How Anastasia Soare built a beauty brand worth billions

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1:16I met and I worked with so many celebrities. But when I met Oprah, it was my Oscar moment.

1:30Oprah's production team called Anastasia Soiree. Would she come do Oprah's eyebrows live on the massively popular daytime TV show? And it was kind of scary because to do live her eyebrows in front of a camera is very difficult. I knew she was coming today, so I haven't plucked yet. This is Anastasia, queen of brows. Anastasia was used to fixing up the eyebrows of famous people in her Beverly Hills studio. But to do it for Oprah, I mean, it's Oprah live on stage on television. I wanted to cry. I wanted to jump. I want I don't even remember what. But Anastasia kept her cool on camera. She walked the audience through how to perfectly shape your eyebrows.

2:20And Oprah loved the result. You will not find anybody better than her on the planet for doing brows. I haven't. Ooh, look at that brow, baby.

2:32This was a different era. Daytime television really mattered. And no one mattered more than Oprah. Her talk show was seen by millions and millions of people every day. So after the episode aired... The phone will not stop ringing.

3:01And it hasn't stopped ringing ever since. The Romanian immigrant celebrity-fueled beauty business grew from renting a room in Beverly Hills to a global brand that peaked at a valuation of no less than$3 billion. dollars.

3:46This is Masters of Scale.

4:14I was thrilled to sit down with Anastasia in Los Angeles for this conversation and honestly a little bit shocked by what she said when we started talking. You have good eyebrows, by the way. My day is made.

4:32Anastasia, welcome to Masters of Scale. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to have you. You, like so many of the founders we have on Masters of Scale, are an immigrant. But most of the immigrant founders we have on the show came to the U.S. as children or came here for college. You came a little bit later. Can you tell us about growing up in Romania and what brought you to the United States? So I grew up in Romania. And after the communist regime came to power, things slowly start changing. They start taking property from my grandparents. My uncles, they were not allowed to own the restaurants anymore.

5:16They were taken by the government. It was very difficult. They start cutting electricity. Food was scarce. And that was probably one of the reason why I wanted to defect, to leave the country. And so you were 30 when you came to the U.S.? I was 31, yes. You're 31. And how did you get here? So my husband was ship captain, and he went to American embassy, asked for political asylum. And he came to United States, and I had to wait three years. The Romanian government didn't want to give me the passport. So you have this three-year wait between your husband applying for political asylum and getting to the U.S.

5:58And you landed in Los Angeles? Yes, I landed because I told him we need to move only in Los Angeles. We were restricted. We couldn't watch movies, Hollywood movies. Everything was black market. So we had to close the drapes and watch everything in the dark. And it was a dream. I remember watching Pretty Woman and Beverly Hills Cups, and I thought, I want to walk on that street. So what was it like when you got here? You land at LAX, and what happens? Okay, so the rule was that I could not leave with$1 in my pocket, because every citizen, Romanian citizen that owned any dollars, will be put in jail.

6:43So I asked, can I have at least$10 that just in case my husband will not be there, I could make a phone call. Like, no, we'll put you in jail if you have$1. And my fear was that I will walk in the airport, Los Angeles airport, and I will not, my husband will not be there. And I will not have a coin to make a phone call. Thankfully, he was there. And I just remember getting out of the airport in the car and I saw that bright light and the palm trees. The Los Angeles light. The Los Angeles light. Yeah. Yeah. Was magical, but scary in the same time. Tell me about the scary part. Oh my God. Everything was scary.

7:30The first thing that I wanted to see was a supermarket. I started walking on those endless aisles, and I was thinking, oh, my God. We didn't have, I mean, people would be in line for one chicken from 12 o 'clock at night until the next day at 3 o 'clock. And sometimes, some of them, they would still not be able to leave with anything. So I thought, oh, my God, the abundance. Right. You go from literal bread lines to lines of bread. Yes, exactly. You've got culture shock. You have everything. It was a shock. Everything. So what do you do then? So I found out from the church that was close to the apartment that they had English classes for immigrants.

