Brand Report
Eyes may be the window to the soul, but lash technician-turned-lash supply CEO and founder Michelle Nguyen has always seen lashes as a window of opportunity.
In 2005, Nguyen started her career as a lash technician, painstakingly applying lash extensions for her Reno, Nev., clientele some 60 hours a week. In 2018, she established Paris Lash Academy (PLA) selling products to lash, nail and brow professionals and grew it to a profitable business generating $30 million-plus in annual revenues and owning five manufacturing sites in Nguyen’s native Vietnam.
But all was not well behind the scenes. Three years ago, after nearly 20 years of several hours-long daily exposure to lash adhesive, Nguyen developed a sensitivity to the adhesive and became unable to wear professional extensions. Rather than skipping lashes altogether, Nguyen began wearing DIY lash extensions made for home application, with gentler glues and shorter wear times.
However, that solution wasn’t foolproof. Nguyen discovered that the thick, uneven bases of the lash segments were too abrasive for her sensitive lids. The problem sparked an idea. Nguyen says, “I wanted to make DIY lashes more of a hybrid between strip lashes and what eyelash extensions can achieve.”
She promptly put that idea into motion by spending a year experimenting with molds at PLA’s Vietnamese manufacturing sites. Then, she learned 3D printing, the process of creating a physical object from a digital file, had gotten sophisticated enough to print materials as delicate as hair. Since 3D-printed lashes didn’t exist on the market and her Vietnamese manufacturing facilities didn’t have 3D printed capabilities, she had to identify a partner with those capabilities.
Enter OPT Industries, a Medford, Mass.-based startup with projects across the medical and industrial fields and a willingness to take a gamble on a cosmetic. After two years of extensive R&D (Nguyen had to personally guarantee the use of six $2 million printers to get OPT to print the lashes in a deep, matte black rather than white, a move preventing the machines from ever printing any other color of resin), TAD Beauty was born.
The brand has DIY lashes for at-home application and companion products like cleanser, prep pads, gentle adhesive and tools. Tools and companion products range in price from a $2.99 cleaning brush to a $25 bond adhesive and sealing product. The lashes are decidedly premium, at $50 for a pack of five pairs, each of which can be worn for roughly five to seven days.
TAD is an acronym for American dream, a belief in success from the ground up that first-generation immigrant Nguyen is proud to represent, and its lashes are made in the United States. The domestic manufacturing is costlier than manufacturing abroad, though Nguyen foresees possible tariffs on foreign imports enacted by a forthcoming Trump administration leading to price hikes on goods coming into the U.S. from Asia and perhaps evening the playing field for TAD.
“Anyone can use this product, and that’s just so different from the opportunity we had at PLA.”
“We see competitors selling an equivalent amount of lashes that we sell in a box that’s $50 for as much as $125 and as cheap as $20,” says Nguyen. “But all the lashes now on the market are made in Indonesia, China or other parts of Asia. Ours are the only lashes in the world that are manufactured in the USA. So, with tariff taxes and everything happening, I foresee prices going up for other brands.”
Ultimately, though, Nguyen has positioned TAD Beauty to win due to its technological innovation, not price. Most non-mink lashes are made from polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) fiber, a synthetic polymer Nguyen says loses curl over time with exposure to heat and humidity. Distinct from them, TAD’s lashes are composed of a specialized photopolymer engineered to work best at human body temperatures.
She explains, “The material bounces back best at around 92 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit, so if you’re a face sleeper or side sleeper, and your lashes are stuck to your eyelid when you wake up, it will take about 30 seconds to bounce right back [to its original curved shape], while other lashes would just stay flat.”
TAD’s products are available on its website and TikTok Shop. Caitlin McAninch, VP of marketing at the brand, says, “One of the reasons we’re hitting Tik Tok so hard is because it’s now the ninth most-used platform to buy beauty products, and we think those [users] that are really interested in trying the latest in the beauty industry will flock to these.”
Amazon distribution is on deck for later this year, and international distribution is planned for 2025. Nguyen reports TAD has already forged agreements with distributors in Brazil, Australia and the United Kingdom. The long-term goal is for TAD to enter a beauty specialty retailer such as Sephora or Ulta Beauty. Nguyen says, “Anyone can use this product, and that’s just so different from the opportunity we had at PLA.”
Next year, TAD is slated to roll out six additional lash styles and a new colorway. The self-funded brand is fully owned by Nguyen and her husband. She doesn’t expect to seek outside investment for it.
“It’s really hard to keep the team the same, have a lot of say in the direction you want your company to go and exactly how you want to invest in product development if you take on investors,” Nguyen says. “I’ve seen that happen with so many of my [entrepreneur] friends, so I’m going to try to hold out as long as I can before I take investment, even if it means growing a little bit slower than we want to.”
