Transcript of the interview with Alina Roytberg and Lev Glazman, Co-Founders of Fresh Cosmetics (Acquired by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, ‘LVMH’) for The Failure Factor Podcast.

Megan Bruneau: Lev, Alina, welcome to the show.

Lev Glazman: Thank you, Megan. Great to be with you.

Alina Roytberg: Thank you for having us.

Megan Bruneau: So great to be with you, too. For anyone who doesn’t know, what is Fresh?

The Science of Nature

Alina Roytberg: Well, Fresh is a beauty company. We like to look at it from a global view. It’s a beauty company particularly focused on skincare with origins in lifestyle that is really evolving into the science of nature—the natural ingredients, their roles, and their powers, and how you combine the current science of skincare technology and natural ingredients.

Alina Roytberg: Sourcing into something that’s not only sustainable but also extremely efficacious. Fresh products are extremely experiential and highly sensorial. We feel that the experience of using the products is just as indulgent as the results are effective.

Lev Glazman: The science of nature is very fascinating. We had the ability to take our magnifying glass and try to understand why these ingredients, which had been used for generations, actually worked. Modern technology allows us to take this magnifying glass and understand their power, and that’s really the essence of Fresh.

Megan Bruneau: Incredible. Well, I can’t wait to hear the story. Take us back to the inception point of Fresh.

A Fateful Meeting

Alina Roytberg: Yes. When I met Lev, I had just moved to Boston from New York. I was in fashion, so I moved for a company. Lev had just recently arrived from Israel. We were both from the “old country”—I was born in Ukraine, he was born in Russia, but during the days of the Soviet Union.

Alina Roytberg: A lot of our formative years were spent not having things rather than having them. That’s an incredible experience for learning what’s important and focusing on what is essential to life. It also had very much to do with how our families lived and took care of themselves with their medicinal remedies and their skincare. Those things definitely had a big impact. When I met Lev, there was something about his passion, specifically for fragrance and skincare. I remember visiting his apartment for the first time, and he literally had bags of unused products under his sink. It was this deep dissatisfaction, this feeling of “I’m looking for something, but it’s not there.”

Megan Bruneau: How did you two meet?

Lev Glazman: It was through a mutual friend. The friend said to me, “A friend of mine is coming for a weekend from New York City to visit her parents.” Alina was living in New York City, studying fashion design at Parsons School of Design, and I had freshly arrived from Israel. Our friend said, “Let’s all three of us go out.”

Lev Glazman: So here I am, in my tight shirt and jeans that I absolutely squeezed myself into, and Alina comes in looking like a punk, like Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Alina Roytberg: This was the 80s.

Lev Glazman: It was the 80s. I mean, listen, she looked awesome, but so edgy. It was something I’d never seen before—spiky shoes, part of her hair shaved on the side. She was really cool. I didn’t even know how to take it. I don’t think there was chemistry or immediate sympathy, except for us dancing together. Then for seven years, we had no connection.

Lev Glazman: Then, I hear the buzzer downstairs. The friend who introduced us was there with another guy, but Alina joined them for the car ride. I was standing right behind them. Something happened when I opened the door. I was like, “Oh my God.” I hadn’t seen her for a long time, and here she was, and she looked a certain way. I felt like we were in the same place. There was an immediate connection. We were in the fast lane to becoming very close friends.

The Dream of a Beauty Market

Alina Roytberg: It was very fast. I think it was within a few months. I remember so literally, the first store location in Boston was in this area called the South End, which is a really fun area now. Back then, there used to be a really popular bar there we used to hang out at. I remember one night when we were leaving, he pointed to this old building on the corner that didn’t have any shop downstairs and said, “One day I want to open a beauty store, a beauty market that will have all these things in it. And I would love to open it right there across the street.” This is a really important part because that did end up being our first location in Boston. To me, our business story goes back to that night. There are things that brought us to that point, but I feel like that was the genesis. We talk about how important it is when somebody has a dream… they may talk about it, they may not, but it takes a moment when they share it with somebody who actually hears it for real. I feel like that was the moment that started us on this journey that has gone on for so many years.

Megan Bruneau: Lev, it sounds like you had a lot of conviction even before Alina joined in with her experience and background. How did you know this is what you were going to do?

