Ever since Tameka Jones started her lipstick company Lip Esteem in 2020, selling at farmers’ markets, she had her sights set on the State Fair.

She applied for a booth at the Fair; no response. Lip Esteem became more popular and Jones opened a brick-and-mortar location on Selby Avenue in 2022, and still, she kept pushing for a Fair spot — but to no avail.

Then, in 2023, things started to go downhill. After she’d already stocked up on inventory and was about to hire staff for the busy summer season, she received a last-minute notice from Metro Transit that Selby would be closed for an extended construction project. Sales tanked. When the Chamber of Commerce asked her to donate a gift basket for a fundraiser, she found she couldn’t afford to give away any products. She still wanted to stay involved in the community, though — and had been a makeup artist for more than two decades before starting Lip Esteem — so she offered to donate certificates for makeovers.

One of the winners of the certificates? Then-new State Fair CEO Renee Alexander.

As the two were chatting during the makeover, Jones candidly asked about the status of her State Fair booth application. Alexander said she’d look into it, Jones recalled. Then, in July, some Fair representatives stopped by the store to formally offer her a booth spot in the Grandstand for the 2023 Fair.

“I said, that’s in six weeks!” Jones said, laughing. But because of the construction, she had enough inventory stockpiled. “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I wasn’t going to say no! So I called all my people, and in six weeks, we got it together.”

For the 2024 State Fair, the Lip Esteem booth on the second floor of the Grandstand doubled in size, and Lip Esteem grew, too. The company is the official lipstick provider to the Minnesota Timberwolves dancers and Vikings cheerleaders.

And at the Fair this year, Jones has worked to continue creating a space that feels like a boutique, not necessarily like a State Fair booth, she said.

Her goal, she said, is to make lipsticks that, besides being vegan and gluten-free — which she said is not always the case — can pair with a variety of skin tones and personal styles.

“As a makeup artist, I realized there were so many colors out there that I could never wear,” she said. “I wasn’t in mind; people of my skin tone weren’t in mind.”

But maybe, she said, a person would recognize that a stranger who doesn’t look like them — or someone who does — is wearing the same shade of Lip Esteem lipstick, and they’ll strike up a conversation.

“Lipstick is very personal, but Lip Esteem is about community,” she said. “That’s what I want, to bring community together — of all races, all people — to come together behind lipstick. I’m just trying to get back to the basics of life.”

Lip Esteem: During the State Fair, in the Grandstand, second floor. Year-round: 876 Selby Ave., 651-788-7868; lipesteem.com

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