Right up until COVID, Cynthia Sakai was doing a brisk business selling contemporary Italian brass jewelry to stores such as Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, as well as to celebrities including Gigi Hadid and Lupita Nyong’o. In 2009 during its first season, the brand, Vita Fede, sold 10,000 units.

When everything shut down in 2020, Sakai immediately pivoted, supplying medical grade masks to New York hospitals.

In the process, Sakai realized that her goal was “to build a company that helped people, a company based on daily essentials.” The masks were her start; she had them produced in fun colors, branded them Evolvetogether, and before long everyone from Rihanna to Kamala Harris was wearing one. Between 2020 and 2022, she sold 44 million masks.

That became the seed for evovletogether, a clean, sustainable brand now with six sku’s. Later this year, the brand will launch body wash, and body lotion.

“I wanted to come up with a collection that fit in with how people lived their lives and went through their days. The most high-performing, user-friendly products with great ingredients, and packaging that uses 65% less plastic than other brands.” The brand’s $24 deodorant is its best seller, which is available in four scents, and, like everything in its lineup, is named after iconic locales: Taormina has notes of orange flower, geranium, and jasmine; Havana uses cardamom, violet, and cedarwood. Outside of deodorant, items carry prices from $21 to $122. Additionally, Sakai has focused on ensuring the collection has a small footprint: Fiji, the brand’s unscented powder-to-foam face wash, uses coconut shells and tapioca starch to exfoliate with less water than a traditional cleanser. Monaco, the rose-and-oud scented body cream, comes with a little roller attachment to squeeze out every last drop.

Four years on from her launch, Evolvetogether has won 16 beauty awards. Some 60% of customers are repeat buyers. The brand is currently in 120 doors around the U.S., a mix of specialty stores and hospitality outlets. On August 30 the brand will enter 60 Bluemercury doors.

“It marks a pivotal turning point for our brand,” said Sakai. “As our first retail partner, we value the curation and care that Bluemercury brings to their consumer. The trust that they instill in their community is unmatched and exactly aligns with the mission I carry for Evolvetogether, to provide everyday luxury personal care without compromising ethics and integrity.”

And while Sakai said she receives plenty of queries from international distributors, she wants to now focus on the U.S. market.

“We want to get this really right,” she said.

For her, that translates to minimal packaging, non-toxic ingredients, accessible pricing.

“For me, doing good is not just about sustainability. It’s about everything,” she said. “We had to look at how we could compete in a world of influencer brands, how we could build a brand that had soul, that felt elevated, that people would actually click on and try and then say, ‘oh my gosh, it’s better than what I thought it would be.’ We had to think about all the steps, and do all the work for the consumers, so by the time they got to the product, it’s easy to be sustainable, easy to feel beautiful. That’s the brand I always wanted to create.”

She went outside the industry to find packaging that would fit with her maximum-sustainability mindset: bar soaps are wrapped in 100% dissolvable septic-safe paper that disappears under running water. As a consequence of using glass and aluminum, the company has saved more than 33,000 pounds of plastic.

Sakai, whose first business was an accessory brand that she launched at age 18, has always been drawn to a sleek and minimal aesthetic, something she attributes to her architect father. From her mother, she inherited a knack for retail (her mother introduced Italian luxury brand Fendi to the U.S. and also once owned a multi-brand boutique selling European labels in Palos Verdes, California. For her, quality outshines quantity; she remembers being influenced by her grandmother, who would journey from Japan to Paris to buy exquisite fabrics for custom-made kimonos, instilling in Sakai that it was better to own a few meaningful products than a lot of mediocre ones.

“I grew up in trade shows,” said Sakai. “I grew up in showrooms and merchandising. I don’t know anything else besides what I do today. And beauty was something I always really loved. Evolvetogether came from that lifestyle space, where I could think about ‘does it show up in your purse, your gym bag, home, office, kitchen, all of your rooms? Does it show up more than that trendy makeup on your vanity space?’”

Evolvetogether started as an entirely self-financed brand; Sakai took the profits from her mask business to launch the other products and to lay the foundation for future growth. By the time she was growing exponentially month-over-month, she knew she had to raise capital.

“It was really the only option out there,” she said of the raise, which closed in early 2024. “Now, we have some incredible people on our cap table. It’s a very competitive industry, but people are crazy kind. People in this industry can be very supportive. I only want to focus on making the best products I can. That’s the thing that keeps me going.”