Sasha Plavsic: Founder of ILIA Beauty

Episode 858

Building clean beauty before clean beauty was even a category — that’s the magic ✨

On The Kara Goldin Show, I sit down with Sasha Plavsic, Founder of ILIA Beauty — a brand that helped redefine what modern makeup could be.
We talk about how Sasha turned her own skin struggles into a category-shaping brand, why she set out to bridge the gap between natural and prestige beauty, and what it took to launch ILIA with just six lip tints in Vancouver. We also get into product discipline, the overuse of the term “clean beauty,” scaling without compromising standards, and staying creative after acquisition.
If you’re interested in learning what it takes to build before the market is ready, trust your instincts before the world catches up, or create a beauty brand that actually lasts — check out the interview on my podcast. You can find it here or anywhere you listen to podcasts 🎧

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. 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, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control, control, control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin 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. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go, let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. The beauty industry loves a trend, but every once in a while someone shows up before the trend exists and actually changes a category. That’s Sasha Plavsic. 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. She launched ILIA 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. So, Sasha is the founder of VILIA Beauty, and I’m so excited to welcome her. So, welcome Sasha. So excited to meet you.

Sasha Plavsic 1:46
Thank you. Excited to be here.

Kara Goldin 1:48
I’m such a big fan, such a big fan. So, and I, 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

Sasha Plavsic 2:08
thanks.

Kara Goldin 2:09
So, for listeners just discovering or hearing about ILIA, how do you describe the brand today, and what makes it different from the beauty brands people maybe have seen out there,

Sasha Plavsic 2:21
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, so 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. 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.

Kara Goldin 3:14
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 and this industry?

Sasha Plavsic 3:25
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 oh eight, 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, and 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 gonna 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, I tried natural, I tried conventional, and I was seeking and searching for products that I felt really didn’t exist at that time,

Kara Goldin 4:46
so was clean beauty a thing when you were starting this concept, or

Sasha Plavsic 4:53
no, like

Kara Goldin 4:54
that, that concept I feel like ILIA was one of the first,

Sasha Plavsic 4:59
yeah. Yeah, so how that really came about, I would say when I was looking around in oh 809, 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 chat 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% 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 at the cash wrap, people 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, there, since that synthetic based, but there’s a low percentage, or this synthetic at this percentage 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, and so what was I? And I think there were some other brands – well, I know there were some other brands in other categories, such as skin care, 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.

Kara Goldin 7:06
Wow,

Sasha Plavsic 7:07
so I launched in 2011 I moved back to the US 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 every, like, I had to get my visa, everything had to get organized properly, and have a corporation that was set up in the US. So moved back down to LA, and from there just started building everything a little bit more, a little bit more. We had prestige accounts around the world. Net-a-porta launched beauty in 2013 I was at ABC Home in New York. I was at Colette 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 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, and 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 we’re launching with them in that space, and together as a partnership, I believe we helped push that category to the forefront.

Kara Goldin 8:41
ILIA is so incredible, and you’ve had amazing, amazing space, and obviously a partnership with Sephora as well. So, when you launched in Sephora, then how many SKUs did you actually have?

Sasha Plavsic 8:56
Two.

Kara Goldin 8:58
Oh, wow, wow, that’s incredible. And what, and what were those SKUs?

Sasha Plavsic 9:03
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,

Kara Goldin 9:29
so interesting. So I read that six lip tints, is that right? That was kind of the the original original. So when you look at everything today, from your formulation to the packaging, obviously you have so many more SKUs, but has the actual brand itself changed much

Sasha Plavsic 9:53
visually? It has. We went through a rebrand in 2019 I think the formula. 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 refurbed, and another one’s getting refurbed right now. 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, I 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,

Kara Goldin 10:58
and why do you think that is? I mean, what, 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?

