One tiny pink
studio in Lagos.
Dimples started in 2022 with a single batch of lip balm mixed on a kitchen table. Three years later we hand-pour five products from a small studio off Allen Avenue — still the same hands, just better tools.
A batch of balm,
a borrowed scale.
The first ten units of what would become Velvet Lip Balm were poured in a borrowed kitchen, with a borrowed scale, into containers I'd ordered too many of. They sold out in a week to friends and friends-of-friends.
The second batch sold out faster. By batch four I had to learn what an emulsifier actually does. By batch nine I had a logo and a permit. That's how Dimples started — slowly, then all at once.
— Dimples
Small batches,
fresh on shelves.
We pour every product ourselves, in batches of fifty to two hundred, in a small studio off Allen Avenue. Nothing sits in a warehouse for months. Restocks happen weekly, and what reaches your lips is rarely more than three weeks old.
We pick our raw materials by hand — beeswax from Plateau, shea from Sokoto, jojoba and rosehip from suppliers we've used since the borrowed-kitchen days. Same vendors, just bigger orders now.
Three things we
won't compromise on.
There are a lot of corners to cut in cosmetics — synthetic fragrance, cheap fillers, frozen stock that sits for years. These are the three lines we drew early and won't move.
Hand-poured, every batch
No contract manufacturer, no faceless factory floor. The hands that mixed your gloss are the same hands that mixed every gloss before it.
Real ingredients, full INCI
Every ingredient is listed on every product. We use plant emollients, beeswax, shea, and naturally-derived pigments — never synthetic fragrance or mineral oil.
Fresh, never frozen
Small batches, weekly restocks. Nothing sits in a warehouse waiting to oxidise. What reaches your lips is almost always less than three weeks old.
We want to train every lipcare founder in West Africa.
The thing that's taken us five years to learn shouldn't take you five years too. Our trainings programme is the cheat sheet — same formulas, same suppliers, ours to share.