Ada Polla expanded a family business into a growing line of personal care products.
can just close and start another,’” she says. “In Europe, that is not so accepted. The U.S. is very pro-entrepreneur.” So Polla used Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business as a laboratory of sorts. She took an entrepreneurship class with adjunct professorial lecturer Jim Hunt, who now sits on her company’s board of advisers, and enlisted classmates as free consultants in developing her business plan. She found it exciting to work on a real business instead of one simply created for the class. “Professors liked the idea that when they suggested something, I brought it
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back to the business,” Polla says. “The business school experience was more targeted and fun, because I saw what I was working for.” Besides the concentration of brainpower at Georgetown, Polla says the access to tools — from the library to a free LexisNexis account — was invaluable. During the summer before her second year of school, Polla returned home to Geneva and named the brand, worked on developing new products and redesigned the packaging. By the time school started, she was juggling classes and the launch of Alchimie Forever. She would hustle from class to local dermatology offices and boutiques, where she tried to sell her products. She didn’t sleep much. Today, Polla is head of Alchimie Forever, which has small offices in Washington,
D.C., and Geneva. She grew the business from the five products her parents created solely for their clients to nearly two dozen products for men and women. Those products now are sold in high-end boutiques in the United States, France, Switzerland, and Canada. Polla says despite the recession, sales of mid-range personal care products like Alchimie Forever still are strong, perhaps more so than super-premium brands. “A woman might forgo a $300 dress,” Polla says. “But for women or men to give up their favorite moisturizer, things have to be a lot worse.” Alchimie Forever is projecting a 35 percent increase in sales this year after a 28 percent increase in 2008. The company is continuing to expand to other countries msb.georgetown.edu