Behind Her Empire: Anastasia Beverly Hills’ Founder on the Eyebrows That Launched An Empire
Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
On this episode of Behind Her Empire, Anastasia Founder and beauty mogul Anastasia Soare shares her journey to founding one of the most popular cosmetic brands on the market, and what led her to the success of her business.
Anastasia is a Beverly Hills-based beauty brand known for its iconic eyebrow products and services. Soare founded her company in 1997, at a time when brow services were relatively unknown. She disrupted the beauty space with her brow shaping technique, which she later patented as the “Golden Ratio.”
“I really believed in eyebrows,” Soare said. “I really believe that there is a mathematical formula that the human eye is encoded to recognize that balance and proportion that the eyebrow does can completely change the face.”
As successful as Soare is, starting out in the United States wasn’t easy.
Soare left Romania in 1989 during a time of Communist regime because she wanted a better life for herself and her family. When Soare arrived in Sherman Oaks, she said everything felt so foreign to her and the most difficult part was not being able to speak the language.
But despite the hurdles in the first six months of living in Los Angeles, Soare pushed through and landed a job as an aesthetician. While the job was originally only temporary, the owner of the salon loved her and offered her a permanent position.
“I will do anything because I want to learn,” she said. “I was like a sponge. I wanted to understand and it was absolutely this desire to learn and to find out what is going on and how I could become better.”
As Soare gained more clientele, she began to notice how frequently she received compliments on her brows. She started sharing techniques with clients and offering free brow services.
“We didn’t even charge it,” Soare said. “But because I was booked for a one hour facial, I [would] be late for my next client, so the owner didn't want me to do eyebrows anymore.”
But Soare knew her brow service was a hit and believed that it could take off as a business. She rented a space at a Beverly Hills salon and started offering eyebrow shaping services in addition to facials and body waxing.
Since she was across the street from Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, the makeup artists noticed that it was so much easier to do makeup when their clients' brows were shaped to their face. They started to send all of their clients over to Soare, and she quickly outgrew the space.
“I [had] to scale the business,” she said. “I [couldn’t] be in one room for the rest of my life. I have to do something. That’s why I risked my life to come here. I left my family and I need to pursue the American dream.”
In her eyes, the next step after owning her own salon was to launch a makeup line. Soare didn’t realize she had to pay makeup artists at Nordstrom and other department stores to sell her products.
“Nobody likes to lose money,” she said. “I realized you will take a chance and you will push as much as you can. But when you feel that it’s a dead end, you need to take a cold shower and make a decision and say ‘Ok, this is a loss. Let’s go with what is the winner.’”
For over 20 years of the business, Soare has self funded Anastasia up until 2018 when she made the decision she wanted to expand the brand internationally.
“That was the time when I knew that we needed to bring on a company or a partner that has got international experience,” Soare said. “And that’s when we partnered with TPG.”
Soare said her life is dedicated to her business and she wants to continue to expand the brand.
“We want to find ways to market,” she said. “You see the platform's are changing and what used to be the magazines, the traditional advertising, now it’s different. So I do social media and I like to always to be on top to hear what is new.”
dot.LA Reporter Decerry Donato contributed to this post.
This podcast is produced by Behind Her Empire. The views and opinions expressed in the show are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of dot.LA or its newsroom.
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Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
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