Anastasia Soare of Anastasia Beverly Hills sat down with Pete Nordstrom, president and chief brand officer of Nordstrom, to debate how she built her brow-focused brand for a special edition of the retailer’s podcast, the Nordy Pod. 

Identical to the Beauty CEO Summit, Soare recently celebrated 25 years in business. While today, Anastasia Beverly Hills is accessible at most beauty retailers, Soare started off small, counting on word of mouth and a customer-centric approach. 

“I emigrated from Romania and I saw a void in the wonder industry of eyebrows. No one paid attention to eyebrows,” she said, which led her to create her own technique using a person’s facial symmetry. 

With a small salon in Beverly Hills and no products in the beginning, Soare’s personalized technique enticed celebrity clients like Jennifer Lopez, who remains to be an everyday today. With this and regular media coverage, the salon became synonymous with brow shaping and Soare knew expansion and product development were on the horizon. 

Nevertheless, brow shaping and brow makeup were still relatively recent concepts, so so as to create a successful brand, education was key. Upon meeting with the Nordstrom team in 2000, the Anastasia Beverly Hills brow bars were born.

“It’s an entrepreneur’s story. You got here in and and created something and you then partnered with us [Nordstrom] to amplify that,” Nordstrom said, explaining that the brow bars have also driven customers to their stores. “When you get a customer hooked, it creates repeat business.”

Nordstrom would open 72 brow bars across their stores, an area where guests can’t only receive services but find out about shaping and experience Soare’s products. 

“Training was very essential for me and the standard of the products. I desired to create the most effective products and the most effective service. It’s the longevity of the connection together with your clients. I don’t want clients to be one-time clients,” Soare said, explaining that by training aestheticians and attending Nordstrom in-store events she was in a position to make sure the integrity of her technique. 

For Nordstrom, implementing the brow bars was also a technique to create a novel in-store experience for purchasers, a key focus for a lot of retailers today.

“Every time we get off beam, it’s because we aren’t staying focused by way of where the shopper is and meeting them where they’re and being relevant to their lives,” Nordstrom said. “If someone’s gonna go to a store, you actually higher make sure that you create a very good experience because they don’t should go to a store.”

By working with Nordstrom, Soare was in a position to construct brand recognition — ultimately entering major beauty retailers including Sephora and Ulta Beauty. Nevertheless, whilst the brand grew, its customer-centric approach was all the time on the forefront, leading the Anastasia Beverly Hills team to double down on social media. 

“We were the primary brand to have a presence on Instagram in 2012,” Soare said, noting her daughter has played an integral part in constructing the brand. Social media allowed Soare to attach with customers globally and understand what they were most desirous about — ultimately resulting in the brand’s makeup line, which launched in 2014. 

Through the years, Anastasia Beverly Hills has remained synonymous with brows, and Soare herself has maintained major celeb clients over the past 25 years, including Kim Kardashian, Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford, to call just a few, which Nordstrom explained has amplified the brand. For Soare, the brand’s success relies heavily on its individualized, customer-centric approach and in fact, addressing a spot within the industry with brow shaping. 

“That’s the ability of the eyebrow,” she said.