STRANGE BUT TRUE STORIES

Make-up Artist Makes it Big!
Former Hollywood artist sees success with face paints and horror costumes

NEW YORK - August 5, 1999 (womenconnect.com) - Hollywood make-up artist Bobbie Weiner sank all her energies into painting film extras to look like frozen corpses floating in Titanic and came up with a splashy idea for her own business.

Bobbie Weiner Enterprises, the company she launched in March 1997 selling specially created make-up kits to everyone from sports fanatics to the U.S. Marines, will approach $1 million in gross revenue this year. In the process Weiner, 51, has remade her life. The lessons she has to share with would-be entrepreneurs go beyond the glamour advice in her Secrets of a Hollywood Make-up Artist book or the terrifying tips in her new "Bloody Mary" horror make-up kits.
     "Be bold! You have to be bold. This all works because I have marketed myself incredibly," says Weiner. "I've always known that ideas sell."

She sells her ideas -- and products -- to the U.S. Department of Defense, professional sports leagues, 500 colleges, teen queens scouting the shopping malls of America for hip new looks and the countless thousands who want to go for the gore at Halloween. Her primary market is selling face-paint kits, color coordinated to dazzle enthusiastic sports fans who snap them up from concessionaires. Those were Bobbie Weiner's red-white-and-blue streaking joyous French faces when their men's team won the World Cup in Paris last year. When the cameras pan the crowds at the Super Bowl, the National Basketball Association playoffs, baseball's World Series and games at 500 colleges, it is Bobbie Weiner's make-up adding the kaleidoscope of colors to the roaring crowd. Her inventive mind, tireless capacity for networking, and risk-taking personality bloomed straight out of high school.

     Finding a niche
Bobbie launched her own thrift shop in Philadelphia at age 19. Rather than let lovely unsold clothes languish, she ripped them up and reconstituted them as stylish pillow covers. She added a needlepoint store and spun off a decorating sideline after a television executive ordered pillows for the station's luxury box at Veterans Stadium. Ever one to make connections, she began a maid business by matching the wealthy women who brought in clothes to the poor women who bought them at the thrift shop.
     "It's all about finding a niche. You have to be able to offer something people want," she says.

But after a divorce, she wanted a new niche herself. "I just decided to start my life over, sell my businesses and try Los Angeles. I knew I could always take care of myself." She quickly married again; but this time, she played as hard as she'd worked before.
     "I was a Brentwood housewife with the fabulous life I'd always envied, playing tennis and going to the country club. Then, eight years later, my husband changed his mind. He didn't want to be married any more."

He rode off on a motorcycle. She gave the Porsche back to the bank. And the house. And everything else they'd owned.
     "I was 46 and starting from zero when a friend suggested I had the personality to work with people and the creativity to be a good make-up artist. I thought, 'You can't go back to recreate what you once did, or who you once were.'
     "I'm resourceful. I'm in Hollywood ...hmm. When in Hollywood, do what they do in Hollywood -- TV and film."

     Moving on
Although Hollywood has hordes of young make-up artists competing for jobs, Weiner concentrated on special effects and started plying her trade even before graduating from make-up school. Anyone starting over in a new profession at middle age could heed her discoveries: "My age turned out to be the best thing going for me when I met a producer or director. I don't drink. I don't do drugs: I will show up and work. Because I'm not a kid, no one ever asked me how experienced I was. Everyone assumed I'd been doing this for years.
     "I did two or three jobs for pretty much nothing at first, just to get my foot in the door. I saw very fast that if people like you, they want you around. And every one of those 100 new people you meet on a set are going to have another job next year where they will put in a good word for you."

For the next three years Weiner whirled around the world doing movie and TV make-up for shows such as Renegade. A stylist from that show put in a good word for her with the crew for Titanic. Her makeup artistry for the death scene led to her rebirth as an entrepreneur. "This boy I made 'dead' every day asked for make-up so he could paint his face for a San Diego Chargers game. I didn't even know the team colors." She learned, fast. Once her Titanic work wrapped up, Weiner decided she'd rather sell her ideas than her time. She knew people wanted vibrant special effects paints that were easy-on, easy-off, and affordable enough for an impulse buy. She'd found her new niche and set out to corner the market.
     "I grabbed a kid I know in a coffee shop in La Jolla and asked if I could paint his face UCLA colors. I drew up a mock kit and took it to the college bookstore. They went out of their minds! A week later I was at a trade show for college stores, selling my kits."
     "I sold the kits on the idea -- the concept and the packaging -- before I had anything to actually sell. I just knew I could do it."

Once more her networking talents paid off. She turned to the German company where she bought the superior special effects make-up all the "corpses" clamored for: "He knew I was the one who had sold a ton of his stuff by introducing it to the artists on Titanic. He flew to California to meet with me."
     Scarcely had the Sports Fan Face Painting Kit kicked off, than a friend introduced her to the manager of the PX, the military store, at Camp Pendleton. She promptly came up with camouflage kits for kids for Halloween. "That was on a Thursday. Friday, I was paged by the manager of another base PX. He wanted kits, too. I came back in a week with a mock-up kit."
     Marines watched enviously as she painted an eager youngster. She overheard one say, "'Oh, it's a shame she can't do the real stuff.'"

     Fighting words! Two weeks later she was back with a kit for the armed forces. In 30 minutes she had an order for 2,000 kits and a connection to a military supply convention. This spring, Weiner was awarded a gold medal from a rear admiral as one of the Defense Department's 300 top-value contractors. Soon she hired a business attorney: "Trademark and patent every new idea you have," she advises. "People will copy you." She also retained a bookkeeper, office staff and three people to work in her 6,000 square-foot warehouse where she often supervises the major shipments in person.

     Working the public
The extroverted Weiner handles all her own public relations. "I bought all the magazines I thought it would be good to be in. I couldn't afford $10,000 or $20,000 for ads so I wrote my own press releases and faxed them to the editors. The first story about me was in 'Inside Sports' in November 1997."
     Since then magazine and newspaper features on her have proliferated. And she has further raised her profile with magazine ads, her own column in a magazine for horror fans, and a Web site.

Though it was her launch pad, "I don't have time to do movies any more," she says. "My whole life now is work and travel. I have no furniture, not many clothes, a red '95 Jeep instead of a Porsche. But I live how I choose -- and I love it."

Note: Visit DearBloodyMary.com to see her make-up SFX website! She makes the best fake blood in the business!

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