Lev Glazman: My sense of smell—I’m very, very sensitive to it. I always felt that this is such an important part of our sensations. I would remember people by their smells; I remember occasions by smell. Beauty and fragrance always felt very transformative to me. It was very approachable. You could always have it. It doesn’t matter if you might not have the latest bag or whatever, but beauty you can have. I see it as democratic. This was my hobby. I would spend time in department stores and cosmetic counters, and I wanted to understand from the beauty consultants about the products, about the ingredients, and what’s in them. I’d be driving them, and everybody, crazy because I really wanted to understand. And that’s where my issue started: I could not fully understand what was in the product. And I realized that neither they nor I could emotionally connect to it. When you get into the bath and you have that moment with yourself, you want to have an experience. You want things that feel good and smell good. But I also want to fully understand what’s in it. I want to understand what I’m putting on my body. I couldn’t emotionally connect to any product, and I felt that was the part that was missing.

Megan Bruneau: Yes, it sounds like you saw a gap in the market for something that was sensorial and experiential, but also—would this be considered clean beauty, looking for natural ingredients?

Lev Glazman: Well, I wasn’t even thinking about the word “clean.” I was thinking about natural ingredients and having formulas that are vetted, where I can understand every single ingredient and the function of that ingredient. Are these ingredients the end of the story, or is there something else? Can we really explore it further? There was definitely room out there because it was very hard to find anything.

Megan Bruneau: It sounds like it. It doesn’t sound like there were any competitors doing this at that point.

Lev Glazman: Not really. We were really pioneering it in the way we were doing it.

Alina Roytberg: Well, I think it always started from a personal place. You can’t decide what other people need; you start where you feel you aren’t finding something, and then maybe, ultimately, other people who seem to be kindred spirits are looking for the same thing. I also think the history of beauty is really the history of civilization. The fascinating aspects of some of these old remedies had to do with where they came from. Who were the people that created those remedies? How did that ancient history of people developing and using remedies from nature impact us? We grew up in places where in our families’ medicine cabinets, you would have Western medicine, but then you’d have dried chamomile flowers for stomach ailments, sea buckthorn oil to heal burns, or putting sugar on cuts and scrapes to heal them faster. These things exist in every family. But this is the part that has to do with emotion. To understand where something comes from… we all have some knowledge of it, and that connects us because it connects you to the human being that originally started it. That’s where the cornerstone of this passion began. It wasn’t abstract. It was something that was cultivated, planted, grown, and then harvested. We could imagine what it looked like, we could explain to people what it looked like, and they could use it and feel it themselves.

Megan Bruneau: But it sounds like no one had really commercialized it, right?

Alina Roytberg: I mean, you had herbalist stores, but in the U.S. there wasn’t really much.

Lev Glazman: In Italy, you had them.

Alina Roytberg: Yes. So that’s what sent us toward Italy and the south of France when we were looking for products for the first store. They had some of these small companies, small factories that used herbal ingredients and natural vegetable oils. That’s the garden where we started sourcing products from before we created our own. The first couple of years after we opened the store was a time of research and discovery. It wasn’t until two years later that we started working on our own product.

From Dream to Reality: The First Store

Lev Glazman: Yeah, but it was amazing because as I shared my story with Alina—I was very anxious—it’s amazing how it immediately became our world. We made it our own. It happened so organically. It was a beautiful, “Yeah, I want it. We’ve got to do it. We have to do it.”

Alina Roytberg: And the idea of it being a store was so important because it was an idea of creating a world. I think that was a huge part of what attracted me to the dream in the beginning. I understood that the idea of people opening a door and walking into a world that you’ve created is ultimately the best thing you could possibly do.

Megan Bruneau: You had to open a storefront and have people come in, have this experience, and smell and test the products.

Alina Roytberg: Yes, and this was before the internet.

Lev Glazman: We had no money. I took $5,000 from Alina’s parents; I borrowed $5,000 from my mother. So we opened the cheapest store ever for $10,000. Those $10,000 were spent by the time we opened the store. We had no money in our pockets. We didn’t even know what that meant. I remember the first day we opened, we made a little over $700, and I was jumping for joy. Again, it’s not about, “Oh my God, I’m going to be rich.” It’s more about people actually appreciating it. The interesting thing is that you feel there’s no way back, and the more we did it, the more we understood, “Oh my God, there is so much for us to do.”

