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Meet Sofiya Movshevich and Anastasia Vitruk of BFROW in West Hollywood

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Sofiya Movshevich and Anastasia Vitruk.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Sofiya and Anastasia. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Sofiya Movshevich: Founder and CEO of BFROW. (25 years)
Russian, moved to London at the age of 14, found BFROW on her second year of university (age 22). Straight after graduating London College of Fashion with BA(Hons) in Fashion PR & Communications came to LA at the age of 23 to grow the company further. And conquer the industry of Fashion Tech by building the biggest community of creative talents and professionals.

Anastasia Vitruk: Product Marketing Manager. (31)
Russian, moved to Paris at the age of 20, graduated Paris-Dauphine with Masters Degree in Political Science. Started her career in strategy consulting and quickly escalated to luxury marketing at LVMH group, moved to NYC to get her professional development by shifting from beauty to fashion with a well-known apparel brand Yiagal Azrouel. Anastasia ended up opening her own outwear brand and finally found her calling at BFROW.

Sofiya: From the moment I entered professional world of fashion, I felt that huge segregation and segmentation of people within industries of Fashion, Beauty and Lifestyle(especially in L.A.) New York is obviously way more developed in the sense of communities and networking – but it is super competitive, due to being one of the biggest fashion capitals in the world. But slowly LA started to takeover in the field of fashion, beauty and lifestyle, and became one of the biggest aggregators for creative talents and professionals from all over the world (whatever is trendy in Hollywood is trendy globally). Oh, an of course the weather.

Throughout my journey, I have met incredible people like Diana Aroutiounova (who is now my CCO) and Anastasia Vitruk. It was so incredible that when I was trying super hard to find people to hire here, I kept on meeting talented (no doubt) people, but not the right people for my company and who didn’t see the bigger picture. With Anastasia and Diana it was pure accidents of meeting through mutual friends and both times we vibed instantly. Girls believed in the idea and I know they felt a bit sceptic in the beginning working with someone younger than them, but I think I charmed them with my positivity and business-savy approach in everything I do.

I met Anastasia a little over six months ago and she instantly told me that she loved the idea and she is currently looking for a project to work in and so far BFROW was exactly what she was looking for. She truly did play a key role in helping me defining the brand strategy and increasing brand awareness via establishing mutually beneficial connections with top professionals within industries of Fashion and Tech. “When Sofiya and I met, I saw a huge potential in her idea, so I immediately wanted to become a part of it. I knew I could help her and BFROW by using my skills in business development and marketing to make it the largest platform for creatives in the US. I have been loving to work with Sofiya from the first day. She is always full of creative ideas and her strategical and entrepreneurial spirit drives us to bring it all to live, while actually enjoying it ourselves.” (Anastasia Vitruk)

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Biggest challenge was to move to LA and have no one here. LA is amazing but US and its regulations is so different from the rest of the world… It took a while to adjust.

Networking is one of the hardest parts so far. Its been a real challenge to bring people together and that’s why we decided to start monthly off-line events for people to network, collaborate and just simply have fun and socialize with like-minded people.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the BFROW story. Tell us more about the business.
BFROW was originally found in my second year of university, back in London

We are a community-based networking platform for creatives, that provides tools for professional development and job search.

So, how the idea actually came to me is quite interesting as I never could imagine myself (back then) being a founder of a project as big as BFROW, I dreamed about it, but I always thought that I will work at LVMH or TOM FORD and then I would have my own company, (always knew I would end up working for myself)… But never Tech Start-up at the age of 22. At first it was supposed to be something like a blogger incubator, as blogospheres were booming and everyone wanted to be a blogger and be their own boss + working with great brands that they always loved. At that point I had a few friends, who were blogging and they were always complaining on how all blogospheres lack tools and there is no one to educate you on how to do it all (communicating with brands and educating business-wise, you’d be surprised how many bloggers still have no idea that legal side of their business is one of the most important ones!) . Plus there was already too many different apps with memberships/subscriptions that were quite pricy, which were used to connect with brands/agencies etc… and they were very targeted for a very specific purpose (like a direct line) and there wasn’t event one platform that would unite everyone in one place… So I just took a leap of faith, mostly in myself and my knowledge and understanding of the needs in the industry, and just went with it.

Three years later I have a beautiful office in the heart of L.A. a great team of young professionals, I have my own production and its amazing how fast we are growing and how many people truly believe in our project and they all support us.

What sets us apart is that we truly believe in collaborative work. Through collaborations with different creatives in LA we came up with great ideas and projects. Exchanging ideas and experiences as well as skills, thats what creative industries are all about, not killing one another for a spot under the sun. Collaborations will always give you a much better results and it also establishes that long-term type of relationship with one another. That way we have slowly started growing our community by simply offering projects to work on and truly getting to know each other and telling our stories through work.

I am personally very proud to have such a great team who is always full of ideas and who are very independent in their approach and who are fashion and creative savvy. Also, I feel like we always have fun doing what we love.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Defining luck is simply experiencing positive or negative events in life… I definitely experienced both. I am a spiritual person and with everything I’ve been through and where I am now, and the kind of people I am surrounded by, it would be stupid not to believe in luck or think that it didn’t play a role in my life or my business. I feel like the luckiest person to have my family and friends, who are incredibly supportive in everything I do Maybe they don’t always understand, but they see that it makes me happy and I guess that’s enough for them. I was very lucky to meet Diana and Anastasia as they have been a huge help and exactly the people I was looking for. I meet incredible people pretty much every day, who believe in me and my ideas, who instantly become great supporters and friends. I believe that I am very lucky in general. But being lucky doesn’t mean you sit by the pool all day sipping on Pina Coladas… I still have to grind & hustle everyday. There is a quote by Seneca that I think describes very accurately what it is: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

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Image Credit:
@katrinrox @whatdianadid

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