Tori Robinson and Leah O'Malley got drunk on St Patrick's Day 2017 and decided to start a business. Both were reeling from brutal break-ups—their exes were best friends—and the phrase they kept shouting to each other through the wreckage stuck. Boys lie. It was supposed to be a cosmetics brand.

'We totally thought we were going to be the next Kylie Cosmetics,' Robinson said on theFemale Founder Worldpodcast. 'We failed miserably.'

Seven years on, that drunken mantra has become a Los Angeles streetwear label generating more than $10 million (£7.9 million) in annual sales. The founders, both 31, have never spent a penny on paid advertising and have not taken venture capital,Entrepreneurconfirmed. They have paid back the $250,000 (£197,000) friends-and-family loan that got the brand off the ground.

'We're out of the block,' O'Malley said. 'Out of even owing money back to friends and family.'

Robinson and O'Malley grew up together in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and have known each other since they were 12. Both were working in cosmetics sales when they borrowed the $250,000 (£197,000) and launched Boys Lie as a makeup brand in 2018. It went nowhere. Revenue that first year came to roughly $250,000 (£197,000), and most of it was driven not by the lipsticks but by two pieces of branded merchandise they had been selling alongside the cosmetics.

They ditched the makeup entirely in 2019 and rebuilt the brand around clothing—bold graphics, cheeky slogans and angel-and-devil motifs aimed at women processing heartbreak. Revenue settled at around $600,000 (£474,000). Then they started blindly shipping free product to anyone whose address they could get.

What happened next nearly defies belief. 'In the height of her breakup with Tyler Cameron, Gigi came downstairs in a full paparazzi moment, head to toe in Boys Lie,' Robinson recalled. 'The brand took off.'

Robinson said the founders were holding a meeting about shutting down the company that same day when a tabloid image of Hadid wearing their clothes landed on their phones. 'The first year we did 250K in rev,' she said. 'Then the following year we did 5 million.'

A post shared by Boys Lie® (@boyslie)

The brand has no ambassador programme, no paid placements and no influencer contracts. 'We don't have any ambassador programmes,' O'Malley said. 'We do a lot of reach out internally and we do receive a lot of reach out.' The strategy remains pure gifting.

Source: International Business Times UK