Mad Gab's, built from a kitchen recipe, will double in size this year

By Daniel Okafor

Mad Gab's will double in size this year, according to Gabrielle Melchionda, who started the lip balm company at 19 with a recipe mixed in her mother's kitchen.

At 19, Melchionda was an anthropology major. She said she had failed math and largely rejected capitalism when she found the recipe. She made the balm with beeswax from her mother's neighbor and gave samples to friends, who told her she should sell them.

How did a kitchen recipe reach major retailers?

Melchionda poured Mad Gab's Lip Lube by hand, scavenged wood for displays from a coffin factory, and peddled to natural food stores from the trunk of her car. She used Yellow Pages and maps to find stores and treated the venture as an adventure, not an enterprise.

Demand followed. Melchionda's account gives three concrete early milestones:

• 1997: Mad Gab's sold out after her appearance on QVC during the home-shopping boom.
• Retail: L.L.Bean, Nordstrom, and Anthropologie became customers.
• Media: A marketing mailing of 80 envelopes produced coverage in Vogue, Elle, and Seventeen.

She said the initial trickle became a flood that consumed her life.

Why did growth slow after the first surge?

Mad Gab's kept expanding, but motherhood forced a limit. While nursing Silas from her office chair amid what she described as chaotic success, she recalled an older woman on a panel.

That older woman told her: “The idea of balance for working mothers is ludicrous. You pick the priority of the moment, the day, the month. Do that well. Work the rest around it.”

Melchionda's account explains the turn. Shortly after her wedding, she became pregnant and expected to fold a baby into the operation. Only hours after giving birth to Silas, she was on the phone with her tin supplier, handling a packaging emergency. She put a pack-and-play and changing table in her office and thought she had everything covered.

Melchionda concluded that she could not do everything and selected motherhood as the priority. She did not raise capital and attended only some trade shows. She kept overhead low.

Her small staff of students, artists, and mothers worked for wages she could afford in exchange for unusually flexible schedules, which she called a novelty in the early aughts. Everyone's children were welcome.

She brought four-month-old Jasper to a show at the Javits Center, where she fielded supportive comments and blatant judgment. She left every day to meet the bus and remained unavailable until the next morning.

As a dual-income household, Melchionda could prioritize her sons over profits. She said Mad Gab's had obvious potential, yet growth slowed and then plateaued. She chose exhaustion over guilt and designed a work schedule around family time, creativity, and community.

What changed after the divorce?

When Melchionda divorced at 41, she had to decide whether Mad Gab's could support her sons or whether she should stop and take a job.

With support from family, friends, and mentors, she decided to grow the business seriously. She rejected the employment option because she saw herself as a reluctant businesswoman and fierce mother, according to her account.

By the time Silas and Jasper were in high school and college, Mad Gab's was profitable and thriving, Melchionda said. She had not raised capital, attended every show, or pushed overhead higher during the years when she prioritized care at home.

Mad Gab's survived a period of slow growth without the rapid expansion she once expected. That deliberate restraint, rather than a lack of demand, shaped the company's next phase, according to her account.

What does the planned doubling mean for Mad Gab's?

This year, Melchionda said goodbye to a recently graduated Jasper as he headed to Europe. Silas will graduate from nursing school. Mad Gab's will double in size this year, and she said she sleeps well knowing her sons have become good men.

She said she was proud to have kept Mad Gab's alive while her sons grew through what she described as chaotic, serendipitous, creative, and painful circumstances.

She said the outcome she values most is her relationship with her sons and the way their upbringing shaped them. Someone who assumed a mother with her own company must always be at work heard Jasper reply: “No way, Mom was always there.”

Jasper's response captures the operating choice behind the plateau: protected family time, modest overhead, and a founder-led business structured around her availability.

Mad Gab's planned doubling creates a capacity test that Melchionda's account leaves unresolved; she described no new hiring, capital, or distribution plan for the coming expansion. Her earlier model depended on low overhead and protected family time.