Alina Roytberg: Well, at that point, I think it was with our own product that things really started. We created four soaps. In those days, it was so hard to sell somebody a bar of soap that wasn’t $2. People used to shop for soap either in the supermarket, or they bought some fancy fragrance soap that was made with old tallow and not great for your skin if you were sensitive. To prove to people or explain to them how important it is to use a better soap with vegetable oils that’s more emollient… we’d literally say, “Well, you just had lunch and you paid more for your sandwich.” We had a lot of different soaps in our store. We loved the idea of soap just because it’s such a simple, commodity-type product. You buy it, you use it, you buy it again. It’s like a bakery where you come to buy bread.

Lev Glazman: And you feel the texture, the smell, and what it does for you. People would come back over and over again.

Alina Roytberg: Yes, because it’s such a necessity. And I think that’s where it began. That was the first product we developed. In order to find a manufacturer for it, we had to go to Europe because companies in America at the time were not interested in supporting very small quantities.

Lev Glazman: And they weren’t even doing natural.

The First Product and a Viral Success

Alina Roytberg: Yes. The cosmetic industry was really all about the giants, the legacy brands. There wasn’t really much. I mean, The Body Shop started making strides in the country, and I think it was just before even Bath & Body Works. This was an important moment.

Lev Glazman: Way before.

Alina Roytberg: We realized when we received the shipment of soap—which was way too many soaps… We had to order 200 of each flavor, so we received 800 soaps. That was an incredibly huge amount, because even though we had a variety of different types, a popular soap would never sell more than a dozen a month. And here we were with this huge amount of unwrapped, unfinished soaps that we had to sell.

Lev Glazman: We were on borrowed money.

Alina Roytberg: Yes, because they were all waiting to get their money.

Lev Glazman: And when the soap arrived on the truck, I said, “Why is this on a truck?” That’s how naive I was. I couldn’t even wrap my head around it; you just don’t think about those things. I was just driven by the fact that we were finally making our own product.

Megan Bruneau: So you’re not thinking, where do I store this?

Lev Glazman: Yes, the 800 bars of soap weren’t even resonating with me. I wasn’t thinking about it. But when reality hit, when they opened the back of the truck and I was looking at the pallet, I was like, “Why the hell are soaps on a pallet? There’s so many of them. Oh my God.” And I said to her—and this only happened one time, never again—I said, “Listen, we’re either going to sell so much of it and it will be awesome, or the opposite will happen. We might not sell any, and we’ll have soap to wash our bodies with for the rest of our lives.”

Alina Roytberg: And everybody else.

Lev Glazman: “And all our friends.” That’s all I said to her. The soaps smelled divine. They were like nothing else. Beautiful. Even touching them was incredible. I couldn’t believe it was actually happening. We were so excited, like, “I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow morning and see what happens with the customers. Will they love it as much as we do?” So a person walks in, goes right there, grabs two soaps, and goes to the counter. I’m on autopilot because with everything else, we had to sell it. We had to take people and explain, “This is the soap, this is how it’s made.” And the person said, “Oh my God, it’s so great. I love them, but I’m in a rush. Can you ring them up?” Two soaps. I looked at Alina, and I said, “Oh my God, we didn’t have to sell it.” This was the moment, and this is where the magic happened. The soap arrived in October. By the beginning of December, we were out of it. The holidays were coming, and people were coming in with baskets, buying a dozen of them. They were saying, “They smell amazing. It’s incredible. I tried it, and I want to give it to my mother.” It became viral—whatever viral was at the time, this was viral.

Alina Roytberg: The recipients would tell the givers how much they loved the product, and then finally the givers would decide, “Okay, I’m going to go buy it for myself.” This is the part that moves on, and the best thing is word-of-mouth. Again, this was before the internet. People weren’t sharing things with strangers. If you liked something, you told your mother. Seeing that reinforced the idea that what we had learned from being in the store seven days a week—seeing people, selling to people, talking to them—and what we thought, actually mattered. There were other people who really wanted what we had. I think that put the major engine behind us to really try to move it forward, start developing our own products, move to a better retail location, and see how we could grow our business beyond Boston.

