858 Sasha Plavsic: Founder of ILIA Beauty

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0:45Kara Goldin:Stop piecing your software together. Go to odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com to learn more. I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Golden Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time.

1:29Kara Goldin:Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time. I felt that pressure firsthand. You know, a bad hire isn't just frustrating, it's expensive in time, money, and team morale. And yet hiring the right person can feel like a full-time job on top of everything else you're already doing. Sifting through applications, trying to spot the real standouts, second-guessing decisions, it can get overwhelming fast. That's why having a way to save time without sacrificing quality isn't just nice to have, it's critical.

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3:01Kara Goldin:With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden. Terms and conditions apply. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it.

3:50Kara Goldin:And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have, it's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity, you just need it to work every time. That's why AT &T business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to The Kara Golden Show. So the beauty industry loves a trend, but every once in a while, someone shows up before the trend exists and actually changes a category.

4:42Kara Goldin:That's Sasha Plavisic. Long before clean beauty became a marketing line, Sasha was trying to solve a real problem. Makeup that performed, felt good on sensitive skin, and didn't force consumers to choose between natural and effective. is she launched Ilya Beauty with six lip tints in Vancouver and went on to build one of the brands that helped completely reshape modern beauty. I'm looking forward to speaking with Sasha today about building before the market is ready, scaling without compromising standards and staying creative and what it really takes to build a beauty brand that actually lasts.

5:26Kara Goldin:So Sasha is the founder of Ilya Beauty and I'm so excited to welcome her. So welcome, Sasha. So excited to meet you. Thank you. Excited to be here. I'm such a big fan. Such a big fan. And I always love meeting the people behind the brands and I think about you a lot. And when I go into my local Sephora stores in the Bay Area, so definitely just love what you're doing. So this episode of the case, Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Upwork. As your business grows, so does the list of things competing for your attention. The best founders know that scaling isn't about doing more yourself. It's about getting the right people around you.

6:13Kara Goldin:Whether you need help with marketing, design, operations, or technology, Upwork makes it easy to find experienced professionals who can jump in quickly and help you move faster. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. It helps growing teams move faster by giving them access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories so you can get the help you need exactly when you need it without adding full-time overhead. You can browse profiles, review past work, and even get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly.

6:59Kara Goldin:With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. Upwork also takes the operational hassle off your plate by handling contracts and payments in one place, freeing you up to focus on running and growing your business. And it's no surprise that thousands of growing companies already trust Upwork for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free.

7:44Kara Goldin:That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Upwork.com. So for listeners just discovering or hearing about Ilya, how do you describe the brand today and what makes it different from the beauty brands people maybe have seen out there? It's interesting. You know, I think I talk about this with the team, But if I'm in an elevator, that elevator pitch or somebody says, what do you do? I usually start by saying I work in the beauty industry to kind of like not say who I am or what I do or what the brand is. And then and then if they ask again, I like to say I like to make makeup that makes your skin better.

8:30So that is really that's what I do. And that's what I like to do. And that's probably, you know, ultimately, that is the DNA of the brand. And when I launched this in 2011, I started exploring all that in 2009 and had really bad skin, which I know you can relate to because I've read your story as well. And yeah, I would really say ultimately, you know, in the beginning it was like, I think I had a sentence on my website that said, I want to bring something new to the world of beauty that makes your skin look and feel alive. And that was really the North Star.

9:02Kara Goldin:So you were a consumer with your own skin challenges. Had you grown up outside of being a consumer? Had you been in this business, in this industry? Yes and no. So my background actually was in branding and graphic design. That was really my first life in my 20s until I was roughly 30. My last gig was with Urban Decay Cosmetics. So I had it. And before that, I was in the eyewear industry. But I had exposure to the beauty industry through working at Urban. And the recession was happening. So this was in 08, and I came in to help with some packaging, and I think they were starting to do a rebrand at that time, of which I was offered a position.

9:47And because it was the recession, they were offering me way below what my normal pay was. And I thought to myself, okay, you know what, I think I'm just going to take a beat here. And I ended up leaving California. At this point, I'd lived in London, New York, California, and I hadn't really been home since I was 18 and home is Vancouver, Canada. So I came home and that was really where the idea kind of started to blossom. And it blossomed ultimately because my skin was so reactive. I had just gone off the birth control pill. I had all this hormonal acne and everything that I was putting on it was making it worse.

10:24I tried natural, I tried conventional, and I was seeking and searching for products that I felt really didn't exist at that time.

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12:04Kara Goldin:Give your skin the affordable, luxurious glow-up it deserves. Go to naturium.com slash Kara Golden for 10 % off your first purchase today. That's naturium.com slash Kara Golden. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Upwork. As your business grows, so does the list of things competing for your attention. The best founders know that scaling isn't about doing more yourself. It's about getting the right people around you. Whether you need help with marketing, design, operations, or technology, Upwork makes it easy to find experienced professionals who can jump in quickly and help you move faster.

