Fabulously fresh
A husband and wife team started a natural soap brand 27 years ago and today, it’s a well-loved beauty lifestyle brand.
THE Fresh beauty brand story started with a soap and was created by a beauty junkie.
And today, it has grown into a global brand of lifestyle products spanning skincare, bodycare, fragrance, haircare and home.
If anyone has preconceptions that a beauty junkie is a young female, Lev Glazman will debunk the idea. Growing up in Russia, he was introduced to the joy of beauty products by his mother, and that set in motion his love for beauty pampering.
In 1991, Glazman and his wife Alina Roytberg, founders of Fresh, opened an apothecary store in Boston, curating luxury and natural beauty products from around the world.
They started Fresh with an iconic oval soap, which they created in their kitchen as the perfect gift. It comes wrapped in artisanal paper, tied with a delicate wire and topped with a semi-precious stone.
Glazman and Roytberg, both 56, were in Kuala Lumpur recently for the launch of their newest product, the Fresh Black Tea Kombucha Facial Treatment Essence, which is sold in Sephora.
Kombucha is a fermented sweet black tea immensely rich in vitamins and organic acids, which help defend skin against pollution and free radicals.
It also enhances skin luminosity, reduces the look of fine lines and pores, improves elasticity, smoothes skin texture and provides 24-hour moisture.
To understand how the brand started, Glazman shared his story of growing up in Leningrad at a time when the country was completely closed off to everything, almost like North Korea, he said.
“A lot of young ladies did not have access to beauty products and everyone smelt the same,” Glazman reminisced.
“One day my very brave mother took me, a very young boy then, to a black market in Russia where smugglers smuggled things into Russia, from stockings to fragrance.”
“My mum bought a fragrance and when she smelt it, I remember the change in her expression. This memory stayed with me and I started being curious,” Glazman said.
“Growing up I felt that there are so many amazing things out there and a beauty treat is something we all deserve. Over time I knew I wanted to be part of this business.”
Later on Glazman would go to department stores and talk to beauty consultants and he said, “I could not connect with what they were selling as they would talk about science. To me beauty is connected to rituals, ingredients, culture, history, smells and natural ingredients.
“When Alina first came to my house and discovered all my beauty products, she thought I was crazy. Then I told her that I am a beauty junkie!
“When we both started talking about my obsession, we wanted to create products with natural ingredients. We wanted people to enjoy a sensorial experience in their everyday beauty rituals and have products that are also effective.”
Roytberg – who was born in Ukraine and has a fashion degree from the Parsons School of Design, New York – says all of Fresh’s products have actual ingredients from rose petals, strawberry, honey, sugar, nectar, soy to sake.
“Fresh is so relevant as our products contain a substantial quantity of ingredients. When we use roses it’s not just for the smell but we use rose petals and tap its goodness. We take a lot of time in the process of creating our products and we work with scientists and chemists to understand ingredients’ potency and benefits,” she said.
The brand’s popularity led LVMH, a multinational luxury goods conglomerate, to purchase a controlling stake in Fresh in 2000, and this gave the brand access to resources like the Fresh Research Lab that is housed in LVMH’s Helios Research Centre in France.
“People usually don’t remember what happened, but they remember how something made them feel. This is very much what Fresh is about and how we started. We never take for granted how a product makes you feel and can resolve your issues,” Roytberg said.