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Essie Weingarten established Essie cosmetics in the year of 1981. When Essie was younger she had an obsession with nail polish. She first started out this company with a business partner, Max Sortino, who happens to be her significant other that she met at a fashion show. At that time she only had 12 shades of nail polish and 3 nail care products. She started naming her 12-shade nail polish collection because she was bored, and happened to be nearby a drugstore one day. Those 12 shades today are still popular which include, Baby's Breath, Blanc, and Bordeaux. Her marketing strategy is to promote that in comparison to other nail polishes, the Essie brand is that it is long lasting, chic, has variety of different colors that can be worn anywhere, and is chip resistant. Essie traveled to Las Vegas to try and sell her 12- collection nail polishes; she went to every hotel and salon in Sin City. Her first products were launched in Las Vegas where a lot of showgirls and supermodels keep up with their nails. In these times, nail polish was only available in department stores and there were fewer than 200 nail salons around. Eventually, nail technicians, celebrities such as Madonna, Cindy Crawford, etc. became Essie’s biggest fans. Today, Essie has over 200 shades of nail polish and releases 4 new collections a year, seasonally. Queen Elizabeth II only wears one of Essie’s most popular colors called Ballet Slippers, a color their been sold more than 5 million bottles. The color Ballet Slippers was inspired by a pincushion Essie saw in China. Essie has the ability to pick colors; her colors are inspired by things she sees on a daily basis. She always keeps pantone color wheel at her desk, so when she finds a color, she gives it to a chemist who matches the colors for her. The color engineer’s job is to mix the color together so it can be tweaked as well. The naming of the nail polish comes from Essie’s book, she keeps a list going of several random names that comes to mind. Her staff picks from a list of roughly 16 and the one with the most checks is the name that gets picked. In 2010, L'Oréal acquired Essie cosmetics. The company was sold to L’Oreal in order to increase its share in the nail color and nail care market. The company was seeing a downfall due to the economy; Essie and her business partner Max were forced to make a decision.

Competitors
Some of Essie's competitors are:
 * Sally Hansen
 * Innovative Color Labs
 * NSI Advanced Products
 * OPI Products

Today
Essie has been a recipient of several prestigious awards including In Style 2007 ‘Best Beauty Buys’, Allure’s ‘Best of Beauty’ for 2006, and was inducted into Allure’s ‘Hall of Fame’ in 2005. Essie has expanded the collection to include total treatments for hands and feet. Essie is currently available in 250,000 salons and spas in the U.S. and 85 countries around the world.