Weekly Co-lab Clubhouse: Beauty Entrepreneurs hosted by Sarah Kugelman
Join Sarah Kugelman as she discusses Beauty Entrepreneurship with four founders – Ron Robinson of BeautyStat, Tisha Thompson of LYS Beauty, Francesco Clark of Clark's Botanicals, and Amy Gordinier of Skinfix.
As a serial entrepreneur Sarah Kugelman has built two successful beauty brands that have become synonymous with key inflection points in the beauty industry – digital and wellness. Most recently, Ms. Kugelman founded and was CEO of the global skincare brand skyn ICELAND, Solutions for Stressed Skin. Launched in January 2005, it was one of the first clean, indie skincare brands and she grew it into a $25 million global beauty brand. In 1999, Ms. Kugelman revolutionized the beauty industry by creating the first beauty website, gloss.com, a multimedia beauty brand for which she raised $25 million in venture capital and grew to over 100 employees. Sarah sold gloss.com to The Estèe Lauder Companies in 2000. Most recently she launched The Pink Factor LLC, a beauty incubator as well as an advisory business to both start-up and well-established beauty brands. Sarah has an M.B.A. in Marketing and International Business from Columbia Business School and a B.A. cum laude from Tufts University. She currently sits on the Tufts’ Entrepreneurship Center Board with the goal of advancing female entrepreneurship. She lives in New York City with her 14 year old daughter and dog Jackson.
A trained makeup artist turned beauty business maven, Tisha Thompson, is the Founder and CEO of LYS Beauty with more than 15 years’ industry experience in clean beauty product development, brand management, marketing, finance and operations. Unapologetic in her pursuit to diversify the marketplace, Tisha built LYS as a landing-place for makeup and skincare solutions that are uniquely catered to all skin types, textures and tones. Founded in 2021 on a steadfast mission to empower, inspire and awaken your most confident self, LYS Beauty is a forward-thinking cosmetics brand with a luxurious, skin-first approach to formulating which helps you step out of society's box and into your truest self. With strict ingredient standards, universal shade offerings and high-performance results, these enriching formulas help target common skincare concerns, like blemishes, visible signs of aging, hyperpigmentation, excess oil and uneven texture and tone. Fueled by the stance that confidence should come without compromise, LYS Beauty is committed to cruelty-free practices, uber-clean formulations, vegan accommodations, non-conformity, accessibility and plant-based ingredients.
Francesco Clark was 24 years old with a promising career as a fashion assistant at Harper’s Bazaar when his entire world turned upside down on a Memorial Day weekend trip to the Hamptons with friends. On June 1, 2002 Francesco dove headfirst into a swimming pool and crashed into the bottom. He became paralyzed from the neck down. Surgeons told his father “he will never breathe, talk or move his arms (on his own) - and forget about his legs.” With his central nervous system impaired, Francesco lost the ability not only to walk, but even to sweat. Without the ability to sweat out toxins, Francesco’s skin became congested, dull and inflamed, appearing to age faster than his years. He learned that everyday imbalances and stressors can cause our complexions to lose their way – so he set out to reactivate his skin and reclaim his confidence. Enlisting the help of his father, an MD and homeopathic doctor, the pair strategically combined nature’s most effective plant extracts with the very best of science to bring Francesco’s skin back to life. The result was Clark’s Botanicals.
Launched in 2009, it took Clark’s Botanicals five years and 78 iterations to get their efficacious, yet effortless, collection of skincare just right. At the core of the formulas are what they call radical botanicals, featuring their proprietary Jasmine Catalyst ComplexTM, an exact, cutting-edge formula of time-released niacinamide, red algae, arnica montana, and jasmine enzymes that activate skin for head-turning, go-bare results. Brighter. Bouncier. Rebooted radiance, every day – even in the face of life’s greatest challenges. "Clark's Botanicals is an organic part of me and my recovery," says Francesco. "Everything about this line has a purpose and reason for being, from the ingredients to the packaging. It's an expression of who I am in its purest form."
Francesco Clark serves as a National Ambassador for the Christopher Reeve Foundation, which is dedicated to curing spinal cord injury by funding innovative research and improving the quality of life for people living with paralysis through grants, information and advocacy. Clark’s Botanicals donates a percentage of profits to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.
Amy Gordinier is founder and CEO of Skinfix. Amy worked for some of the biggest names in beauty, from L’Oreal to Jo Malone, before moving to the Canadian coastal city of Halifax, Nova Scotia to start a family. It was there that she met the great, great granddaughter of Thomas Dixon, the pharmacist creator of the heritage Skinfix healing balm. She was captivated by the powerful formula that the Dixon family had passed down through five generations and blown away by the hundreds of hand-written testimonials that they had amassed from people who had used it to heal some of the most serious and stubborn skin concerns. Amy was intent on dissecting the Skinfix healing balm in order to understand why it worked so well to restore healthy skin.
Since Amy relaunched Skinfix in 2014, she and her team have followed the methodology of using a robust combination of clean, active and nutritious ingredients to replenish and maintain the vital skin barrier. They work with dermatologists, naturopaths and holistic chemists to develop skincare that is consciously clean and clinically proven to work and will continue until they have helped heal every skin concern that they possibly can.