The Real Investors of Beverly Hills

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Starring on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” has been good for Russell and Taylor Armstrong – and not just because they’ve become famous.

The Armstrongs – perhaps best known on the reality TV show for their marriage woes – are now in business with BeautyTicket.com, a West Hollywood-based online retailer that sells higher-end beauty products at steep discounts.

Russell Armstrong said BeautyTicket’s founders, industry executives Lindsay Pedder and Jill Sherman, learned about his wife because of the show and contacted her about working together. The couple then acquired a 30 percent equity stake in the company last month through Russell Armstrong’s Miracle Mile-area private investment firm, Crescent Financial Partners Inc.

“After studying the business model, we felt like BeautyTicket.com filled a void in the cosmetics industry,” he said.

Armstrong is financing BeautyTicket’s future growth through his investment firm, and plans to take the company public within 24 months.

Meanwhile, Taylor Armstrong, who is co-founder and president of a business software consulting firm, is serving as BeautyTicket’s chief creative director – a role some might find surprising.

“Taylor’s very business minded and many people don’t know it,” Russell Armstrong said. “She’s a go-getter.”

Uruguay Shuffle

Ryan Citro, a valuation and business model specialist with the downtown L.A. office of Ernst & Young LLP, knew he would have some adventures when he set out on a trip to Uruguay in October and November as part of a company fellowship program that sends financial experts to developing countries to help startup companies.

Citro even added a personal vacation with his brother Jeff, hiking in the Patagonia region of neighboring Argentina.

But nothing prepared the 30-year-old for an unusual camping trip into the middle of the Uruguayan wilderness. The trip was arranged by workers at the tech company startup in Montevideo that Citro was sent to help bootstrap.

With Citro tagging along, the workers drove for hours on dirt roads, crossing two rivers before deciding to put up their tents more than 50 miles away from the nearest settlement.

But soon the workers opened up some bottles and began to party. Trouble was, in the process, the workers consumed their entire food store for the weekend.

When they woke the following morning, they faced reality.

“All we had left was half a bag of potato chips,” Citro said, “so we all had to go back that day.”

Staff reporters Alexa Hyland and Howard Fine contributed to this column Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].

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