Start to Scale from The Beauty Center at FIT

Latest episode

5 Oct 2026 · 51 min

Jenn Krouse

Jenn Krouse is the founder and CEO of AUNU Beauty , a skincare brand built around medical-grade Mānuka honey. Before creating AUNU, Jenn worked at Tory Burch and WeWork and was part of the founding executive team at Victoria Beckham Beauty, where she served as CFO and COO as the business grew to more than $100 million in revenue. Jenn and I talked about what happens when you’ve spent years building and scaling other, bigger companies and then you start your own from zero. We talk about foundational lessons: understanding healthy growth, managing inventory and distribution, knowing where to…

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Earlier episodes 6 most recent

1. 

   28 Sep 2026 · 54 min

   Jasmine Bina

   Jasmine Bina is a cultural futurist, brand strategist, and co-founder of Concept Bureau , the strategy agency she built with Jean-Louis Rawlins. She is also the co-founder of Exposure Therapy, a community for strategists and cultural thinkers. Her work is about how to read culture before it becomes a trend —looking across psychology, sociology, consumer behavior, media, and seemingly unrelated categories to understand what people are beginning to want and what may be “waiting to be born.” Jasmine and I talk about how brands gain meaning in a culture where consumers are more sophisticated,…

2. 

   21 Sep 2026 · 56 min

   Pierre Vouard

   Pierre Vouard has spent his career in fragrance and beauty, working at L’Oréal, Chanel, and Calvin Klein before moving into the independent side of the business. Today he advises established and emerging brands through PJV Advisory, teaches Fragrance Innovation at FIT, and writes Voir, C’est Savoir , his Substack about the business, culture, and changing consumer behavior around fragrance. Pierre started his career in consumer insights, and that way of looking at the business still shapes how he thinks: what is changing, why is it changing, and what should a brand actually do with that…

3. 

   21 Sep 2026 · 52 min

   Sofie Pavitt

   Before Sofie Pavitt had a skincare brand, she had a skincare studio. And before that, she spent years in fashion, designing accessories and traveling regularly to Seoul, where she became interested in a much more results-driven approach to skincare than what she was seeing in New York. She eventually went back to school to become an aesthetician and opened her own studio. By the time she launched Sofie Pavitt Face in 2023, she had treated thousands of clients and had a pretty clear idea of what she thought was missing. She saw people overwhelm their skin with too many products. She saw acne…

4. 

   14 Sep 2026 · 56 min

   Jean Godfrey-June

   Jean Godfrey-June has spent more than three decades writing about beauty, including at Vogue , Glamour , ELLE , Lucky , The Wall Street Journal Magazine , and, most recently, as Executive Beauty Director at goop. Today she writes Godfrey’s Guide , her Substack about beauty and everything that inevitably surrounds it—style, aging, wellness, travel, food, culture, and life. Jean has tested an extraordinary number of products and watched the beauty industry change from magazines and department stores to e-commerce, social media, affiliate commerce, and an almost overwhelming amount of choice.…

5. 

   14 Sep 2026 · 45 min

   Stephan Kanlian

   My first guest is Stephan Kanlian, Chairperson of The Beauty Center at FIT and one of the people responsible for making beauty management a field of academic study. Before I began building Choulie, I spent fourteen years in two food businesses. I understood product development, manufacturing, margins, retail, brand building, and the multitude of decisions involved in turning an idea into a company. But even though Choulie is a CPG product, beauty has its own history, economics, distribution channels, power structures, and assumptions about how brands grow. Stephan has spent his career inside…

6. 

   1 Sep 2026 · 1 min

   Introducing Start to Scale

   This fall, I’m launching Choulie , a fine fragrance body care company. It’s my second time building a consumer brand, but my first time in beauty. And while plenty of what I learned building Haven’s Kitchen applies, the beauty industry has its own language, economics, gatekeepers, rituals, and history. So when The Beauty Center at FIT asked me to create and host a podcast about how beauty companies are actually built, I jumped at the opportunity. The Beauty Center is home to FIT’s Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing and Management graduate program, the first and longest-running program of its…

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