We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarah Kugelman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sarah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

When I started my first company i was 34yrs old and i was in a corporate job at a big company. I was making a good salary and i had been granted options in the company. The stock split 3 times while i was there so i was sitting on an illiquid asset that would vest in August 1999, my third year with the company. It was more money than i ever thought i would have in my life. It was money i could invest and would take care of me in my retirement as i had no savings.

But destiny called and in the beginning of 1999. I had an idea for a beauty website (there was no such thing at the time) and i had written a business plan on nights and weekends while working full time. A friend, who was a big banker in Silicon Valley, asked me to call in sick to work so i could meet with 4 investors he hand-picked to hear my idea. That day i raised $5,000,000 and i had 24 hours to decide whether to quit my job and leave all of my unvested options on the table, or stay at my cushy job and in 4 months take my money off the table.

It was the hardest decision of my life. My father said to me ‘are you sure you should leave your job for something unknown and so risky. What if it fails and you end up with nothing?” To add to the situation, my father was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer at the time and only had a few weeks to live. But I said to my father, ‘if i don’t do this and smoeone else does, i will never be able to live with myself. I have a vision and i need to bring it to life. It’s like a baby, i need to birth this idea and it belongs to no one but me. I just HAVE TO do this this. I don’t think i have an option” and so my father said “i understand. Go follow your dream.”

And with that, i quit my job, leaving everything on the table and throwing caution to the wind. I started my first company, Gloss.com, and sold it one year later to The Estee Lauder Companies. I sold that company two weeks before the market crash of April 2000,, the ‘internet bust.” That experience changed my life forever and i would not have traded it for all of the money in the world. It put me on a completely different career track and elevated my position in the beauty industry. It also established me as an entrepeneur. Today i’m on company #4 and i have never looked book.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started my career in the beauty industry 36 years ago after getting an MBA from Columbia University. I worked on the corporate side of the business for market leaders, in marketing and product development for 10 years. I honed my skills and grew to love the industry i had always dreamed of making my career in.

In 1999 everything changed for me when i struck out on my own and launched my first company gloss.com. It was the first beauty internet site and we sold 125 beauty brands and created the first online magazine for beauty mavens. In total i raised $25million for this business, grew it to 100 employees and i sold it a year later to The Estee Lauder Companies.

In 2005, I founded and was CEO of the global skincare brand skyn ICELAND, Solutions for Stressed Skin. It was one of the first clean, indie skincare brands and she grew it into a $25 million global beauty brand. In October 2024, the company was acquired by Amerikas.

As a serial entrepreneur I’ve built two successful beauty brands that have become synonymous with key inflection points in the beauty industry – digital and wellness.

In September 2024, I launched my third beauty brand ALL GOLDEN, a skincare and hair care line targeting a new inflection point – aging for women over 45. With this brand I am committed to changing the cultural conversation and combatting ageism. By developing an innovative, patent pending, technologically ground-breaking product line and creating a community that elevates and celebrates women, I am planning to target major white space.

I have an M.B.A. in Marketing and International Business from Columbia Business School and a
B.A. cum laude from Tufts University. I currently sit on the Tufts’ Derby Entrepreneurship
Center Executive Board with the goal of advancing female entrepreneurship. I was also a 2023
Columbia Business School mentor in the high impact EC-America program exclusively for Latino
entrepreneurs.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I had planned with my second company to invest in growth for 3years so that we could break even. I was so proud of myself for staying on track and building incredible momentum for those first few years. When it came to year 3 i was prepared to go raise money so that i could take my business to the next level. I had a great story to tell, i had rolled out with a national retailer, we had grown steadily over three years and we had a killer leadership team. Then, the market crashed. Badly. It was the end of 2008 and we entered one of the worst financial downturns in modern times.

I realized there was no way we were going to raise money. I met with over 100 investors and everyone was going to sit and wait it out. At the same time, our big national retailer decided to exit my brand. They were 80% of my business. I realized i was at the end of the road. We were done.

But my #2 person at the time – whom i had always lifted up and championed – said to me, we’ve come too far, we’re not going down. I didn’t believe her at the time and i was feeling paralyzed by all of the bad news. But i stayed up all night shortly thereafter with my P&L and figured out how to survive. What did i need to do to literally just ‘keep the lights on? As the sun rose, i had a plan. I had to let my team go and make a bunch of other cuts that were going to be painful, but there was a path forward and a clear view of how to survive.

It was one foot in front of the other and one day at a day. But we made it. I relaunched the company in 2012 (about 3-4 years later) and rebuilt the company until we were acquired in 2022. That was a painful but very valuable lesson as an entrepreneur which is that you can never plan for the unexpected. But, you have to be nimble and ready to pivot at all times.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I love the book Shoe Dog by Phil Knight the founder of Nike. It is a quintessenial story about the life of an entrepreneur. I find the book especially interesting because we think of Nike as a big, corporate giant. We forget that it was one man’s idea and his hard work that built this iconic brand. For years he toiled away building this business with risk, uncertainty and many ups/downs before it all clicked. We always see successful businesses from the outside and think they are overnight successes but this is so often not the case. And Phil’s story is the same story of so many entrepreneurs. If someone is striving to grow a business, interested in starting a business or facing serious challenges and feel alone in their struggles, this is the book for you. It will make you realize that you are not alone, that all entrepreneurs go through the same types of situations/cash flow issues/people management challenges and that even if you feel down, you may very well be on the right path. And this book is for those that are thinking about being an entrepreneur, this is good insight into what the journey is truly like.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.allgolden.com
• Instagram: @allgoldenbeauty
• Facebook: @allgoldenbeauty
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-kugelman/
• Youtube: allgoldenbeauty
• Other: www.sarahskyn.com
  @sarahskyn on instagram

Image Credits

All Golden Inc,
Sarah Kugelman