Lev Glazman: Our appetite was already there—our appetite to create products and put them out there. Seeing that amazing reaction, we were like, “Okay, it’s resonating. What we’re doing, people can experience.” We couldn’t wait to share the products with people.

Megan Bruneau: Sounds like you really believed in the product. And you were also validated that when people were educated around the product or had the experience of the product—and honestly, even later, maybe just had the experience of the brand because it was so beautiful and it was a gift—they got the feedback from whoever they gave the gift to that, “Oh my God, this is amazing,” and then they could buy it for themselves.

A Lesson in Focus: The Challenge of Expansion

Alina Roytberg: That’s the best part. That brought us to the desire to grow the business. But not having any financial foundation, the banks weren’t interested. So we couldn’t afford to open another store.

Lev Glazman: We wanted to. The idea was to expand our retail because we like retail. We like the interaction, the theater of retail. And Alina was a genius merchandiser, merchandising things like nobody else. Everything was very welcoming. You could touch anything. It wasn’t behind the counter anymore. We were the first ones really opening it up.

Alina Roytberg: And it was nice to stand next to the customer, hold their hand as you’re exploring and testing. You’re both experiencing it. I think it’s what they call “open-sell” now. But at the time, it was all about standing across from a counter and being sold to. The idea was, “Let’s share in this experience. Let’s go on this path together and explore things.” That’s the part that connected us very closely to the customer right away and also taught us very early on to never take a customer for granted. Because when people choose to walk through the doors of your shop—or, as we train people now, open your e-commerce site—you have to appreciate the fact that they chose to be there. You have to make their time interesting and important. Ultimately, their experience and the product they use will become part of their life, because that’s the full intention.

Megan Bruneau: Yes, I love that. It is such an honor that any customer is stepping into your store or onto your platform. Of course, the spoiler alert for everyone is that eventually you guys were acquired by LVMH and had wild success. Just for the purposes of time, and knowing that on this podcast we talk about failure and challenges, is there a challenge or failure you two want to talk about that we could all learn from?

Lev Glazman: We realized that opening stores was a dream that might never come true because we would never be able to get the money. At the time, going to banks or finding investors for a beauty business, particularly an unknown one with a new concept—people were very skeptical. We said, “Okay, we can’t open stores, but our product looks like a winning thing for us. So why don’t we start opening doors for distribution?” That’s where the next big step happened. Barneys saw the products and immediately fell in love with them, which at the time was only soaps. They put them in their three stores, and they sold out within days. They wanted to know what else we could do and were really standing behind us. But we also had an exclusive agreement with them. This leads to the story of what we see as a failure, which happened when Bergdorf Goodman approached us. It’s an iconic store. They said, “Look, we’re moving our cosmetics floor downstairs. We want to give you a beautiful shop.” I was very honored, but we said, “We can’t give you the whole Fresh collection. We can’t.” We already had a line of fragrances in our store that we had created called Index. Those fragrances were created by me; it was my library. So we came to the table with Bergdorf Goodman and said, “Look, we can’t sell you the Fresh collection. But we have this line called Index, and we can expand it. We can do soaps, shower gels, lotions…”

Alina Roytberg: Creating an ancillary product collection for the fragrance.

Lev Glazman: It wasn’t a sub-brand; it was its own thing.

Megan Bruneau: And what was the reason you didn’t want to give them the full collection?

Lev Glazman: Because we had an exclusive agreement with Barneys, and we had to respect that relationship. They really helped us and put us on the map.

Alina Roytberg: Obviously, both Barneys and Bergdorf’s had a lot of the same cosmetic brands, but when it came to these indie, niche explorations, everybody wanted to hold on to what they had because that made their selection unique. Barneys and Bergdorf’s are literally two blocks away from each other, so they shared a customer. The stores were very interested in having exclusive brands. Our agreement with Barneys was that we were exclusive, and we saw this as a way around it. We couldn’t say no to Bergdorf because it’s such an iconic place, so we decided we would find a way around it and create a brand for them. That’s what Index was. And while it was a beautiful line, it became very difficult to connect to Fresh.