8:23So I went and I started taking those classes. and my husband worked as a taxi driver. He met a Romanian gentleman and his wife was an esthetician. And when we met, she said, I'm pregnant and I have to take three months off and I would love to introduce you to the owner. You could work in my place and then when I am back, you have to leave. So for her, it was a good arrangement because she didn't want the owner to hire somebody and she could lose her job. Did you have a background in beauty at that point? So while my husband came, he saw that Eastern Bloc women, they all were estheticians. So he suggested I should go and get my license in Romania.

9:15So while I was waiting for my passport, I went to beauty school there. I worked there for two years and I was kind of surprised that nobody in Hollywood paid attention to eyebrows. And of course, in Romania, we didn't have disposable cameras. I bought a disposable camera and we start taking picture of us, family. And I realized that I look surprised in the picture because my eyebrow was pencil thin and round. So the shape of my eyebrows wasn't correct. And I remember my art teacher talking about how to draw a portrait and change an emotion. And using golden ratio, you could change an emotion. Let me pause you there because I'm not sure that all of our audience is familiar with the golden ratio.

10:10Could you explain the golden ratio for us? The golden ratio, it's a mathematical formula that is found in nature, plants, and everything that surrounds us. So it's a proportion that the human eye is encoded to recognize because it creates balance and proportion with everything. So the proportion is 1.618. That creates a harmony. And as you are seeing your own face in these photos from the disposable camera and looking at your clients, you're realizing the golden ratio needs to be applied to the brows. Yeah. What did you do with this realization? So I started, I wanted to fix my own eyebrows. And once I did that, my clients used to come and say, wow, you look different.

11:01You look rested. What did you do? And of course, I started sharing with them my discovery and I started shaping their eyebrows. And I went to the owner and I said, look, I think we should do this as a service. And they said, well, we cannot charge more than$10 because it wasn't a service. And it didn't make business sense for them. It didn't scale. Which didn't scale. But I really believed in it. and one Sunday I told my husband I'm going to open my own business so this was two years after I came to America I said well look I came here to do something I have I have to to do this this is why we came here otherwise we could stay in Romania or we'll go back if I will not be able to make it, we'll go back anyway.

11:56So I looked in a newspaper and I said, I'm going to rent a room in a salon only in Beverly Hills. Nothing to lose and everything to gain. So the boldness of the vision, the I'm going to do this, I know it doesn't scale yet, but I see the opportunity. I can feel it. I'm going to rent a room. Is a real leap of faith? Yes, absolutely. And this was the only country that will allow me to do that. So in the course of most of the 90s then, you go from one room rented in someone else's salon to Oprah. Oh, yeah, that was. So how do you go from renting a room and just starting to working with the biggest, most famous talent in the world?

12:46That's a very good question. So the moment I rented the room, which was scary in a way, what I wanted to do was to master my skill. I cannot tell you how many free eyebrows I've done at the beginning of my career. Every shampoo girl, every hairstylist, every makeup artist, everybody, because I want them to believe in my skills and talk to their clients, send me their clients. If they were happy and was important for me that they would be happy, they would send me their clients. Soon, Anastasia was working with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Didn't take long for women's magazines to take notice of this new beauty trend.

13:31She says that Allure magazine was the first to call her in the early 1990s. They asked me if they could write about the best kept secret in Hollywood and use a celebrity client. So I asked Michelle Pfeiffer, I called Michelle, and I said, can I use your name? He's like, oh, of course, of course. And at that time, remember, people didn't talk about facials or bikini, Brazilian bikini, and I thought, I'm not going to talk about eyebrows because eyebrows is something that it's a walking advertising. Everybody could see it and everybody is happy to talk about. And what it sounds like is you built really a hand by hand, person by person, an incredibly devoted clientele to the point where within just a few years, I mean, I don't know that our younger audience members know that Michelle Pfeiffer in the early mid 90s was, As, you know, I mean, as biggest stars existed.

14:42The biggest star that existed is true. Yeah. This is not a small thing. Not only can you call her, but she's going to say yes to being with you in a lawyer magazine. I have to say that my clients were the biggest supporter. They were the most wonderful people that helped me to learn the language better. If I had the question, hey, I don't know how to write a check. How should I do it? where should I like okay we'll help you yeah no I have a photograph in my home that I love it's a sign and it reads something like um the words I love you are indeed beautiful and powerful but there are no uh more important three words in the English language than can I help and yes that spirit of wanting to help absolutely is so so deeply powerful And I learned from them that you have to ask.

