When Bobbi Brown—affectionately dubbed “Bibbi”—launched Jones Road Beauty in October 2020, it marked a deliberate swing back to her creative roots—and some might say a dramatic reinvention. Twenty-five years earlier, she started a small but deliberate cosmetics brand that in just 5 years had grown fast enough to catch the swab of Estee Lauder, who acquired it for a glossy $75M.
Brown played the corporate game for a while but eventually left the relationship and, along with her husband, Steven Plofker, started building her next move. Just 1 day after her corporate non-compete expired, they launched Jones Road: a boot-strapped start-up to fill a space Brown says was “over-styled”. As Brown likes to say, “Jones Road gave me a chance to reinvent how I approached the beauty business from the very beginning, with my own identity”.
Jones Road’s ethos is clear: skip contour, celebrate glow, and go minimal in ingredients, packaging, and routine. Total anti-fuss makeup that improves your look without changing who you are in as short a time as possible in front of a mirror. Packaging and selections are clear, no frills, no contour, just simplicity in a jar. This became evident when early demand for Jones Road outstripped packaging supply, so to make sure her customers received what they ordered, she opted to ship in basic pouches rather than delay while waiting on packaging—moving product, not perfection.