12:46Kara Goldin:Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. It helps growing teams move faster by giving them access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories so you can get the help you need exactly when you need it without adding full-time overhead. You can browse profiles, review past work, and even get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours.

13:33Kara Goldin:No endless searching required. Upwork also takes the operational hassle off your plate by handling contracts and payments in one place, freeing you up to focus on running and growing your business. And it's no surprise that thousands of growing companies already trust Upwork for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. So was clean beauty a thing when you were starting this concept?

14:25Kara Goldin:No. Like that concept, I feel like Ilya was one of the first. Yeah. So how that really came about, I would say when I was looking around in 08, 09, it was green beauty and natural beauty. And you would find these brands mostly in little boutiques. you wouldn't see it you know in the department stores or some of the bigger prestige retailers so there was the green space and a lot of it was more natural and organic so when I started I actually I had a like a lip chap that I'd been using that I bought in Europe I used to buy it and ship it over or go over there or have friends bring it to me that left a beautiful tint on my lips and I wanted to see if I could recreate it to be something more natural and organic but that felt really nourishing that left your lips more hydrated with each use and that was buildable in its intent so you could kind of do one swipe for a lighter wash and then build it up as you go that was the brief and when I launched that it actually was 85 percent organic in materials because a lot of that is butters and waxes but I did use dyes so when I went to market which was really me walking into little stores and asking if they'd take my little display and put it in the cash wrap.

15:45People were trying to coin what I was because I wasn't completely organic, even though I had a high percentage. I wasn't totally natural. I used dye. And people said, well, what are you? You know, you don't really fit into any of these categories. And I would say, well, I know, but if I don't use these ingredients, it's not going to work as well. And yes, they're synthetic based, but there's a low percentage or this synthetic at this percentage, it doesn't matter. It's really neutralizing as a base. And so there was definitely, I kind of was put in a corner, to be honest, and shunned because people said I wasn't part of the green or natural crowd.

16:22And so what was I? And I think there were some other brands. Well, I know there were some other brands and other categories, such as skincare, doing the same thing, working with synthetics in a thoughtful way, some natural ingredients, but really trying to define what was then going to become the clean category. Wow. So I launched in 2011. I moved back to the U.S. in 2012 because I was actually bringing lipstick components into Long Beach. And they're like, you need to register your business down here. And luckily, I already had my social. So I had to get my visa. Everything had to get organized properly and have a corporation that was set up in the U.S.

17:02So moved back down to L.A. and from there just started building everything a little bit more, a little bit more. We had prestige accounts around the world. MetaPorter launched Beauty in 2013. I was at ABC Home in New York. I was at Collette in Paris. And it was in 2015 that Sephora called me back and I went in for a meeting and they said, we want to test this category. it's going to be called clean we would like you to help us formulate the ingredient list for makeup and you are going to be the guinea pig and that was really um the beginning and it was very it was very exciting actually because it was it was almost like you were standing at an edge of a cliff and there were other brands that were starting to march in this direction but there was nothing truly defined yet.

17:53And I will say that Sephora is one of the reasons that category has become what it's become because it helped to propel it forward with the brands that were launching with them in that space. And together as a partnership, I believe we helped push that category to the forefront. Ilya is so incredible and you've had amazing, amazing space and

18:19Kara Goldin:obviously a partnership with Sephora as well. So when you launched in Sephora then, how many SKUs did you actually have? Two. Oh, wow. Wow. That's incredible. And what were those SKUs? Well, in fairness, we launched two SKUs. We probably had about 30, maybe 40, but we launched two SKUs that no longer exist. They were two illuminators. So they were a little chubby stick like our multi-stick, but they had an illuminator formula inside of it. And they were on an end cap and they were tiny and it was really very minuscule and very small when we launched. This episode of the Cara Golden Show is brought to you by Upwork.

19:05Kara Goldin:As your business grows, so does the list of things competing for your attention. The best founders know that scaling isn't about doing more yourself. It's about getting the right people around you. Whether you need help with marketing, design, operations, or technology, Upwork makes it easy to find experienced professionals who can jump in quickly and help you move faster. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. It helps growing teams move faster by giving them access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories so you can get the help you need exactly when you need it without adding full-time overhead.

19:55Kara Goldin:You can browse profiles, review past work, and even get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. Upwork also takes the operational hassle off your plate by handling contracts and payments in one place, freeing you up to focus on running and growing your business. And it's no surprise that thousands of growing companies already trust Upwork for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support.

20:39Kara Goldin:It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. So interesting. So I read that six lip tints, is that right? That was kind of the original, original. So when you look at everything today from your formulation to the packaging, obviously you have so many more skews, but has the actual brand itself changed much? visually it has we went through a rebrand in 2019 i think the formulas have a lot of those formulas that i launched in the early days there's maybe only three of them that are left and one of them i've actually i've touched and and refurbed and another one's getting refurbed right now um so i would say the core again of makeup that makes your skin better is still there and ensuring that we are really making products that perform.

