Daily Inspiration: Meet Arlene Banks

Today we’d like to introduce you to Arlene Banks.

Hi Arlene, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Hello, I’m excited to introduce myself and how we were created! My name is Mrs. Arlene Nicole Banks, but well known as Queen. I’m the CEO of this amazing new lip wear line that once was just an idea and a dream on April 7, 2017! I stepped out on faith and Soup Coolers Lipwear by Queen Arlene became a dream come true and was born and introduced to the public via social media on June 24, 2019! After much research and hard work, finally, in May 2020 we launched our new, beautiful 24 lipstick shades that were available, began taking pre-orders online and business took off! I was very hesitant as to how well business would do because Covid-19 had just hit in March 2020 and we were heading into mask coverage mandates. Although I was slightly fearful, I kept going and I kept promoting and by the grace of God I SOLD OUT! I restocked and even through the entire pandemic my business continued to grow every day and my lippies continued to sell out. 1. because we have beautiful, amazing products, and 2. everyone was stuck at home and the only way to shop was online. Now as of April 2022 we are still fastly growing, even more now that life is somewhat getting back to normal and people are starting to get out more regularly. The mask mandates are a little slacker which has brought in more sales because customers or “SC Babes” as we call them, can now rock their beautiful shades without covering them up.

This lip line was created in dedication to my beautiful, deceased mother Adriana, and my loving father Charles L. Harrison, Sr. I lost them both to the deadly disease cancer…my dad at age 60 in 2008(stomach) and my mom at age 55 in 2016(pelvic). I recall as a young girl, about the age of 9, my dad flirting with my mom in the kitchen calling her “Soup Coolers.” I later curiously asked my dad what that meant and he said “full beautiful lips that can cool off a hot bowl of soup, lol” hence the name and logo, wink! I said “ooooh” , thought about it and laughed! Now, as a grown woman, who has inherited my mom’s full beautiful lips, I have enjoyed the meaning and essence of their beauty behind the name! One day my husband called me “soup coolers” not knowing my backstory and it clicked! I needed to start our lip line since I’m a lipstick addict, call it Soup Coolers, and incorporate those full beautiful lips cooling off that hot bowl! That was my confirmation, then VIOLA! It came forth…the love my parents shared was so lasting, funny, and rare like ours, but real! So real that my mom passed on my dad’s birthday. So, in memory of them and their relentless love and to keep their love memory alive I decided to start our lip line due to my desire to embrace that memory that has stuck with and followed me into my womanhood to be a blessing to others. I literally turned my pain of losing my parents into my passion in this business that I’m building brick by brick.

As a child I watched my mom put her makeup on flawlessly, and effortlessly daily before she headed to work. She would dress her beautiful full lips day after day with so many different arrays of lipstick colors/shades! It was like a mini, magic stick wand of color to my young eyes and I wanted to one day do it like her, and I did gracefully inherit the talent. She even told me before she passed away to make sure her soup coolers were right, lol, and they were…just right with her favorite color Coral, for my dad waiting to greet her with a loving kiss in heaven. They were both such characters and are truly loved and missed! I was so blessed to witness their beautiful love, business relationship as owners of our family business Harrison’s Memorial Chapel in Memphis TN (open since 1923), and faithful dedicated marriage as a child, which in turn has helped me grow and flourish in my marriage and businesses as well, and I know that my parents are proud, smiling down from heaven.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

In honor of them and their flirtatious love, I humbly thank you for reading my story and supporting my vision, journey, and dream come true in building Soup Coolers Lipwear by the Queen Arlene into a very successful brand! We are almost 2 years in business and growing daily! Pray for me as I pray for you! Thank you and know that you are appreciated!

Now head over to www.soupcoolers.com to join and become a part of our Soup Coolers Babe Tribe and enjoy shopping!

P.S. Please be sure to purchase our signature shade named after my beautiful mom in her favorite color, Adriana Coral! It’s a beautiful matte shade in the orange family I highly recommend! A great spring/summer/fall shade!

Head over to www.soupcoolers.com/product-page/adriana-coral product-page/adriana-coral and check it out now!

A portion of the proceeds will go to a local cancer charity to help those fighting this disease.

Soup Coolers Lipwear by the Queen Arlene

“Lips with PERSONALITY!” Smooches!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has somewhat been a pretty smooth ride. The only struggle I thought I’d have would have been not selling due to the pandemic, but of course, we know that was not the case, I literally sold out! Another slight struggle and challenge was building my own website but YouTube University made that a lot easier, and I built my own entire site in less than 2 weeks:) Building any kind of business is a learning lesson, but it’s a lesson that can be learned that can be beneficial in so many ways that can take you far in life! The Bible quotes “Your gift will make room for you.” Proverbs 18:16 and I am truly a witness and testament to this living Word!

