984 at the age of 11 after they’d deposited her and her three sisters in an El Salvadoran convent while they remade their lives in a new country. Her father was a farmer in El Salvador, but his land was taken from him, and he went into maintenance in the U.S., and her mother became a housekeeper. The sisters regularly pitched in on housekeeping jobs.
One of Mancia’s sisters started working at Cosmetic Group USA, a beauty manufacturer in the San Fernando Valley, and recommended Mancia for a position in the lab. At 19, she began in the lab and was tested for her color-matching skills. Assessed to have outstanding color-matching abilities, she was tasked to handle developing Avon products.
In 1997, Mancia and Kimberly Clark, a colleague of hers at Cosmetic Group USA who specialized in sales, left Cosmetic Group USA to join Cosmetic Essence, and they subsequently founded All About Beauty. The pair became a magnet for fast-growing indie brands on the West Coast back then like Urban Decay, Stila, Too Faced and Smashbox. “Kimberly and I, we always believe you have to be quick to market, you have to be the first one,” says Mancia. “That’s why we had the clientele we had.”
Clark and Mancia sold a majority of All About Beauty to Harry Haralambus, an investor active in apparel and beauty in the 2000s and 2010s, in a deal that ended poorly. Mancia was forced to declare personal bankruptcy.
Perhaps counterintuitively, the struggles she experienced at All About Beauty left her feeling stronger about her contribution to the beauty industry and business acumen. She dove back into the beauty product development with Clark at Dream Team Beaute, and it was acquired in 2017 by Northwest Cosmetic Labs, a contract beauty manufacturer that later became Elevation Labs.
Although Mancia flirted with leaving the beauty industry for good—she even tried her hand at real estate—when her five-year noncompete agreement was up, she opened Esme Beauty Labs in a 24,000-square-foot facility. Today, it has about 15 clients across production for makeup, bath and body care products and research and development.
As she simultaneously builds Esme Beauty Labs and Libertad Vida, Mancia isn’t in a rush for the brand to explode. “I know it’s going to take time for people to know who we are, and I’m Ok with that. It takes time for people to recognize you. I have the patience to wait,” she says. “Right now, my goal for the brand is to be outside the U.S. We wanted to launch here first because people in other countries want to know you are selling the brand here, and that it’s made in the U.S.”