Sasha Plavsic 11:12
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, so 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, 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 wearer. So, for people that are more sensitive to mascara, which a lot of us are, I mean, I have such sensitive eyes. I 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. 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 Ilia. It’s not just how something looks when you apply it, because a lot of makeup will look good when you put it on. How does it wear, like a foundation? Does it break in two to three hours? Does it? 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 tick boxes in

Kara Goldin 13:27
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, or it, 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.

Sasha Plavsic 13:59
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 an 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? There’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 are 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. One 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,

Kara Goldin 15:45
so ILIA grew as consumers became more ingredient aware, so How do you educate people without overwhelming them on your products?

Sasha Plavsic 15:57
That’s a great question. I think that, so I, there’s sometimes we’re not aligned, the product team and the marketing team on what to say first when a product comes out. I believe today that the product has to be the best, so if we launch a powder baked blush, it’s got to perform in what we see as the best out there, so it should not dry out a lot of powder, make powder blushes will dry out over time. It’s got to be able to have good pickup. It’s got to be able to lay down nicely in a way that’s not going to be chalky or kind of patchy. So, there’s all these elements that we look to, and that’s just one product, for example, but we really look to ensure we are bringing performance to top of mind, because if you have a beautiful ingredient story, or even beautiful clinical claims, if the product doesn’t work as well as one of your other products, you likely will not go and repurchase it. So, I’d say, what we look at is, what is it, what is what is required to create a replenishment here or repurchase, because that is really where you begin to build loyalty. That is how you cross a customer over into other categories, and then you can have them be loyal, perhaps in three or four categories, of which that’s how you, I believe, create longevity in a brand and trust, and so those are really more at the forefront of what we’re doing, and so the goal is to build trust. How we get there, to your point, is to ensure that we’re leading with the right messaging, depending on what product we’re launching. It will have some products will lead with ingredients, others will lead with performance, others will lead with the story. What is it about it that we think will be, you know, the biggest aha for a customer when we’re launching, and that is something that is constantly in the works internally.

Kara Goldin 17:48
So, before we hit record, you and I were talking about you are the founder and will always be the founder, but you brought in a CEO pretty early on. Can you talk about that decision, and what’s your thoughts on that today that you would suggest to others?

Sasha Plavsic 18:05
I can, and I’ve said this story a few times, if anybody’s listened to other podcasts, but it was during that initial meeting with Sephora in 2015 and I was sitting next to the head of color, Allison Hahn, who recently retired, and I remember I was kind of a mess, I think. I just had my first baby. I didn’t come with a deck or anything. I came with my charm and my product, and I turned to her when she said, you know, we want to test this category, and I said, I don’t understand your world. I don’t know how to play in this sandbox, really, and I need somebody who knows how to do this. And she looked at me, and she said, ‘You know what? I think I have someone for you. And it was at that point that I was introduced, via her, to Linda Berkowitz, who became really my partner and Ilia’s CEO in 2016 which the two of us really co-CEO to that company, I recognized I was head of product, really good at product, creative marketing. She was really great in sales, finance, ops, and we overlapped in some of these areas, but ultimately, what made that a great decision, and we were only a few million in revenue is that I was able to really focus on the brand and the product, and she was able to focus on the bigger parts of the business, and I think for many founders there’s a bit of an ego pull to say that you are the CEO. What a CEO ultimately is, is it’s an operator, they’re not always the most creative, except when it comes to real problem solving within the business, that’s that’s their job, but once you get to a larger size, it’s I would say I would strongly advise that you have somebody that knows how to take a business from, like, let’s say you want to go to 100 million, they know how to do that, they’ve been driving that car before. Um, it really helps to have somebody there who knows to do that, because then you can avoid a lot of the pitfalls that you know you would, you would normally hit if you didn’t have that experience there. So it was probably one of the better decisions, and to just tee that off, just because you have a CEO with that title does not mean that you don’t have final say, so I still had final say, which was usually something her and I would align on, and that to me again is just the art of partnership.

