LEARNING TO DETOX & DE-CLUTTER
Beauty brand lilah b. cuts through the overload with a ‘with less, you are more’ mantra — words that founder Cheryl Yannotti Foland takes to heart
For most entrepreneurs, a move to the Bay Area is par for the course. For Cheryl Yannotti Foland, founder of 18-month-old Sausalito beauty brand lilah b., San Francisco was the last place she saw herself. The seasoned beauty and media industry consultant moved from Manhattan to the Bay Area in 2006 to run West Coast operations for Arcade Beauty. She figured she’d be here two years at the most.
“I was this crazy, highstrung. oldest child, overachiever type A, fast-talker New Yorker,” Foland says. “I’d sneak into the gym and run on the treadmill like a gerbil for 30 minutes at 5 a.m. so I could work my butt off all day. And I don’t think I ever realized how unhealthy that was because that was the world I lived in.”
Foland steadily grew the Arcade business, working with brands like Bare Escentuals, Urban Decay and Benefit Cosmetics that were all on the cusp of expansion. She soon adopted the California lifestyle by dressing more casually and seeking outdoor activities at every chance. And she also met and married Steve Foland, an investment banker with Stifel whose weekend house in Napa gave her more opportunities to de-stress and connect with nature.
When Arcade was sold in 2014, she was 44 and facing a crossroads. “I recognized it wasn’t just this new lifestyle that I took on, but it was the people. It was the culture out here that I fell in love with. It really forced me to slow down and focus on what was important.”
Colleagues had always encouraged her to break out and do something of her own. At the same time, she saw a problem she knew she could fix: “I had enough experience launching products with brands, and was just seeing
an overwhelming amount of clutter. I recognized how confusing it was to the modern woman who wants ease.” She was also tired of brands pushing multiple products for the same thing, when she wanted a single product with multiple uses. Foland came up with a business plan and spent the next 18 months working with her lab in Milan, Italy, to develop a line of high-performance, multitasking makeup that’s both healthy and long-wearing. She launched lilah b. in April 2015. The lip and cheek duo quickly became an editor’s favorite and was recently voted an InStyle Magazine Best Beauty Buy. (The products are positioned as a luxury brand, with prices ranging from $28 to $78.)
But what’s really made a splash is lilah b.’s smooth, pebble-like packaging. “When I was growing up in New York there was this time where Elsa Peretti was the hot designer for Tiffany’s, and everything about what she did was so unique and timeless — that organic, beautiful feel,” Foland remembers. “Everything felt so smooth and amazing to the touch. I had this beautiful paperweight from my mom that was on my desk for years. It always felt so good in the hands, and that’s what I wanted to achieve.” She went to her longtime friend Gary McNatton, a fragrance and packaging designer who’s also the co-founder of design retailer Hudson Grace.
More than shape and color, McNatton was interested in the emotional experience of the product. “There’s a word that’s a funny word to use — it’s called ‘addictive,’ ” he says. His goal was to create an object that “feels so glorious in your hand, and you start touching it and moving your fingers across it. You don’t want to put it down.”
The brand has already scooped up coveted stockists like Barneys New York, Neta-Porter and, most recently, Neiman Marcus. Beauty apothecary Space NK also carries the line in select locations. Heather Connelly, head of merchandising at Space NK, says: “There’s a sense of calm that comes from holding these chilled, weighty pebbles in your hand. They’re easy to find in a makeup bag or the bottom of a purse, and are very Instagrammable.” The Net-a-Porterpartnership gives Foland access to customers in more than 170 countries and ideas for where to expand. Lilah b. launched at Barneys New York San Francisco this month, and online with Neiman Marcus.
Further extending the brand’s philosophy of “with less, you are more,” customers are given a prepaid return label with online orders to send back not only their used lilah b. packaging, but any other brand’s products. All of the packaging is recycled in Southern California. “I don’t want to sell you products you don’t need,” Foland says. “I want to give you things that only you love, and you’re going to use every day. Why do we have to have so many things? There’s no other brand out there that actually encourages women to buy less.”