Eyebrows are having a moment in fashion. Gone is the thin, overly plucked, look of the early aughts. Today, thick, well groomed brows are all the rage. There's one woman that women are turning to to get the eyebrows of their dreams: Anastasia Soare. She is the founder of Anastasia Beverly Hills and her talent with brows has made her one of the wealthiest self made female entrepreneurs in the United States.
Anastasia has been a favorite of celebs and Los Angelinos in the know for decades. Her secret to success is in her technique. Anastasia Beverly Hills was one of the first beauty companies to use social media as part of its brand strategy.
Soare was born in Romania and moved to Los Angeles in 1989. She was a 32-year-old single mother who didn't speak any English. She had studied art and architecture in Romania. She got a job in Los Angeles as an aesthetician. She noticed a difference in American women versus those back in Romania. Americans didn't pay much attention to their eyebrows. She had learned about the golden ratio back in art school and began applying it to her clients' eyebrows. The golden ratio was also used by Leonardo da Vinci. It uses the ration of 1.618 to 1.0 to find the perfect arch of an eyebrow. Soare has patented this.
Marc Piasecki/Getty Images for Sephora
It didn't take long for celebrities to find her. Supermodels Cindy Crawford, Stephanie Seymour, and Naomi Campbell were among the first famous ladies to have their brows done by Anastasia. She opened her own small one room studio in Beverly Hills on 1992 and found herself working seven days a week on her own offering her eyebrow grooming, facials, and waxing. Five years later, she was successful enough to open a flagship Beverly Hills salon.
In 2000, she launched her first product line for eyebrows. It was challenging to get her products into stores. Only Nordstrom was interested in her fillers and brushes and even then, her line was only in 20 stores. Of course, Anastasia is a master of eyebrows and her products soon gained the same cult like following that her salon had.
She was also one of the first beauty companies to use social media as a brand strategy and she has her daughter Claudia to thank for this. In 2013, Anastasia Beverly Hills launched an Instagram account and soon found that Insta models and influencers including Kim Kardashian, helped her go viral. Due to her Instagram success, Soare then launched a makeup line. Not long after, Anastasia Beverly Hills products were selling in Sephora, Ulta, and pretty much everywhere else.
Soare's line now sells 485 products and goes well beyond makeup for eyebrows. Anastasia Beverly Hills is in 2,000 stores around the world. The company brings in about $340 million in annual revenue. The company is currently worth around $1.5 billion. Soare owns 100% of the company.
Now, reports are surfacing that TPG Capital is nearing an agreement to acquire a 3% stake in Anastasia Beverly Hills, giving the company a $3 billion valuation and making Anastasia Soare a billionaire.
She's come a long way since she arrived in the U.S. in 1989.
