Ilia Beauty founder Sasha Plavsic on riding the clean category's 'extreme growth pattern'

Sasha Plavsic is pretty clear that she picked the right beauty category to start a business in. "The clean category, as they're calling it now, is on an extreme growth pattern," Plavsic said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast, calling it "one of the fastest categories in Sephora, if not the market in general."

Plavsic founded Ilia Beauty in 2011, a few years after turning 30 and returning to her hometown of Vancouver. "I had left the guy, left the job and was really searching for something new," Plavsic said.

What started as a brand that sold mostly lip products soon became a hot newcomer for complexion and eye products. Though known for those products, lip sales went from 60% to 15% of Ilia Beauty's business after building on other clean product categories." That's not uncommon if you're growing in complexion, but what really took over for us was our mascara," Plavsic said.

Ilia Beauty is now carried across approximately 200 doors at Sephora, Plavsic said. Seeking to fuel continued growth, the company raised Series B funding in January, not long after its first funding round in 2018.

This episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast was recorded prior to the coronavirus pandemic. A spokesperson for Ilia Beauty said in a statement that the company is "monitoring the situation daily regarding the coronavirus and will adjust accordingly as needed with our forecasts. Like many businesses in our position we believe it is very early still, and too soon to make an estimated guess on what to expect. We have not yet re-evaluated our 2020 revenue projections."

With ample funds for retail, marketing and product, Plavsic talked about what the white space she originally felt in the market and the broader demographic for clean beauty products.