15:41Still ahead, how Anastasia's daughter helped her company reach new heights as an early adopter of Instagram.

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16:26It became overwhelming and we were like, we need home, but not in our actual home. We realized that there was also a need in our community for something bigger in our neighborhood. So we had to find a place. Moving from a home operation into a storefront was a huge next step. But Nicole and Mike were able to take it on with the help of Capital One Business. It's not for the weak. As a small business, finding resources is super important because that's the way you'll be able to manage and scale. We would have never done that without having Capital One to be able to help us along the way. The cashback rewards are very helpful.

17:02You know, it just gave us that runway to be able to breathe a little bit. Then you get to focus on the cooking of the food and making the experience great. To learn more, go to CapitalOne.com slash business cards. Every leader knows this moment. You've got the vision, the strategy, the plan, but somehow the team isn't clicking. Deadlines slip, momentum fades, and here's the kicker. Disengaged employees cost U.S. companies nearly$1.9 trillion every year. At Project Management Institute, teams gain the skills they need to collaborate, deliver, and turn strategy into results because the real cost isn't the training.

17:46It's what happens when you don't. Project Management Institute. Empower your people. Turn potential into performance. Find the answers at pmi.org. Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and more on our YouTube channel. Anastasia went from Hollywood's best-kept secret to a household name when she appeared on Oprah. They said, well, Oprah wants to get her eyebrows done by Anastasia live. And it was kind of scary because to do live her eyebrows. And doing life in front of a camera is very difficult. So, of course, I said yes. I went there. And it was very powerful. Oprah had always been central to Anastasia's idea of success in America.

18:48And remember, I came in this country and we had only one TV. And my husband used to watch Lakers and all the news. and I said, I want to watch only one show, this three o 'clock show, this woman called Oprah. And he's like, but you don't understand English. Like, why do you want? And it's like, I don't, I don't know, but I feel like I want to watch this show. This is the deal. You could watch all day long, all day night. I need to watch at three o 'clock. I need to understand how she ask questions because one day I'm going to be on her show. My beginnings, I saw it. I put it in the universe. So when I went and I did her eyebrows was, oh my God, I couldn't, I wanted to cry.

19:36I wanted to jump. I don't even remember what, you know what I mean? It was one of the most powerful woman on the planet, the most influential woman, and her power and her energy, her aura was so powerful. What is the Oprah effect? What happens after you're on the show? The phone will not stop ringing. It changes everything. And so there's one direction to go in building this business where you could be franchising and launching Anastasia Brows all across America and what have you. There's another where you start launching consumer products. Which direction did you go? So I start, I actually, I work on both.

20:26I used to do master classes and teach people, esthetician, how to do eyebrows. And it was very difficult because they will get the certificate. They will put it in their salon. And then if they will have a client that wasn't happy, they peel off half of their eyebrows, they will call my salon because it was my name there. You've certified them. Yes. Yeah. So to keep the quality was very difficult. But every face is different. Completely. And so the judgment of the person who's providing the service comes into play in a way. It just doesn't in other kinds of businesses. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

21:07So when I start doing eyebrows, I used to mix some Vaseline with aloe vera and eyeshadow to fill in the eyebrows to create that perfect shape. And the client will come back and say, well, I know my eyebrow looks amazing when I leave, but after I take a shower, I need that product. So that was the reason why I wanted to create products. So it was an authentic, a normal thing for my business to do. because I had such a long list of celebrity. Nordstrom invited me to launch the product there. And that was the perfect moment for me to launch the brow studios. Because in 2000, when I launched Nordstrom's, women were not very familiar with filling their eyebrows with powder or pomade.

21:59So they needed to be educated. So partnering with Nordstrom was the best thing. We opened Brow Studios, esthetician. I had at that time a team of field team that will go and will train the girls and myself. Every weekend I used to travel in different cities and train the estheticians. Did you need to raise money to be in the consumer products or were you able to use the Nordstrom deal to fund the consumer products? In 1990, nobody wanted to invest in something called eyebrows product. So I had to work nonstop doing eyebrows in the salon. I had a part-time job flipping houses. So I would buy a house, fix it, and after two years, I will sell it and those money I will put in the company again.

