Exploring Life & Business with Lindsey Mulligan of ctrl + alt + delete beauty

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsey Mulligan.

Hi Lindsey, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
The self-care/beauty industry has always held my interest throughout various seasons of life. I really gained momentum experimenting with beauty products as a pre-teen; my free time involved analyzing the different purposes, textures, scents, and feel of my mother and grandmother’s luxury products, and provided me with a Zen-like mental escape.

The beauty industry has also provided me with a steady 17-year-long career path. Despite having earned Bachelor’s degrees in both psychology and anthropology, I have always been heavily involved in both the salon and medical spa industries.

Holding positions that have naturally evolved from receptionist to management and business development. Just prior to my relocation from Denver three years ago, I served as the VP of a large salon suite company. When Covid forced the country into a lockdown, the brick-and-mortar salon industry was faced with an unpredictable future as the art of professional hairdressing came to a sudden and unwanted halt for both patrons and providers alike.

I had long wanted to try a bold, bright and unnatural color in my hair, and since I couldn’t physically go to a salon, I decided to order a popular semi-permanent hair color (sometimes referred to as “color depositing conditioner”). I chose a color called “vibrant purple”, and it was certainly vibrant fun, and very not “semi-permanent”. After about 4 months, two orders of the product, and several at-home applications, I grew sick of the purple and was ready for it to come out. After several weeks of washing with a clarifying shampoo, baking soda, extremely hot water, and even dish soap, the purple was determined to stay.

I hopped on Reddit, various other hair blogs, I decided to try something that no one on these blogs had mentioned, and instead, combined ingredients that I knew, based on my knowledge of hair and chemistry, should theoretically work. I feel strongly that my background working in hair salons has provided me with substantial knowledge of not only the “rules” of chemistry pertaining to hair, but ways in which I could successfully push the boundaries, try new things, and ultimately successfully break those same rules.

This experience as a whole is what produced ctrl + alt + delete beauty, the company I subsequently developed after my theoretical mixture rendered exactly the results I wanted: No. More. Purple. I wanted to reply to the countless blog posts I read saying “I HAVE THE ANSWER!!!”, so many other people were in a similar predicament. Then the “what ifs” entered my thoughts, and I felt compelled to not only share this, but also to take it a step further and see where it could really go if I put the time, effort, and TLC into it. I filed to patent my product and trademark my company’s name in early 2020, and have since received both accolades.

Ctrl + alt + delete beauty was born from the amazing reset the Overnight Treatment gave my hair. Being that Nashville is my home and where this endeavor came to fruition, my company holds some pretty cool custom branding that echoes my appreciation for this city and our salon culture here (check it out on our website!).

After such a positive response to my first product, I am actively working to develop additional products, both independently and with partner companies. Stay tuned!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
To be honest, I don’t have a ‘black and white’ answer for this. The development of this company has been rewarding in both its successes and setbacks.

ctrl + alt + delete beauty has truly offered me one of the most profound experiences of my life, specifically that this has been a completely unique project for me and allowed me to evolve and grow in many facets of my own individuality and entrepreneurial skillset, as well as given me a modality to connect with individuals from all over the world I ordinarily would have never had the opportunity to meet.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
ctrl + alt + delete beauty is really, still, in its infancy, and although I know the heart of the company will stay authentic to making progress within the beauty industry, based on the evolution of consumer needs, it is difficult to predict our next “phase” as an organization.

Product development will continue to be an integral part of our company’s growth, and I hope to maintain the brand’s unique aesthetic through thoughtful collaboration with artisans local to Nashville. The foundation of ctrl + alt + delete beauty has been and will remain, our accessibility and transparency to our consumers, which has undoubtedly set us apart from “the norm”.

We offer several different modes of contact, including a “chat” feature on our website, and look forward to answering questions and engaging with our patrons. Our shoppers have definitely generated my deep sense of pride for ctrl + alt + delete beauty based on the reaction, the recommendation for, and repeat purchase of our inaugural product, Overnight Treatment.

Within the first few weeks of this product launch, it felt like so much of the contact we were having with our shoppers was based on a referral from someone who had tried the product and loved it. Since then, we continue to generate the majority of our sales by recommendations made by actual consumers, which stays true to our foundation of authenticity.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I have no doubts that our success has been an attribute of brand authenticity, and I look forward to the growth and evolution of ctrl + alt + delete beauty while maintaining this as an overall company standard.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: www.ctrlaltdeletebeauty.com
• Instagram: @ctrlaltdeletebeauty
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ctrl.alt.delete.beauty