Kara Goldin 20:31
You built ILIA without typical connections or capital, right? You continued to grow it. Did you raise outside capital,

Sasha Plavsic 20:41
we did. So I am Canadian, and coming into the US, I had to build my credit from nothing, but because I’m a foreigner, I definitely had a cap on how much of a line of credit I could pull. So we were very thoughtful in how we were able to kind of have a revolving door on a line of credit that was a couple 100,000 because the business was only a few million in revenue until 2016 17. We were able to stretch that and be very smart and lean in our team, and there wasn’t really the days of advertising and Instagram just yet. So I think from a timing standpoint, we did not need a lot of capital in the beginning. We were roughly at around 5 million in revenue. When we went to do our first raise in 2018 we raised 3 million. The next year we were really starting to grow. We were going to hit 15 million, and I realized we were going to run out of money in several months, so went and did another round and raised 10. So we raised roughly a total of 13 million. With that capital, we were able to extend it, and then we just had rapid fire growth when Covid hit. We went from 15 to 37 to 100 and we had a very strong profit at that 100, and that’s when we went to market and were required.

Kara Goldin 21:59
That’s incredible, so your acquisition by the Courtin Clarence family in 2022 you stayed involved creatively. So, why was that so important to you?

Sasha Plavsic 22:13
I think it wasn’t just important to me, I think it was also important to them, and I think it’s important that if you are a founder and you are building a business, you kind of have to ask yourself what you want at the end, and what is the end? Do you want to sell? Do you not want to sell? Do you want to run a smaller business that’s generating a decent revenue? It could be, you know, under 5 million, and you have a small team, and you’re comfortable. Do you want to get it to something big that requires more people, more problems, and have it be acquired. So those are just some questions I think that are important to ask. For myself personally, I wanted to find a home that would help to bring it like an aligned perspective, and the values of Clarens, though we are very different, the values are very similar, so that was a natural fit, and ultimately they have really left us to do what we know how to do well, and we haven’t been thrust into a mold. There are other strategics out there that will kind of take you, and I don’t want to say break you, but they break everything down and then re-put it into their engine, that’s not what we have experienced, so it really is operating as its own separate entity. We haven’t moved our formulas, we like nothing ultimately has changed. There’s a different reporting structure, and there’s some different obligations that are required financially, but outside of that, there’s not huge changes, and that’s really what I wanted for the business.

Kara Goldin 23:47
So you built ILIA by trusting your instincts before the market validated them. What do you trust now that you didn’t trust back then?

Sasha Plavsic 23:58
I think I trust myself. Maybe I think I.. it was hard to be building a category that was not validated yet, right? I think there were a lot of questions around it. There still are, you know, a lot of questions, like what is clean? I think it’s unique to every clean brand. Everybody kind of has their own definition, but I would say the validity around the category in how the products were working and what they were doing, there was a lot of uncertainty, and I feel like that today is gone, and it is a category that is here to stay. So I do trust in the category, and I do trust in, you know, that the people, many of the brands that are out there in these categories, in this category, I’ll say that again, many of the brands that are out there in this category are looking to be thoughtful in how they’re building their products, how they’re giving back, how. They’re looking at their packaging or sustainability, and that is a really beautiful thing to see today after 15 years of doing this.

Kara Goldin 25:08
Yeah, definitely. Sasha, thank you so much for joining today, and I love your story, and it’s a great reminder to founders who really want to change the status quo, that it can be done. It’s, it’s hard, right? And building a new category, in addition to a company, as you’ve done, is not for the faint of heart, but you’ve, you’ve really done it, and you and your team have done it. So, so, so incredible. Everyone needs to check out Iliad Beauty, whether in stores or online, and I love watching it, and can’t wait to see what else you do. So, the products are terrific. So, thank you again, and thanks everyone for listening. Until next time on The Kara Goldin Show.

Sasha Plavsic 25:56
Thanks, Kara.

Kara Goldin 25:58
Thanks again for listening to The Kara Goldin show, if you would please give us a review, and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit, and of course, feel free to subscribe, so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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