Austinite Mozh Mizban created the MoGlow adjustable makeup mirror with her husband, Glen Boehm, after Mizban was frustrated she couldn't find a makeup mirror that didn't require her to slouch. 

Austinite Mozh Mizban created the MoGlow adjustable makeup mirror with her husband, Glen Boehm, after Mizban was frustrated she couldn’t find a makeup mirror that didn’t require her to slouch. 

Provided by MoGlow

Mozh Mizban was frustrated. Every morning she would strain her neck, maneuver her back just to do skin care, tweeze stray hairs and put on makeup. Her makeup mirror was not adequate. 

That was 2018, before Mizban and her husband, Glen Boehm, moved to Austin in 2020 from New York, where Mizban was worked in marketing and strategic planning for a global law firm.

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“We fell in love with Austin itself and the people, the music and energy,” she said. 

She searched stores and the internet for the perfect mirror. None adjusted easily to her height or her husband’s for shaving. She could install a magnified mirror to her bathroom wall, but what if she wanted to move it to another room or wanted to change the magnification strength? She would be stuck with one function at one height.

MoGlow's adjustable makeup mirror was created by Austinite Mozh Mizban and her husband, Glen Boehm. The mirror adjusts up to 3 feet tall and has 12 light settings, as well as two magnifications.

MoGlow’s adjustable makeup mirror was created by Austinite Mozh Mizban and her husband, Glen Boehm. The mirror adjusts up to 3 feet tall and has 12 light settings, as well as two magnifications.

Provided by MoGlow

Mizban gave Boehm the task of designing something better. Boehm had worked for years as an engineer, mainly with paper products, but he had that real-world, practical sense. Mizban had the idea of what she wanted in a makeup mirror:

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Able to easily telescope up to 3 feet and then back down again.
Able to hang from a door at the height you want
Able to be suctioned into place on a counter or table for stability
Able to switch from 3x to 10x magnification by rotating the mirror
Have an LED light ring around the mirror with 12 different settings
Rechargeable with a battery that can hold three weeks of charge with average use or could be plugged in
To be relatively lightweight but sturdy at 3½ pounds

They set out on an eight-year quest to develop the MoGlow mirror. At the end of February, the product was available for sale at moglow.com. 

With a retail price of $359, MoGlow is an investment, she said. Instead of buying four to five mirrors for different needs, it’s one mirror. She likens it to buying three bad blenders before she invested in a Vitamix. “I never looked back,” she said of her Vitamix. 

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She is betting that people will be willing to pay more to buy the right one. “This is the Yeti cooler, the Dyson (vacuum), the Vitamix,” she said. “You want the best.”

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It’s about your posture

When people are repeatedly straining their necks to look down while applying makeup, looking at their phones or laptop or jutting out their necks at a weird angle to shave, that can have long-term effects on muscles, said Shawn Foster, an Austin physical therapist who focuses on correcting postures. 

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“The body will prepare to be looking down until it is so adaptive, it becomes restricted to looking down,” he said. He has worked with people who have had long-term difficulty lifting their necks.

For proper posture, Foster advises, you should be standing with legs hip-width apart, with the weight distributed on the heels of the feet. There should be some small tension in the belly to hold you up. The armpits are squeezed slightly to hold up the shoulders and the neck. And you are looking forward without tension, with your neck in a neutral position. 

“I can instantly see the value,” he said of the MoGlow, for preventing 20 minutes or more of bad posture a day. 

Most mirrors require a person to slouch or strain their neck while putting on makeup or shaving.

Most mirrors require a person to slouch or strain their neck while putting on makeup or shaving.

Provided by MoGlow

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From idea to reality

Though conceived and designed in Austin, the product has deep global roots. Boehm is from Vancouver, British Columbia, where his children still live. Mizban was born in Iran, but came to the United States at age 10 in the mid-1970s as her family sensed the unraveling of the Shah’s government and the end of political freedoms and education for women and girls. She and her three sisters went to good schools, she said. “Tehran was like New York City. It was modern,” she said. And her family was “super modern,” which didn’t fit with what was brewing in the country.

MoGlow is made in China after Mizban unsuccessfully tried to find a U.S. manufacturer who would do it at her small scale and at an affordable price. 

The process has taught her a lot. From the time her mirrors leave the factory in China, it takes three weeks for the container to travel by boat through Hong Kong to Los Angeles, then by train to a distribution center in Columbus, Ohio.

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The designers at Plump Engineering in Austin went through multiple designs just to get the telescoping rod to work easily.

“There are 100 pieces in here,” Mizban said.

Every prototype was another delay to getting the product to market. She has seven prototypes in her home that were functional but not quite right. And then last year, the uncertainty of tariffs threatened the product’s financially viability because of the aluminum parts in the telescoping rod.

While Mizban continued her day job consulting for global law firms, Boehm focused on getting from design to finished product. Mizban focused on the aesthetics and marketing. They’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process, she says, though she declined to give exact figures. It was never about the money for Mizban and Boehm, she said. 

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“We did it because we wanted a product out there that we loved,” she said. 

A woman uses the MoGlow adjustable makeup mirror at the height she wants it to be and with the amount of lighting in the ring she wants.

A woman uses the MoGlow adjustable makeup mirror at the height she wants it to be and with the amount of lighting in the ring she wants.

Provided by MoGlow

Planning for the success

On the day before the official launch, Mizban received good news. Orders were coming in from around the country during their soft launch, including from people she did not know. People at the Soho House in South Austin walked by it with curiosity and were invited to try it out.

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Mizban hopes to sell her initial 6,000 mirrors this year and then order more. Her dream is for MoGlow to be in high-end hotels with a QR card that allows guests to buy one of their own. 

“Once you have it, you realize you needed it,” she said. “Anyone who buys one, I want them to go, ‘Oh, my God. I love this!'”