The Lip Bar

The Lip Bar is a Detroit beauty brand that sells vegan lipstick and other makeup. Melissa Butler founded it. When it went on the show, its pitch was a line of lipsticks in nontraditional colors. Butler pitched in Season 6, Episode 18. The sharks were not convinced, and she left without a deal. Her original ask was not captured from a reliable source, so it is not listed here. What makes the company notable is what happened next. Instead of folding after the rejection, The Lip Bar kept building its customer base and won national distribution at Target in 2018. Both CNBC and the Detroit Free Press framed it as a comeback by a company the show had turned down. The founder has also been open about how events outside its control, including shopper boycotts of Target, affected its sales there. Those figures are company-reported and unverified. Because no shark invested, no shark holds a stake from the show. The Lip Bar continues to sell through its own website, thelipbar.com, which carries a current copyright, and through Target. For Shark Tank followers, it is one of the better-known examples of a founder who heard no from every shark and still reached national shelves. The details of the Target swings are covered in the update below.