In the News

Kalamazoo businesswoman Elina Fedotova's
holistic skin-care products keep faces
looking young around the world

By Stephanie Esters
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Kalamazoo Gazette

Two years ago, licensed skin-care specialist and cosmetics-company founder Elina Fedotova flew to Dallas to train spa employees in using her products.

She arrived at her hotel late and wasn't able to find anything to eat.

"I was so hungry ... I just used my strawberry mask and my pineapple mask and put it in water, and it was just a wonderful smoothie. It was wonderful protein."

Those skin-care products made by Fedotova under the brand name Elina are so natural that they can be eaten. Also, they're better for your skin, she says, than the harsh chemicals found in traditional cosmetics or the toxic materials such as Botox that can be injected into skin.

Fedotova has been offering holistic skin care for 10 years. Her products feature fruits, vegetables, herbs, natural vitamins and oils and other natural ingredients, and the procedures she offers include facial massages and collagen stimulaters to help reduce wrinkles.

"Some people think you have to have plastic surgery or just get old," Fedotova said. "I would like to promote holistic, nondangerous, noninvasive, affordable, holistic skin care."

She has had much success doing it. She opened her first clinic, Elina Herbal Skin Care Clinic, 10 years ago in downtown Kalamazoo.

Two years ago she opened another clinic, Elina Advanced Skin Care Clinic, at 50 E. Oak St. in downtown Chicago.

Her products are created by hand in a lab on Kalamazoo's Lovell Street and distributed as far away as California and Australia.

Fedotova founded the Association of Holistic Skin Care Practitioners in December 2007, and, as its president, will help host a national conference for the association Sept. 21 and 22 in Chicago.

Part of a trend

Fedotova's business is part of the fastest-growing segment of the North American cosmetics and toiletries industry. Sales of organic products are increasing by 20 percent a year, according to Organic Monitor, a London-based business-research and consulting company.

Even mainstream stores like Wal-Mart and Target are introducing natural and organic personal-care products, according to the report.

Worldwide, the natural- and organic-cosmetics market generated almost $7 billion last year, Organic Monitor reported on its Web site. In coming years, this segment of the market is expected to represent about 15 percent of total cosmetic and toiletry sales.

Organic Monitor also predicted that this will be the year that the industry will start to draw lines between "legitimate natural/organic products and pseudo products."

How she got started

Fedotova, who grew up in Moscow, says she suffered from severe acne from age 14 to 19. But her skin these days appears flawless. (She wouldn't reveal her age.) When a teen-age Fedotova looked for ways to treat her acne, her mother cautioned her against using products with chemicals that could harm her body.

The search for a natural way to heal her skin, coupled with Fedotova's interest in science (her father is a chemist), led her to study aesthetics and become interested in the use of organic substances.

She enrolled at the Russian School of Cosmetic and Herbal Therapy in Moscow, where she earned a degree in 1992, several years after she and her husband had left Russia. She returned to Moscow periodically to complete her education.

She and her husband, Igor Fedotov, left Moscow In 1989 for Mexico, where he worked as a violist. They immigrated to the United States in 1991, living first in Midland, Texas, before moving to Hattiesburg, Miss., in 1994.

In the summer of 1998, she and her husband moved to Kalamazoo, where he is a Western Michigan University viola professor and principal violist with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra.

On Sept. 1 of that year she opened her first skin-care clinic, at 226 W. Lovell St. The clinic moved in 2002 to its current location at 219 S. Westnedge Ave.

An unhurried facial

On a recent day at her Kalamazoo clinic, Fedotova was giving a facial to one of her licensed estheticians, Brooke Barz, in anticipation of the young woman's marriage, which occurred on Aug. 30.

The facial was a 90-minute process, and its unhurried pace was part of the holistic regimen that Fedotova espouses.

"We're holistic practitioners, so we're working with the patron as a whole," said Fedotova, who noted that she hires her staff members based in part on how holistic their lives and diets are.

"Skin shows what's inside. If they're unhealthy people, they look unhealthy. Doesn't matter how many skin lifts a person has."

When Fedotova came into the room, Barz had already started the steam machine, which was spewing steam that would help open up the younger woman's pores.

Fedotova started with a cleansing product using tea, instead of water, to dissolve powder mixes that she would smooth over Barz's skin.

She also used a small vacuum to cleanse microscopic dirt particles from Barz's face.

"(It does) what vacuuming does for the carpet," Fedotova said. "Skin has the same structure -- it has many, many holes and pores. The whole art of extraction is to get out ... (dirt) but not break the capillaries."

She applied a natural acid peel to exfoliate the skin and microderm abrasion to remove dead skin cells. She then applied a rejuvenating serum by using a small ultrasound machine.

She applied another nourishing herbal mask, using another high-frequency machine and a cold laser -- which, she said, helps to calm down the skin and rejuvenate collagen.

Then she massaged the young woman's face, using a paste that she mixed especially for Barz's skin.

She topped off the facial by applying eye and neck cream, moisturizers and an oil-control product to Barz's T-zone area -- the space involving her forehead and nose.

She concluded by using what she called a sun shelter, a natural sun block containing zinc oxide.

Before meeting Fedotova, Barz said, she was prone to getting blackheads on her face. But "her products have completely healed my skin."

'They're wonderful'

Barz is not the only one who praises those products.

Elina cosmetics have been sold at Borgess Integrative Medicine for eight or nine years, and the people who buy them love them, said Dawn Brand, an administrative assistant there.

"They've had problems with some of the stuff you buy over the counter, and they're looking for things that don't have all the chemicals in it," Brand said. "They love the products. They're wonderful."