Lev Glazman: It did nothing for Fresh.

Alina Roytberg: It didn’t enhance Fresh at all. It was hard because you can’t split your focus when you’re trying to protect and grow something. You can’t run two separate brands under the same umbrella—not at that stage. We weren’t a multi-branded group. We were just growing, and everything was going incredibly well, but that part definitely took our eye off the prize, and it did not succeed. It was there for three years, and by the end of those years, we realized we just had to disengage, cut our losses, and walk away.

Megan Bruneau: What were some of the consequences you experienced as a result of that decision—financial, emotional, any consequences to the Fresh brand, or to your relationships? Just so people can understand what you were going through at that time.

Lev Glazman: One is that we neglected our baby, which is Fresh. Our attention was taken away completely. It was a major diversion from the focus of editing things and putting things together, rather than running around trying to be everything for everybody. That’s what taught us a lesson about how we need to work when scaling our business and the level of discipline we need to have. That was a process. From that point on, it took us a few years to get the business to a place where it was ready to be taken across the globe.

Megan Bruneau: I’m reminded of the fable of the dog with the bone. He looks in the pond, and he sees his reflection of a dog with a bone. He’s already got a bone, but he’s like, “I want that bone, too,” and then he drops his own bone in the water.

Megan Bruneau: It sounds like there was a version of that where, so understandably, both of you were like, “This opportunity with Bergdorf! Of course we have to take it. We have to move forward and develop this Index brand. This is a way around the exclusivity agreement.” But then as a result, it took your attention away from Fresh and kind of diluted both brands.

Lev Glazman: And if we hadn’t learned from that, we wouldn’t be here right now. We became brand builders. Our conversations became more about how we’re going to be leaders and always be innovative. We started to understand what is most important and what our business is, exactly.

The Power of Education and Clear Messaging

Alina Roytberg: That became understanding what Fresh is. It’s not in one specific product, although ultimately it will be. It’s about how people perceive it. Especially when you go out of your own shops, when you go from DTC to multi-branded presentations in other stores, you have to understand that your message has to be very clear. Your products have to be clearly connected.

Alina Roytberg: It should be very easy for the customer. I remember at the time, even in a place like Sephora—and now the attention span is even shorter—but for brick-and-mortar, they used to say a person has three seconds to see your gondola before they move on. What is it that you want to say?

Alina Roytberg: And that’s when we were able to build the right legs for the brand to really go and move beyond North America.

Megan Bruneau: Well, something I’m also struck by is that it almost seems like you created demand by educating people. What role did you play in that narrative and in helping educate consumers that this is something they need and would benefit from?

Lev Glazman: I’ll use an example. When we developed the Soy Face Cleanser, it opened up a conversation about how we see the beauty ritual. First, we talk about natural ingredients. Then, when we were doing personal appearances in stores, we would interact with customers and share our tips: Cleanse, mask, moisturize. Great skin always starts with clean skin. We had the opportunity to not just share these things with our customers, but to really educate them. We would see people coming into the store, buying very expensive creams, but we’d look at their faces and their skin would look dehydrated. I’d ask, “What type of cleanser do you use?” And they’d say, “Well, I don’t actually use a cleanser, I use a bar of soap,” or something else. And I’d say, “Well, if you’re using something that’s irritating your skin, whatever you apply after isn’t necessarily going to repair it. Use a product that will balance your skin.” So cleansing became very important for us.

Lev Glazman: It really worked. By giving people a clean and easy-to-understand direction on how to look at their beauty rituals… if we’d meet the same customers three months later, their skin would look different. Not just because they used our product—they might still use other products—but because they adopted a different regimen. It gave us an opportunity to gain people’s trust and to continue talking about the power of natural ingredients and our formulations.

Megan Bruneau: So you were giving them something they would immediately benefit from, like the Soy Cleanser, where they could see, “Oh, my face is not as dry and it actually looks better.” So you were educating them on how to achieve the best result.

Alina Roytberg: In the early days of the clean beauty trend, there was a lot of conversation about what’s *not* in the product. We’ve always addressed what’s not in our products, but we wanted to really focus on what actually *is* in there. Why are you using this product? What is your objective? How do you want to feel about your skin, and how do you want to look? Because obviously, when your skin looks good, you feel good.

