The same thing that’s kept Jeanine Lobell playing mahjong is what’s given her beauty career its longevity: the love of the game.
Lobell, who founded Stila, one of the iconic indie brands of the ’90s, and most recently founded Neen, has been playing mahjong since before her time in the beauty industry trenches.
“I learned to play Chinese mahjong when I was a kid. I played all the time with my best friend,” Lobell said, who took up the American version of the game about 15 years ago. “Then I started teaching everyone I knew how to play, since you need four players.”
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These days, she alternates between two groups, as well as her children and their friends, and also plays online. Lobell celebrated her birthday year with a 48-hour cruise off the west side of Manhattan, which quickly turned into a two-day mahjong binge with five other friends.
All her playing time notwithstanding, don’t call her a game person. For this founder, it’s all about the human interaction.
“The interesting thing about mahjong is that for me, I use it as exercising my people-reading skills. I’m playing my own hand, then I’m watching everyone else, how they’re reacting, and what they’re throwing tells me what their actual hand is,” Lobell said. “It’s a big strategy game, but they all just say, ‘she’s a witch!’”
All that practice definitely pays off. “I win a lot,” Lobell said. “There are 70 hands in mahjong, and I have them all memorized. It’s something I’m just very good at, but there’s also luck, right? You’ve got to get the right tiles and hope nobody is playing the same thing.”
Brand building is similar. “It’s knowing when to hold back and knowing when to go for it,” she said. “When I’m on Zoom calls with people I want to work with, I gauge their face, their reactions and body language. It helps me know what to say next.”
Building a business also requires the same balance of luck and know-how. “It’s a bit random how some things work out for some people, and how it doesn’t for others,” she said. But I realized I love making makeup, and I always tell people, ‘I don’t need to be smarter than other people, I need to be smarter than the problem.’ I’m a problem solver.”
Thus was born Neen, driven by Lobell’s desire to create an environmentally conscious cosmetics line tapping into the advances in ingredients and formulas since her early days as an entrepreneur.” Neen’s assortment is comprised of products for lips, cheeks and eyes. The products are housed in refillable, dishwasher-safe silicone compacts, and highlighters are packaged in recycled aluminum tubes. Lobell’s subscription cards, on FSC-certified paper, also come with product samples and accompanying QR codes to tutorial videos.
And while the perfect meld may not exist in mahjong, for Lobell, the merging of those factors made launching a new makeup brand a no-brainer. “I wanted to make something now that was environmentally conscious, and I wanted it to mimic my life, which includes every kind of person,” she said. “I was ready to go again.”