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
At the age of 13, I began styling hair and doing makeup in my mother’s kitchen. I remember having my first beauty salon appointment at the age of 13, which I was so excited about because I was getting my first cut and I wanted the Halle Berry cut from the movie Boomerang. Well, although I got the cut I wanted, with my mother’s approval, I ended up having such a bad experience with the beautician that it led me to start styling, cutting, and doing my own hair and I never wanted to go back to the beauty shop ever again. She basically burned me with the relaxer when she sat me in a corner and forgot about me because she had so many clients. That experience is what’s actually started my amazing career in the beauty industry and to this day I still thank her! I learned that I was so skillful and talented with my hands that I ended up starting a business that continued into high school, where I took cosmetology from my sophomore year up to my senior year. I would style my friend’s hair in school and also do their makeup for a small fee. I kept all of my friends in school looking good before the bell:) For my senior prom, I promoted a “Prom Prep 2000” promotion to all the girls in my school with flyers I had printed using my mother’s printer. I bought my 1st appointment book and I started booking appointments at school. I booked so many appointments that my parent’s home was swamped. Amazingly I made $600 in 3 days from doing hair, makeup and nails! That’s when I knew the beauty industry was what I wanted to do full-time after graduating. When I graduated from Whitehaven High School in Memphis Tennessee, I had accumulated 1,000 hours in cosmetology. My father helped me enroll in the Southern Institute of Cosmetology for a 6-month course where I obtained the extra 500 hours needed to get my cosmetology license. After obtaining my total of 1500 hours, I applied for the cosmetologist exam and passed with flying colors the very first time! I was so excited and cried and my parents and siblings were so proud of me. They always complimented how well I styled my friends and my client’s hair.

I worked alongside some of the most amazing salon and barbershop owners/stylists which helped take my career to the next level. I entered my very first hair show, the Milky Way Hair Show, in 2006 where I took home the bacon by showcasing my amazing short hairstyles on 6 incredible models that danced and strutted to Kanye West’s hit song out at the time “Golddigger” and my baby brother played his role as Kanye West and the crowd loved it. That was such a fun, memorable, amazing experience I will never forget! To WIN was a dream come true! Cutting hair, coloring hair, and short hairstyles are my specialties. I shockingly ended up winning this hair competition, winning $1,000 and a huge first-place trophy. I was also featured in three hair magazines, where my hairstyles made the cover of two of them. I was also featured as a stylist for a Christian movie titled “Indivisible” shot in Memphis, Tn of which I’m most proud! I built up an amazing clientele and had a beautiful salon where I became a six-figure stylist in one year where I was known as ” The Short Hair Styling Queen” which later changed to “The Queen of Memphis” because of my expertise in hair and makeup being known as one of the city’s TOP STYLIST. I was even recognized on STYLESEAT as a 5-STAR stylist which brought even more clientele! I was known for setting “Divas on the Loose,” because once women stepped out of my salon, they immediately turned into divas that wanted to go everywhere they could to show off their new look and style, which brought me so many more clients because they loved showing off and telling how good their new do looked and felt(from my amazing shampoos). Many of my clients loved my technique of only styling one client at a time, which set me apart from other stylists because no one was stacked up in the salon waiting hours for services because I gave each one of my clients my undivided attention for their appointment and that simply came from the bad experience that I had as a teenager I told you about earlier. Once I was done with one client that was when I would move on to the next and my clients highly respected, loved, and paid TOP dollar for my services to cater to them. I put in a dedicated 22 years and happily, but sadly retired from hair 4 years ago to move away from home, 800 miles away to our new home at the beach with my husband and our teenage son. To this day my clients are still reaching out to me telling me how much they miss me and how much they miss me taking care of their hair and giving them amazing styles and mostly they miss our 1-on-1 appointments. I surely miss my clients as well but my body does not miss standing behind the chair for long hours day after day. I will always be an important instrument to the beauty industry and that is why I created Soup Coolers Lipwear by the Queen Arlene to continue my journey and passion for making women feel beautiful from the inside out.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
The best thing I love about Myrtle Beach is of course the beautiful beach to share with my husband, our son and more beach babies to come, the amazing fresh seafood, the shopping, the incredible culture, the dedicated support of local business owners like myself, and the massive growth! What I do not love is NOTHING! My family and I totally love Myrtle Beach! The only downside is that when the season comes back in, around March – April everything is swamped and you can hardly get into any places because of the tourism. But it’s fun at the same time to see and meet so many amazing people from so many different places that are excited to support and share my business. Myrtle Beach is the place where my family and many other people are definitely “Living the Dream.”

Contact Info:

• Email: soupcoolers2020@gmail.com
• Website: www.soupcoolers.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soupcoolerslipwear/
• TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTd4jTaMq/