Esōes Cosmetics: Fighting Drug Facilitated Assault + Violence With Patented Smart Safety Cosmetics

Hi, my name is Joy Hoover, and if I don't know you yet, I'm so excited to meet you! I'm here to share a bit of our story of our last 13+ years as Women's Safety Activists and share just why we're the right company to link arms with in fighting the epidemic of drug facilitated sexual assault and violence! If you're not a reader, here's a TLDR in art form for you!

But if you like stories, have I got a story for you!! Here it goes...

Our journey started in 2010 when we sold 90% of our belongings in Michigan and packed up our little Jetta with a few suitcases and moved to Las Vegas.

The day after we arrived in Vegas, we started connecting with + serving our community. We worked with thousands of survivors providing resources + support & helping many of them leave abusive situations. Through this, we truly learned what courage looks like.

And then suddenly it became very personal to us. My Father-in-Law was abusive for the entirety of my partner Phil's life, and on April 10, 2013, he took the life of my mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and himself.

So the mission became even more important & the more we learned about trafficking and abuse, the more we realized the enormous amount of barriers that impacted survivors. So we created fundraising systems that allowed thousands of people to link arms with us and collectively meet the increased need.

As we worked to partner with our community - we were honored with some incredible awards like the Champion of Justice in Service alongside folks from the UNLV Immigration Center and our previous Sheriff, now current Governor.

We also had the opportunity to bring on real estate investors + donors to raise over $2M in investments + cash so we could start building a safe space for survivors to heal while earning income so they could rebuild their lives!

And then in October 2021 we knew we had to take the next step. We were so pissed off that after almost 12 years of working to fight the epidemic of violence, the numbers weren't decreasing - in fact they were increasing by about 2.9% year over year! I had this wild idea of Safety Cosmetics and after bringing on a legal + dev team, Esōes Cosmetics Inc. was started. This was our very first drawing created by 2 amazing engineering students Bo Baird & Lili Heim!

We invited 100 of our friends and supporters to our backyard where we ate charcuterie & shared the vision of a social enterprise with a mission to fight drug facilitated sexual assault and violence. The response was palpable and we were able to raise a friends & family round of $50,000!

2022 started out with a bang for Esōes as we brought on a badass Marketing Advisor Korina Edwards & seasoned Financial Advisor Mike Fitzpatrick with a combined 30 years of experience scaling startups! With their support I started pitching investors & working to bring on the Dev team of my dreams! These powerful women were anchors in our first pre-seed investment fund & they believed in me before we even had a prototype in hand!

In May of 2022 after 8 months of pursuing my dream scientist on linked in, he finally offered to take a meeting with me! Nick was the head scientist for a drug testing nail polish that unfortunately never went to market. But because I knew he had so much experience in lateral flow technology, I knew we needed him! To my surprise, Nick also brought the head engineer from the nail polish project, Adam on the call where they both shared their excitement about Esōes! We hired Nick, Adam, and their whole team of scientists, engineers, and developers at Kymanox to create our safety device and handle quality assurance + production of our rufie test strips! Combining science + technology + beauty inside a lipstick felt impossible - but with this team of experts, we built a prototype for a tech enabled lipstick that could save your life in just 6 months! This is Nick, Adam & I at our prototype launch party eating cake to celebrate after they flew in to help me present the magic to all our investors & supporters!

We also worked with a phenomenal team of software developers to create our Esōes Safety App that can be found in both iOS & Google Play stores. Not only is it GORG, it has so many incredible features that the ZooZoo Web Team brought to life!

With a product + app prototypes in hand, we were able to bring on over 60 investors and raise over $300K through a Special Purpose Vehicle Fund. Our investors are 85% female + survivors and we love having male allies to add to the mix! Our investors live all over the country and they have been our biggest cheerleaders & were the first to share product feedback!

As we started sharing our product on social media, MILLIONS of people showed their support & the most heartbreaking stories started rolling in. If we had any doubt that this product was needed, this showed us how much people all over the globe were interested in our product and we gained over 75K followers + $30K in pre-sales!!

Media also went wild for Esōes and we were featured in over 60 media stories nationwide and even landed a feature in a Polish publication!!

We also got SUPER exciting news in July that our utility patent was granted as were both our trademarks, and our software patent was just recently converted!

We created our own proprietary bluetooth & brought on a Las Vegas based lipstick + device manufacturer and despite all the wild hurdles, we were able to get product into all our pre-buyers hands the first week of August! We've spent the past few months hearing feedback, editing the product a few times as we test V1 & V2 with customers, all while working to find our product market fit!

We also launched some kickass merch which you will have the opportunity to get for free with your investment!

And we launched our Safe Space Certification program and supported 10 companies in better understanding the nuances of drug facilitated sexual assault + violence & linked arms as they made a commitment to keep customers in their establishments safe and supported!

So why do we need you?! Well, we are ready to get our V3 safety lipstick manufactured in massive quantities to meet our customer demand, add new lip colors + product features, expand our app capabilities, increase our rufie test strips ability to test more beverages & eventually detect more drugs and expand our community to take Esoes to the next level! So we are super excited to invite you into our lipstick revolution! Have any questions? Don't hesitate to reach out to us at: [email protected] & check out our professional pitch deck below for lots more info! Let's do this!!!