The LVMH Acquisition: A New Chapter

Megan Bruneau: Exactly. Beautiful. Well, we’ll wrap in a few minutes, but I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about your experience of acquisition. It’s something so many people desire; it’s why they’re building startups or listening to this podcast. What did that look like for you? How did you reach a point where you were ready for it, or were you approached?

Lev Glazman: We were approached. We were approached by a few companies, LVMH being one of them. It was stressful to the point where we decided, “You know what? Maybe we’re not ready for this.” We didn’t want to give up control because we still had so many ideas, and we felt like the trajectory was really happening—we were taking off. But LVMH was very consistent. They really loved the brand, and they offered us full autonomy, the ability to get into way deeper research and development, and the ability to remain partners, because we still own a piece of the company with them. We’re partners with LVMH. They have a huge level of respect for founders. I remember hearing once from Bernard Arnault, he said, “Can you imagine if Mr. Dior were still alive today?” That’s what attracted us.

Megan Bruneau: It sounds like you had a lot of autonomy still. Was there anything that you had to adjust to or that was challenging in that transition?

Alina Roytberg: It wasn’t just us. That was a time when they partnered with or acquired a few other small American brands. Because LVMH is a group—it’s not centralized like an Estée Lauder or a Clarins—they had to figure out how to build relationships with these American companies that were all completely different. So, to be honest, it took a few years for some of those things to stabilize. Outside of that, there were incredible opportunities with the laboratory. Because we’re fully focused on skincare, Lev was able to completely step up all that research and development. The idea of having an international company that was thinking about global expansion gave us a lot of excitement for the future and the ability to bring in more amazing professionals. Lev continued as CEO for another seven years and then stepped fully into a founder and product development lead role. Since then, we’re brand directors. We call ourselves the gatekeepers at Fresh.

Lev Glazman: Yes. LVMH calls us the gatekeepers.

Megan Bruneau: You’ve accepted the title.

Lev Glazman: We always heard that from them. They see us as the gatekeepers who guide the real transitions.

Final Words of Wisdom for Entrepreneurs

Alina Roytberg: The challenges happen when you start. I think now, starting a new brand, there are so many more things you have to do right away. You have to decide what your core values are. What’s the most important thing to you? If you plan to hire people, what do you want the image and personality of your brand and company to be? It took us a good 12 or 15 years before we all sat down and actually wrote that down. Things happen so much faster now. You’re not going to have eight years to make mistakes and figure out your failures. You have to be so much more ready right out of the gate. While it can be overwhelming, I still think that if there’s something you want to do and you’re really passionate about a product or service you dream about, find a supporter. It’s really important to have a partner. And go for it. As Lev and I always say, if you’re standing on the edge of a cliff, you jump, because you can’t fall below the ground.

Megan Bruneau: Yes, I love that. Alina, thank you for those incredible closing words. I wish we could talk for another hour. As we wrap, you two are such veterans. You’ve been in the trenches for so long and have seen so many iterations as leaders, creators, and builders. Any final words for entrepreneurs or budding entrepreneurs listening who are in it?

Lev Glazman: I always say keep the passion going. Be very true to yourself. Find that place inside yourself where you can hear what your intuition tells you to do. I think that’s very important because it will bring you to the right place. It’s when you start looking to the left and to the right that you might get confused. Keep pushing and keep going with that. Believe in it, and other people will believe in it. Stand your ground. Don’t think about how wealthy you’re going to be; think about why you are doing this and what you are doing it for. Life is too short. What you’re doing is important and impactful. It affects other people’s lives in a very positive way. Stay on message and believe in yourself.

Megan Bruneau: Thank you both so much for being here today, for sharing your story, for sharing all your wisdom.

Lev Glazman: Megan, this was awesome. It truly was great to be with you and share our story. It felt very warm, and I appreciate it. We both thank you so much.

Alina Roytberg: Thank you.

Megan Bruneau, M.A. Psych is a therapist, executive coach, and the founder of Off The Field Executive & Personal Coaching. She hosts The Failure Factor podcast featuring conversations with entrepreneurs about the setbacks that led to their success.