#CABOODLE MAKEUP KIT FULL#

They were a runaway hit, selling 2 million units in the first two years. The first boxes, called 'on-the-go organizers,' hit the market in 1987. THEY HIT THE MARKET WITH THE TAGLINE 'THE WHOLE KIT 'N' CABOODLE GOES INTO A CABOODLE!' As she was checking out, she told a clerk who was curious about why they were buying so many hair dryers that they were for her new product, Caboodles-it was the first time she had named her idea out loud. To come up with just the right ones, Mateer and the manufacturer visited 'a local discount store where I chose four brightly colored plastic hair dryers in peach, yellow, pink, and purple,' she writes. Just as the name had to be colorful, so did the boxes themselves. 'I came across 'Caboodles,' which had a definition of 'a collection or clutter of things.' How perfect, I thought, for an organizer box.' 5.

'I was sitting in my bathtub reading a huge Oxford English Dictionary,' she recalled. 'I knew that the name needed to be colorful if it was to appeal to my target audience-teens,' Mateer writes in Blueprint, and she wanted it to be a C word. SHE CAME UP WITH THE NAME IN THE BATHTUB. I became an employee of this company.' Later in Blueprint, she acknowledges that she gave the idea away: 'I was given something that money cannot buy-hands on experience … I often say that Caboodles was my college education.' Mateer left Caboodles in the early '90s to start a competitor, Sassaby, that was purchased by Estee Lauder she did eventually return to Caboodles as a consultant.

#CABOODLE MAKEUP KIT FULL#

'As I didn't have the capital required to launch a full product line, this manufacturer immediately took ownership of the brand and the products and invested all the capital required to create, market, and sell the product. ' initially hired me as a consultant to create the line, market and develop the brand, set up the rep force and sell the product to the retailers,' Mateer writes. The second manufacturer Mateer called ( Plano Molding, though she doesn't name the company in her book) was interested, and hired her to launch Caboodles.

The first company she approached offered to use their tools to create the boxes, then backed out. Mateer writes in her book, The Caboodle Blueprint : Turn Your Idea Into Millions, that she began by researching all the companies that made tackle boxes.

THE FIRST COMPANY MATEER APPROACHED REJECTED THE IDEA. When she relocated to California in the 1980s, Mateer wanted to start a business she recalled that she had once seen a model arriving to a photoshoot with a tackle box to organize her cosmetics, and an idea was born. THEY WERE INSPIRED BY TACKLE BOXES.Īlthough company legend has it that Caboodles were inspired by a 1986 People magazine photo shoot where Vanna White used a fishing tackle box as a makeup organizer, Caboodles were actually the brainchild of New Zealand native Leonie Mateer.

(If you had one, you probably grew up to be the kind of person who hangs out in The Container Store for fun.) Now, the vintage organizers are back in stores. Teen girls in the late '80s and early '90s had to have a Caboodles organizer-the bright plastic cases filled with trays for organizing their makeup.

Caboodle makeup kit