Eric John Fox

LITTLE ROCK — As a plant manager for the world’s largest cosmetics and beauty company, Eric Fox takes his job seriously.

Very seriously.

Just how very seriously? The manager and veteran marathoner has swept mascara on his lashes, applied lipstick and painted his nails. But it’s all in the name of research - and he has only worn the makeup briefly at work.

“I can say with pride I have tried all of our products,” he says. “I have worn lipstick, nail polish, mascara. It is all very private and it is all in a safe industrial setting.”

His employees at the L’Oreal USA plant in North Little Rock love it when he tries on cosmetics. Some of his female employees showed him how to apply mascara.

“You have to learn how to make the mascara face,” Fox says. “Your eyes are wide open and your mouth is ‘ooh’ like that. They got a big kick out of the fact I was willing to try it and would humiliate myself. But I think it is important to know what makes our products work well.”

And he is not the only one who tries on the products. Female employees are given samples to try.

“It is great market research to ask the women in the plant what they think,” he says. “They can usually pick a winner. They can usually tell you whether a product is going to sell or not.”

All makeup aside, he is devoted to making sure the North Little Rock plant works well. He is fairly new to his job - having started in November.Safety is the No. 1 priority at the plant. Signs everywhere proclaim: “Nothing we do is worth getting hurt.”

At 41, Fox still has boyish looks and boyish enthusiasm. He sprints from one end of the 800,000-square-foot plant to the other. For a companion wearing heels, it is almost impossible to keep up with his pace. It is no wonder he can maintain such a fast clip. He has already run in 17 marathons and has a long-term goal to run a marathon in each of the 50 states.

The North Little Rock plant was built in 1975 for Maybelline, which French cosmetics giant L’Oreal bought in 1995. Today, about three-quarters of all Maybelline products and half of the L’Oreal line are made in North LittleRock.

One building is devoted to nail polishes. Another produces face powder, eye shadow and mascara. In addition to L’Oreal and Maybelline, the company makes high-end luxury fragrances and cosmetics including the brands Giorgio Armani, Kiehl’s, Lancome, Ralph Lauren, Kerastase, Matrix and Redken.

“This plant makes a quarter of a billion products a year,” Fox says. “This is a significant accomplishment to say, ‘Look what our team did. Our team made this.’”

NOT A WEATHERMAN

Fox grew up on New York’s Long Island with dreams of becoming a weatherman. He enrolled at Rutgers University because of its meteorology program. He realized his sophomore year that he really didn’t like that type of work and switched his major to environmental sciences, earning a degree in 1990.

After graduation, he got a job with a New Jersey environmental consulting firm, working there four years before moving to Newport Beach, Calif., to join another environmental firm. That job took him to southern Arkansas for a site assessment. In Camden, he met a woman, fell in love and eventually moved to Arkansas to be closer to her. Though their marriage didn’t last, it did produce two of the biggest joys in his life - sons Drew, 7, and Ben, 5.

Fox worked at two Arkansas companies before landing a job with L’Oreal in June 2004. About a year later, he was transferred to New Jersey to take over logistics operations at the company’s hair color plant. Six months later, he was assistant vice president of plant management at the company’s facility in Florence, Ky.

“It was always my dream to move to this site,” Fox says. “Within L’Oreal, this is kind of an interesting site because not many people want to come to Little Rock. But the people who are in Little Rock, not many want to leave.

“For me to live here, it is completely different. I love the pace of life here. The people are super-friendly. The culture is extremely social. The cost of living is fantastic. You can have such a great quality of life living here.”

In November, Fox’s wish came true. He took over as plant manager, succeeding Richard Jones, who was promoted to senior vice president of the luxury products division. Jones headed the plant for less that two years, having replaced Jack Bucher.

Bucher hired Fox originally as a production manager, deciding after only two weeks to promote him to director of lipstick and nail enamel manufacturing.

“He is a very high energy guy with a terrific personality and those are the key elements for a good manager,” says Bucher, who retired in 2007 after a quarter-century with L’Oreal. “You always have need for good management people on your team, and my goal was to hire the best people I could find to make my life easier.

“It was the first time I ever did anything like this,” Bucher says of having promoted Fox so quickly. “He is truly one of the best people I have ever hired. He has moved up very, very quickly because he is extremely capable.”

Walking through the North Little Rock plant is a girlie-girl’s dream come true.Mascara tubes roll down conveyor belts, where they are filled and the brush wands are screwed into place. Sheets of eye shadows and blushes roll off huge machines where they are cut and dropped into compacts. The plant is practically a start-to-finish facility. Everything but the bottles and compacts is made on-site.

One section is dedicated to Maybelline Great Lash mascara - which Fox says is the top-selling mascara with a tube being bought somewhere every 1.2 seconds.

