Key Takeaways:
Meeting Shannon Berries, co-founder and CEO of Shades By Shan, is an experience. Like a giant crystal radiating positivity, Berries looks like a Latina Natalie Portman, and is as petite as her personality is large. She carries herself with conviction, and you can’t help but listen to what Berries has to say. And she has a lot to say.
Over the past five years, the San Francisco Bay Area–based Berries and her co-founder sister, Erika Clark, COO of the brand, have transformed Shades By Shan into a seven-figure business with 80% year-over-year growth, leaving a trail of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in their wake.
But more on the Cheetos later.
Before Shades By Shan, Berries was known in the Bay Area since 2010 for being a popular radio show host on CBS and NBC. She loved being a voice in the Bay Area community, but Berries always longed for something more, something that was her own. After all, her mother, whom Berries calls “Mama Berries,” taught her and her sister to embrace an entrepreneurial spirit.
Berries does not have a professional makeup background, but she has always been a makeup fangirl. “I started seeing these influencers and these big celebrities coming out with makeup lines. I was that consumer. I was that girl who had 17 screens open, trying to buy a drop, and then waiting and checking the mail every day to get it, put it on, swatch it.”
Only to find disappointment. Every time.
Berries knew her stuff, and she felt she could do it better and consistently. But she knew she would need help. In 2017, Berries called Clark, who was in Shanghai at the time, to share her ambitions. “For 12 years, I lived abroad, working in Asia, Europe, and Latin America,” Clark said. “By the time Shan called, I was burned out.”
Clark moved back to the US, and the sisters set up shop in Mama Berries’ basement. But before the first Berry Obsessed Eyeshadow Palette was pressed, Berries and Clark sought to find a philanthropy that Shades By Shan could support. “Our mom always instilled this in us. If you’re going to start something, how are you going to give back? How are you going to give that helping hand?”
The sisters grew up volunteering at St. Jude in San Francisco and making sandwiches for the homeless during the holidays. “We started looking for charities, and nothing really spoke to us. It kind of came down to, if we donate to a charity, where is that money really going? How do we know that they're spending it in the right place?”
The sisters paused their search to think long and hard about a solution. “The answer was right in front of our faces. It was our single mom.” Berries said. At the time, the sisters couldn’t find any credible philanthropies for single parents, even though 19.7 million children lived in single-parent homes in the US in 2018.
Berries and Clark had seen firsthand how hard it was for their mother to manage as a single mother. “I went to Erika and said, ‘Well, I hear about people starting nonprofits all the time. Why can't we start one?’ And she said, ‘Are you serious?’ And I was like, ‘Why can’t we do it?’ So Erika did her thing, and we figured it out.”
The sisters spent 17 months registering the nonprofit and completing the endless paperwork.
“It was probably the hardest thing we ever had to do,” Berries remembered. “All the legal fees, the legal terms, the paperwork. It was a huge journey.”
Berries and Clark named their nonprofit, The MamaBerries Foundation, in honor of their mother and to help single parents in need. This was in 2018, and the sisters treated the foundation’s inception as a green light to start Shades By Shan, with the intention that a portion of proceeds from every purchase would go to help single parents.
During this time, Berries was home in the Bay Area working on the creative for the brand, while Clark traveled to China to source suppliers for the initial launch. Since then, Clark said, the brand has garnered suppliers in Korea, Germany, and Italy.
The sisters each contributed $1,500 and launched solely on Instagram with two products: The Berry Obsessed Eyeshadow Palette and the Hyphy Highlighter Palette. They had six months of inventory, which sold out almost immediately. “We were like, what the heck is happening?” Berries remembered. “We saw people reposting and buying. We were worried we wouldn’t have enough to send out! It was insane.” The brand also got an influx of messages from single moms, thanking them and sharing their love for the products, and they knew they were on to something.
Later that year, Shades By Shan entered Planet Beauty, a local beauty retailer with 15 stores in California. And by 2019, the brand was live with subscription service IPSY. “Shades By Shan is a true rising star with high-quality products, an engaging founder, and a story that resonates,” said Doak Sergent, VP of Brand Partnerships at IPSY. The brand expanded from six subcategories to more than 11 on IPSY, according to Sergent.
The brand was growing, but not explosively. At least until 2022, when they got “the call.”
The Call
The sisters had been approached by investors, but declined because they did not want to lose the magic (or control) of Shades By Shan. “I'm open, but weary,” Clark said. “I want to make sure that if we do bring on an investor, it's the right person, because it's a marriage at the end of the day, right?”
But then the sisters got the call that would change everything.
The JCPenney (JCP) team told the sisters they wanted to put Shades By Shan in stores. The sisters were elated, but thought it would be no more than 10 stores. But then JCP told them they wanted the brand in all 610 doors (JCP now has more than 650). “Shannon was jumping for joy, and I was looking at her like, ‘Oh, mama, how are we going to do this?’” Clark recalled. “It was her dream come true. It was my worst nightmare.”
Berries said she was immediately humbled when Clark laid out the reality of the situation, “Think about it, Shan. There are like 610 stores, and that takes money, money we don’t have.”