22:57So it was quite a challenge. And going to Nordstrom's, it really helped me to have a different way of doing the business. I mean, they were great partners. Even today, they are still amazing. And they helped me to build that service business. Right. And the service business marketed the products as well. Of course. Yeah. Of course. It's a virtuous cycle. Absolutely. It's perfect. In that 2000 to 2010, 11, 12 range, sort of the consumer internet is starting to explode, but finally Instagram arrives and changes how beauty and beauty products are marketed. How did you grow the business in that phase before we got to the explosion of beauty on social media?

23:45I used to be on every single show, TV show that I could think about it. Because if you think about it, all the TV anchor, they wanted their eyebrow beautiful. So they used to come to the salon, producers and everybody. So my deal was, okay, I will do your eyebrow, but I want to be on the show to talk about my products. So that was very important. Plus when I used to travel Sundays and Mondays around the country, before I would go at Nordstrom's, I would go on TV, network in that specific area. Right. If you're going to the Nordstrom, Cincinnati, you're going to hit. Exactly. Right. Or Chicago.

24:28Yes. So plus all the beauty editors. So I did everything possible the old way. Well, there's no question hard work has been a core part of your story. And then this cheat code arrives in the form of Instagram when it comes to beauty. So a lot of businesses that were established in the 90s and early 2000s were not able to take advantage of the opportunities. They didn't see it. They weren't nimble enough. They weren't entrepreneurial or opportunistic enough. And a lot of companies that reach scale and have a founder who have done things one way for a long time, they miss it. And that's where insurgents come and take over.

25:12But you caught that wave. You took that wave. So what happened that let you do that? How did that happen? So my daughter started working with me. Saturday night, we'll take our carry-on and we'll fly to different cities to promote the product. I used to shave the eyebrows and I would recommend the color and the products. And she used to tell them how to use them. So after a while, she said, Mom, I work seven days a week. I'm only 18. I was like, it's this app. We should have our products there. We should talk about them. We should post. We should do videos. And I said, Claudia, I don't like Facebook.

25:52I don't care how many coffees people will get like, no, no, no, this is not Facebook. This is a different type of social media. I'm like, OK, let's give a try. So we posted one video and it was incredible. It was our Brow Wiz that is one of our most popular pencil, mechanical pencil. And of course, we read every single comment and was one comment that said, oh, I wish I would have that pencil. I could buy that pencil. And I answered, I said, can you please send me your address? I would love to gift you one. And she said, oh, no, you can't because I live in a small little town or village in India.

26:42When I read that, I thought, wow, this is something to pay attention to. I will never be able to reach a person in a small village in India. Yeah. So I sat down with Claudia, like, let's hire some younger kids and let's really do this. So we were 24-7 with the Instagram posting. And you caught the next wave of what we now call influencers, right? Whether it's Kardashians or what have you, who were native to that platform and so powerful on that platform. And so you built the business quite impressively. I mean, this has become a very big business to the point where you took on private equity money.

27:31Can you tell us about the decision to take a private equity investment? Well, in 2018, we were unstoppable. It was incredible. How big was the business in 2018, give or take? The business was$320 million in sales and with an incredible margin, incredible margin. And you had not taken outside investment up to this point? No. No, I own 100 % of the business. To be honest with you, I didn't even know how much the company was worth it, but we wanted to expand international. I realized to do business internationally, it's much more difficult. And to establish every country was way difficult. And for me to do that would take me away from doing what I have to do that nobody else could do, which is marketing and the products.

28:30And was a decision that we wanted to take a partner to help us expand internationally. And this is how we end up a partner with TPG. Right. And they made a sizable investment in the business. How has it changed having a private equity partner in the business? Well, I mean, they are great partners, very smart people. Unfortunately, there were some events, natural events that really hurt the business. COVID was probably the most difficult part. And it was very hard. Yeah. Very hard because you couldn't touch the makeup. Stores were closed. Even when they opened, you couldn't use the tester. So it was hard.