So is bat guano really in mascara? Or is that just an urban legend? Cassie Liverance, director of manufacturing at the plant, laughs at the question and says no bat droppings are in mascara. But she says the actual ingredients are “proprietary information” and cannot be revealed.

In addition to safety and proprietary secrets, the plant takes hygiene very seriously. Before entering a production room, workers put on lab coats, steel-toed shoes, hairnets and safety goggles. Fox walks through the production rooms every day.

At the front of the L’Oreal campus is the popular employee store. Every two months, employees are given $75 in store credit to buy beauty products at half price.

“You realize just how popular you are with your female relatives when you work at L’Oreal,” Fox says.

A YEN FOR RUNNING

A serious athlete, Fox runs in a couple of marathons every year, competes in triathlons and plays on a soccer team. As far as his goal of running marathons across the nation, he has already checked off eight states. He has run in the Little Rock Marathon since its inception in 2003 and in the prestigious New York City Marathon three times.

His best time was 3 hours and 48 minutes in the 2008 Little Rock race. He hopes to break the 3:40 mark in November at the New York Marathon. But that is still a long way from his dream of competing in the Boston Marathon. To achieve that, he will need to run 26.2 miles in 3:20 or less.

“For me, the exercise and fitness is such a great stress relief,” he says. “It really helps keep me sane. It helps me manage the stress of the job and of life.”

One of his workout partners is his best friend, Bentley Blackmon. They run and cycle together and also enjoy traveling.

On one of their adventures, Fox and Blackmon went on a deep-sea fishing trip to Costa Rica in 2003. After an afternoon of catching sailfish, they returned to their hotel, the Hemingway Inn, and made a snap decision.

“Later that afternoon, we decided we needed a really good excuse to go to Costa Rica a lot. So we bought the hotel,” Fox says.

The pair, along with another friend, closed on the 17-room property in 2004. They hired a manager but made frequent trips to Costa Rica to check on their investment. Fox eventually sold his interest in the hotel to his two friends.

Fox and Blackmon have traveled to numerous countries - including Guatemala, El Salvador, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Finland. Blackmon, who picks the locations, says they are “guy trips” and are “mostly kind of adventure related.”

“It is not a trip unless Eric has strained an ankle,” he says.

On one of those trips, Blackmon and Fox got into a discussion about how far they would go to save a loved one. Somehow the conversation turned to which body parts they would give up if it would save a friend’s life.

“So the standard measure became a kidney. We agreed we would give a kidney to save a good friend’s life,” Blackmon says. “Eric is absolutely a kidney friend.”

Blackmon also says his friend is very sensitive to his surroundings. Fox likes the thermostat set to a comfortable temperature, insists on getting enough sleep and must eat plenty of nonspicy foods. On one of their many trips to Costa Rica, the two were whitewater rafting when it started to rain.

“The next thing I know is that he starts turning blue and shaking uncontrollably,” Blackmon recalls. “Thinking this was temporary, I only made fun of him initially.”

Fox ended up wrapped in blankets in bed for the rest of the day.

“Again, let me remind you, we were in the tropics,” Blackmon says. “He may be the only person to ever get hypothermia in the tropics.”

Blackmon gave Fox the nickname of “Rain Man” because of his “incredible recall.”

“Especially sports trivia,” Blackmon says. “He knows every sports fact on just about every sport at any school.”

Blackmon also introduced Fox to his second wife, Misty Butts of Little Rock. At that point in his life, Fox was working at the plant in Kentucky.

“Bentley was trying very hard to set me up with someone who would bring me back to the Little Rock area,” Fox recalls.

On their first date, Fox and Butts “sat up until 2 in the morning on a bench in the River Market talking about politics and religion - the things you are never supposed to talk about on a first date.”

The couple married Sept. 19, 2009. They are expecting a baby in December.

“I love to get the whole life experience,” Fox says. “I just don’t want to be somebody life has passed by.”SELF PORTRAIT Eric Fox

DATE, PLACE OF BIRTH Oct. 26, 1968, Long Island, N.Y.

MY FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH IS Soccer.

MY PERSONAL SHAMPOO BRAND IS Garnier Fructis.

THE WEIRDEST PRODUCT FOR WOMEN HAS BEEN A vibrating mascara. It was called Pulse Perfection. It was very expensive to have a little motor in there driving that brush wand.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE IS Caddyshack. It’s hard to beat that one.

MY NICKNAME IS Rain Man, because I can remember useless trivia.

MY FAVORITE MEAL IS Steak. I love to grill a good steak.

MY FANTASY DINNER PARTY WOULD INCLUDE Jack Kerouac, John Wooden, Hillary Clinton and Bono.

ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP Passionate. I just don’t want to do anything half-ass. If I am in it, I am in it.