Returning to Color Up
To our cherished community,
Some stories are written in ink, and others are written in scars. The story of our brand has been written in both. Today, we are turning a pivotal page, not by creating something new, but by reclaiming what has always been ours.
We are returning to our original name: Color Up.
For those who have been with us since 2015, you’ll remember Color Up Therapeutics. You were with us on the ground floor of a revolution, long before the 2018 Farm Bill legitimized an industry we were already building with our bare hands. You knew our heart and our mission from day one.
Over the past two years, we operated under different "doing business as" names—VXN Wellness, VXN LAB and House of VXN for a month or two. This was not a choice born from strategy, but from a fight for survival. Following a painful fracture where two of our three original founders departed, a forced rebrand, warehouse blowout sale, and requirement not to release information about the rebrand until after the buyout, were stipulations for this company to continue. Knowing there would be challenges ahead, we chose to fight for our mission, and for the company we built, hand-in-hand with all of you, even if we had to do it under a different name.
At the time, we believed a new identity could honor the fierce women—the VXN's`—who stayed to fight. What we didn't yet understand was how unforgiving modern e-commerce is to a name change, and how technology requires consistency to keep a community connected.
The Heartbeat That Never Stopped
While the name on the bottle changed, the integrity within it never wavered. The soul of this company is its people, and that core team has only grown stronger:
Shauna, our remaining original co-founder, bought out her previous partners and absorbed the responsibilities of three people—plus the roles of critical contractors in accounting, financing, website design, and SEO. She went two full years without a paycheck, selling personal assets to keep payroll going when the industry slowed.
Amber, now a co-owner, a Filipina American, joined us in 2018 straight out of college with her Bachelor of Science. She has worked her way up from working in the lab, to ownership of the company, providing the perfectionist touch that ensures every product retains the quality you trust.
Marrana, now a co-owner, has been a core leader since 2019. She ran our sales and education departments for years, managed all fulfillment and shipping, and continues to maintain her practice as a licensed massage therapist, tirelessly adapting our professional protocols with real-world expertise.
Amanda, our lead esthetician, a mother of 3 boys who owns her own spa in Wisconsin, has been our rock in the esthetics field—testing products and helping bring our professional education program back online.
Our four mothers (Shauna, Marrana and Amber has two!) became our backbone, volunteering hundreds of hours in the lab, answering the phone, and providing the moral support that fueled our fight.
We learned the hard way what changing a brand name, domain, and online identity does to a small business. We realized the challenge in creating a new brand was that we had already created Color Up—and she was exactly who we were meant to be.
The Amazon Experiment with VXN LUX
In the midst of these challenges, with rising costs and inflation, we realized that to sustain our no-minimum wholesale model and continue supporting our small business wholesale partners, we needed another revenue stream. The answer came from a project our lead formulator, Lili, had started years ago when we saw this time coming.
After years of study in Brazil and in cosmetic labs, Lili joined our team in 2019, dreaming of developing products that could nourish the skin through life’s many stages. While financial constraints had paused the project before the buyout, our new all-woman team’s resilience brought it back to life.
We were accused of selling out, abandoning CBD, or sowing confusion with rebrands. None of that is true. We created VXN LUX as a separate, non-CBD line under a different entity to stabilize revenue and honor years of Lili’s work, while protecting our professional CBD line. We have never even considered selling our CBD products on Amazon, nor would they allow it. This was a move to ensure the survival and strength of the Color Up community.
A Legacy of Collaboration
From the very beginning, our formulations were born from a collective of brilliant minds, forged in collaborative sessions with practicing estheticians and educators from the School of Botanical and Medical Esthetics. It was in those rooms, through shared wisdom and real-world practice, that the heart of our products was created.
While our former formulator was still in school, Shauna was already in the treatment room, building the foundations of this brand with the women who continue to use and improve our products every day. This was never one person's vision; it has always been a collective effort.
And while we honor every person who has contributed to our journey, the fact remains that our products have always been created by all of us. This brand was never the product of a single individual. Color Up was, and always will be, the result of shared expertise, community feedback, and a passion for creating the world we want to leave behind. That collaborative spirit is the true magic behind every bottle, and it is carried forward with that same spirit today.
Setting the Record Straight
Recently, a former co-owner made false public claims about our company and stated that we are not permitted to use the Color Up name.
To be clear, we were bound by an agreement to operate under a new name, and we honored it. However, actions were taken against us that breached the spirit and letter of that departure agreement. After 28 months of survival, we are no longer staying silent. We are now willing to fight for our name, and we are confident we will win.
The time for survival is over. It’s time for our reclamation.
Returning to Color Up is a declaration of who we are. It’s a testament to the fact that the soul of a brand is in its people, its purpose, and its refusal to be broken.
Our mission, rooted in cannabis reform and clean herbal remedies, remains as necessary as ever. Thank you for standing by us. The original is back, not because we are going backward, but because our roots have given us the strength to finally, fully, move forward.