Lift Off for Rocket City Cosmetics

Compact sizes and fun styling combine in packaging that fuels ‘less is more’ line.

By Janet Herlihy, Editor

Daring to go where no cosmetics line has gone before—smaller—Rocket City Cosmetics has been created to offer a full line of fun, trendy, less-is-more cosmetics.

Based in Carlsbad, CA, Rocket City took off in early 2000 and is now available in select Sephoras, select Nordstroms, Mishmash and other boutiques nationwide.

According to founder and president Becky Adams, a former beauty store owner, the smaller size makeup products offer other benefits in addition to portability.

“Finally, women can clear out their closets full of half-empty cosmetics and actually use their makeup before its shelf-life expires,” Adams said. “And with our contemporary colors and sleek, upscale packaging, playful, sexy and confident women everywhere will look out of this world.”

Seeing the line as the future of cosmetics, Adams decided on a futuristic name and look as well. Packaging, designed by Adams and Robin Smith, creative director of Rocket City, is sleek, silver and pocket-sized.

Suppliers, World Wide Packaging (WWP) of Liv­ingston, NJ, Roberts Containers of Chats­worth, CA, and Wormser, of Englewood, NJ, “have all been very helpful in packaging,” stated Adams. The line has taken shape in aluminum, tinplate and metal­licized plastic, finished in matte or glossy silver tones for a high tech look.

Product names are takeoffs from pop science fiction such as Zing-Zoom, a dual lip gloss in a compact and Lunar Love, a pressed powder blush.

New products for Summer 2002 include Space Case, a space age compact that unfolds with the touch of a button. The motorized lip color compact is available in two combinations: RC-23 Pink Stars with six cool colors and RC-27 Gold Goddess for six warm colors. The compact has a robotic look and opens to form a tripod with a back support, mirror and product palette that can stand up securely with no other support. A spring-loaded mechanism, that rewinds when the compact is closed, eliminates any need for batteries.

The line, which can be seen and shopped at ww.rocketcitycosmetics.com, currently consists of products for lips, eyes and cheeks as well as a cream for all-over shimmer, glitter and glow, pressed and loose powder as well as a loose all-over glitter. And Little Dipper Bag is a clutch to carry it all.

Rocket City’s future is still expanding. Asked about additional line extensions, Adams said “We have out of this world plans for RC and really there are no limits.”