21:55I think a lot of people have learned about us over time through social media or word of mouth, and people will actually know our products more than they know the name of our brand, which is really interesting. Or maybe that's changing a little bit more today, but initially that's what it was. It's like, oh, I have this white mascara and I have this skin tint. And it was items that became hero products and leaders in the makeup category, not in clean, but overall. Like our mascara at Sephora has been the number one mascara overall for about four or five years.

22:30Kara Goldin:And why do you think that is? I mean, what do you think it is about mascara? And I think most people who wear mascara know that there are different types of mascara. But what is it that makes yours so unique? Well, it was so unique when I presented it in 2017. They were thinking about not taking it because at the time it was very trendy to have really voluminous lashes and something that, you know, kind of gave you more of that spidery effect and a lot of volume. and this was definitely a lighter, more lengthening, kind of lifting mascara and nothing in the top 10 mascaras was kind of hitting that mark.

23:11So there was concern around, would it be able to break into the category? And a lot of mascaras don't. They come in and they go out and they're in there and they call it the mascara graveyard and it was a risk to bring it in. I do think what made this formula very unique was the brush. We have a dual-sided brush that helps to really lift and lengthen And then the other side helps to comb out the formula to give it more of like a really soft finish so it doesn't look kind of spiky or clumpy in any way. It is safe for sensitive eyes and safe for contact lens wearers. So for people that are more sensitive to mascara, which a lot of us are, I mean, I have such sensitive eyes.

23:50I talked about that earlier with you before we hopped on here. And it's so important to be able to have something gentle around the eyes, of which I don't think certain ingredients benefit the eyes in many ways. So we were really thoughtful in how we put that together. It doesn't flake, it doesn't smudge, and it's easy to remove at night. So your lashes stay lifted. It's kind of like, I think when somebody's buying a mascara, they're looking for that 360 approach. And that's really a big cornerstone for Ilya. It's not just how something looks when you apply it, because a lot of makeup will look good when you put it on.

24:24How does it wear? Like a foundation, does it break in two to three hours? Does it cling to your dry patches? Can you see it kind of melting later in the day? And really, it's that kind of effortless wear that should last from the time you put it on to the time you take it off. Even if it fades slightly, as long as it's fading evenly and not looking kind of strange on your skin, that is a big win. So I would say for the mascara to make sure that it's comfortable and it can come off easily, but not flake or smudge in the day, those are things that people really are looking for that we were able to tip boxes in.

24:58Kara Goldin:Whenever a big term like clean or natural or organic comes out, then there's followers and everybody starts to change that term. What have you seen clean change from since you launched it that is annoying, right? Or, you know, makes you think that, you know, that that's not really what the term is at all. Maybe that people have taken advantage of it. I think that it is a tricky term because the opposite of clean is not necessarily a nice word. and for us we would define clean at ilia as thoughtful beauty so one of our core values is actually think fully and think fully means that you're really again thinking from a 360 degree approach so how does you know even even internally how does one decision affect another department how does one change in this formula affect the timeline how doesn't it how does this impact the customer.

26:08There's a real thoughtfulness to the way that the formula is constructed, how it will perform. For us specifically, I think we're nearly finished the testing where we can claim that all of our products are safe for sensitive skin. Most of the formulas for complexion, I think all of them now are without fragrance. So it is really, again, an approach that is thoughtful to ensure that we're bringing harmony to the skin. And again, to go back to making that skin look and feel alive. We do also have active ingredients. I think there's a lot of people in this space that do do that. We are definitely in there at a clinical level and have clinical claims on most of our products to ensure that we are able to claim the benefit.

26:52One thing I think that's changed for us is that as we got bigger and as we got bought, it's really important that if we say something, you know, and there's a claim that we are able to back it up. There's a lot of ways in beauty that you can get around saying something and it can be more of a marketing claim. But a clinical claim is something really different. And that's something that we really went after and I believe creates a big point of difference between us and the other brands in the space.

27:17Kara Goldin:This episode of the Cara Golden Show is brought to you by Upwork. As your business grows, so does the list of things competing for your attention. The best founders know that scaling isn't about doing more yourself. It's about getting the right people around you. Whether you need help with marketing, design, operations, or technology, Upwork makes it easy to find experienced professionals who can jump in quickly and help you move faster. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more.

27:57Kara Goldin:It helps growing teams move faster by giving them access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories. So you can get the help you need exactly when you need it without adding full-time overhead. You can browse profiles, review past work, and even get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. Upwork also takes the operational hassle off your plate by handling contracts and payments in one place, freeing you up to focus on running and growing your business.

28:45Kara Goldin:And it's no surprise that thousands of growing companies already trust Upwork for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com, Upwork dot com. So Ilya grew as consumers became more ingredient aware. So how do you educate people without overwhelming them on your products? That's a great question. I think that sometimes we're not aligned, the product team and the marketing team, on what to say first when a product comes out.