Lisa Price On Carol’s Daughter Bankruptcy, Selling Ownership: Everyone misunderstood what we did.

Despite what many commenters have to say, she didn’t close her stores because it was her last resort, but that it was the smarter choice for longevity of her brand.

A lot of people looked at it and said she lost her business, she filed bankruptcy, she’s broke. That’s not what chapter 11 is. This was more of a downsizing. Move and focus on what’s making money and try to close and secure what isn’t. We can’t keep something open that’s not working. It’s not so much sad about the store’s closing because it had been going on for four years and because there was work being done to make it better. I realized this is just isn’t working. At that point it didn’t feel like a failure on my part and my team’s part. I was more disappointed about having to let the staff go because they were really trying to make it work. I think they felt in some ways, maybe they had failed when they didn’t .

Through it all, Price says her biggest upset wasn’t the backlash received because many didn’t understand what a chapter 11 was and instead they went on attack mode towards her and her brand.

Because everyone misunderstood what we did and perceived it to be a failure, the attack on the failure was uncomfortable. It’s disheartening to have people blatantly refer to you as stupid, to say, ‘well you know she never had control anyway,’ ‘they charge to much for their products, that’s why their store closed, good for them.’ That was uncomfortable to deal with. At the end of the day, we made the decision we had to make. We spoke directly to the staff so it didn’t take anyone by surprise.

Her next bold move was to find the next major investor that’s going to keep her brand growing. Weighing all her options she decided the best thing to do was sell her brand yet, she still has controlling factor in it’s make-up, she’s sort of like the Shonda Rhimes of hair and beauty.

Being an entrepreneur is great, I couldn’t ask for a better life. I had investors and your investors do want to walk away at some point. So for me finding a company that understood what I was doing, appreciated it, and understands the market place is really important. And that’s something I definitely felt with L’Oreal.

I understand the concern our customers have because as African American’s there aren’t many things that we own. But if we are able to function, control, executive produce—Shonda Rhimes executive produces three major network shows, she doesn’t own the network but she’s in a position to have influence over content and really change what an African American driven show looks like today. For me, I don’t own Carol’s daughter but I am Carol’s daughter. Carol is my mother, I am her daughter and that’s not changing. I’m the face of the brand, I’m the person developing the product, goes on HSN and sales, that’s not changing. The technical owner has changed, but I still hope people will still be proud that someone started a company in her kitchen and sold it to the biggest company in the world.

Press play to watch the video after the jump.