Small Business Spotlight: Mizzi Cosmetics | News
PORTLAND, CT (WFSB) — This week, Channel 3’s Small Business Spotlight heads to Portland where one mom took an idea to help keep her kids safe, and turned it into a national cosmetics line.
Mizzi Cosmetics has grown significantly in the last seven years.
The clean beauty brand, born in Portland, was created after owner and founder, Brenda Mierzejewski saw a need with her own children for non-toxic products.
“My son had open heart surgery, and so during that time when we were there, they were putting petroleum-based products on his mouth, and at that time I was a breastfeeding mother. And I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to ingest the petroleum,” Mierzejewski said.
Her son’s surgery was 10 years ago, and she said when she asked if it was safe for him to be using the petroleum-based products, she didn’t get a clear answer.
“Long story short, petroleum is not something that you want to ingest. A lot of people put petroleum on their lips, or you know, under their nose, whether you’re using like a Vicks-type of product, and those are things that do not metabolize in your body. So that just kind of lit a fire underneath me to create something, not only for them, but for everybody else and kind of get that word out there that you can use simple, clean products that are luxurious and affordable at the same time,” she explained.
Mierzejewski, who has a background in pharmaceuticals, researched clean, sustainable and safe products for everyone to use, and then started creating lotions, body scrubs, and her LipLuxe line.
In fact, Kylie Jenner mentioned the LipLuxe line in one of her YouTube videos back in 2018, launching the cosmetics company into the national marketplace.
But, Mizzi’s roots are still local.
“This town means a lot to us; you know our kids were very small when we moved here, they go to school here. We’re just all about supporting the community in any way that we can. And when COVID did happen, we tried to donate everything just so everybody can be safe. It wasn’t even about the money at that time, it was about this virus. How are we going to combat it together, and how can we make our first responders here in Portland, Glastonbury, Cromwell, Colchester, even Middletown, how are we going to keep them safe because they’re the front line,” Mierzejewski said.
Mizzi Cosmetics even started making hand sanitizer at the beginning of the pandemic, and it is one of the state’s suppliers.
Mierzejewski says her original goal still at the forefront of all her endeavors is “I still want to keep my kids safe, so it’s really grown from there, but now we have a full-fledged cosmetic company. We have a medical line, we have an ortho line, we have a line for the medi-spas, it has grown into something so much bigger.”
She went on to say that “the sky is the limit right now for Mizzi Cosmetics.”
The woman who started it all is successfully merging motherhood and clean beauty.
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