So the sisters hit the pavement, trying to get a business loan. “When I tell you we went to every single bank, Janna... no one would loan us the money,” Berries said. “All we heard was, ‘You don't have anything to show for it.’ And we told them we had this huge PO [Purchase Order] from JCPenney, but they didn’t care. They told us we hadn’t been in business that long and that we had no collateral.”
Of course, Mama Berries offered to sell her house or refinance it to get the sisters the money they needed, Berries recalled. “I said, ‘Mom, if anything, we need to be taking care of you.’ We tried to move heaven and earth to get a loan, but we just couldn't get it.”
The sisters were heartbroken when they called the JCP team to inform them that Shades By Shan would have to politely decline. “I think this story is really important too, because I want to show how much heart JCPenney has, and we haven't shared this story with very many people,” Shan said.
Bibbity. Bobbity. Boo.
When Jo Osborne, SVP/GMM Beauty, Centre Core & Footwear at JCPenney, and Lisa Green, VP of Beauty & Salon at JCPenney, met the sisters for the first time, they were mesmerized by Berries’ magic. Osborne and Green are beauty industry veterans, with many years of pitch meetings between them, but from the moment Berries began her presentation, the women were focused solely on her. “We believed,” Osborne said. “I remember the day we met her, the energy that comes with her, and her self-belief. And it’s not just about her. She's so community, which is what JCPenney has always been about.”
On that fateful call, Berries and Clark expected the conversation to be short, because what else was there to discuss? They didn’t have the money. But to the sisters’ surprise, the JCP team said, “Okay, let us talk about it internally, and we will come back to you.”
According to Berries, when JCP called back, she and Clark expected the worst. “When they came back to us, we were like, okay, shit. This is going to be a tough pill to swallow. But instead they said, ‘We've discussed this with our team and the CEO, and we want to loan you the money. We believe in you, your brand, and your mission, and we’re going to help.’”
JCP is not accustomed to financing new, unproven brands, according to Osborne and Green. But they had the encouragement and support from JCPenney Brand CEO Michelle Wlazlo, who “has a strong belief in amazing individuals,” Osborne said. “She met Shan, and from day one, she could see exactly what Lisa and I saw.”
In Q4 2022, when JCP was still building out its stores and closing Sephora locations, Shades By Shan launched two SKUs as part of their holiday collection. But by Q1 2023, Shades By Shan hit the shelves at all JCP locations nationwide—and Berries was determined to visit every single one.
Osborne remembered being with Berries at one of the first in-store appearances, and she was blown away that Berries wanted to give a check to a single mother in the audience. “It was wild, and I mean to see the give-back in such an early part of anyone's launch. For me, that said, this woman is very unique.”
Green was also impressed with Berries’ dedication.“She was just so involved and wanted to meet every beauty consultant. She brought them [Flamin’] Hot Cheetos. Every beauty consultant loves her.”
Berries and her team visited every single JCP store, bringing huge smiles, hugs, and big bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to every location. Green said, “She literally went into every door. She’s been to more locations than me, and I work for the company!”
The Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Road Show
It took Berries and her team close to nine months to hit every store. “From March 2023 until December 2023, we were on the road,” Clark said. “Stores would come tell us, ‘Do you realize no one has ever come to visit us?’ They would cry and thank us. Shan, I’ll let you tell the story about the Hot Cheetos, but that was one of the reasons they loved our visits, too.”
Berries loves sharing her obsession with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. “Let me tell you, Janna… I've been addicted to Flamin’ Hot Cheetos my entire adolescence into adulthood, like my babies were in my belly eating Hot Cheetos. Since high school [Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco], I would get my $5 sandwich, my Hot Cheetos, and my Arizona drink. And later, when I went into radio, I was on mornings, and I would eat my Hot Cheetos for breakfast. And people were like, ‘What are you doing? It’s not even 6 am!’ So I became this girl who loved Hot Cheetos!”
Someone Berries met told her he knew the inventor of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and gave Berries the man’s email. “He was my idol. His story always spoke to me, so I emailed him, and he responded right away! He said, ‘I know exactly who you are. You're the girl in San Francisco that everybody tells me is addicted to my Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. I want to send you a gift to say thank you.’ And when I tell you, Janna, this was not a box. This was a crate. A crate! Yes, the driver had to wheel it into the radio station with thousands of bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos!”
It was no surprise to Osborne that Berries set her mind on meeting the inventor of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and achieved it. “Have you ever seen her dream board she creates every year? She posts it on Instagram. She might as well call it a winning bingo card, because every dream on that board has come true.”
JCP’s support of the brand has been unwavering.“We're just so involved because she is the glimmer,” Green said. “She's that burst of joy that everybody's looking for. When she enters a room, she just radiates. And that's her secret sauce, honestly, it’s how she connects with people.”
Osborne just wants to continue sharing Berries’ magic with the world. “Honestly, for me, she's a very special woman that I can see doing incredible things. And we're so lucky to launch her brand exclusively. I now want to fly her around the world and for every consumer to meet her.”
And Berries would do it, as long as she was outfitted with endless bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.