672: From Broke College Student to $20M Brand in 10,000 Stores | ESW Beauty

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan · Jun 11, 2026 · 40m

While every brand was raising prices during inflation, Elina Wang cut hers—and nearly tripled revenue. The co-founder of ESW Beauty turned a juice bar epiphany and a $25,000 bank loan into a $20 million business across 10,000 retail doors, fully bootstrapped and profitable from day one. She did it by making the contrarian bet on retail-first when every founder around her was chasing DTC—then survived Covid wiping out every purchase order overnight while going through a co-founder breakup at the same time.

In this interview, Elina breaks down the real cost of getting into major retail, why she…