Felicity Evans: Leveraging deep curiosity to build a wellness brand lasts

Long before she was building one of Australia’s best-known ingestible beauty brands, Felicity Evans was simply trying to feel like herself again.

An autoimmune diagnosis in her early 30s left her bloated, inflamed and exhausted. Rather than accept those symptoms as her ‘new normal,’ Evans began poring over scientific journals and experimenting with probiotic formulations in her own kitchen. At the time, there was no inkling of a business plan or an ambition to become a founder.

"I followed a health crisis and a deep curiosity and let the rest unfold," she tells The CEO Magazine. "My career has never been linear, I simply followed my obsessions and my instinct, moving quickly when I needed to."

Twelve years later, that curiosity has become IMBIBE, a brand built on the philosophy that beauty starts from within and a belief that wellness products should be underpinned by rigorous science.

The start of Evans’ career looks much different than it does today. Back then, she was an events manager, orchestrating international events and managing hundreds of delegates across cities including Sydney, Singapore and Mumbai.

It wasn’t until later that she recognized how much that chapter had prepared her for what came next.

"None of it was beauty or wellness, but I can see now it was training," she says.

"I learned how to build something from nothing and hold every moving part at once – to make something complex into a beautiful symphony."

Patience as competitive advantage

The ability to manage complexity in those early years has proven invaluable. After all, IMBIBE wasn’t brought to life through investor decks and carefully modeled business plans.

"The brand came after the result, not before it," Evans points out. "That order matters, and I think it’s why it’s lasted."

Every formulation begins with either a health concern Evans herself has experienced or feedback gathered from customers over years of conversations and she’s been willing to spend years refining a single product, while many competitors race to get their products to market.

"Translating real science into something that fits a woman's life takes far longer than the market wants to allow and I’ve never let the timeline win," Evans explains.

"Five years on a single formula is a long time to be patient. But that patience is precisely why we’re still here while trendy brands have come and gone."

Another key ingredient of IMBIBE’s success has been the loyalty it’s built over the years. As Evans talks about the company’s biggest milestones, that’s the point she turns to first.

"IMBIBE’s biggest milestone won’t be found on a spreadsheet," she says. "It was the first day a stranger re-ordered a product – and shared it with all her friends. That’s when I knew it was working."

Even today, much of the brand’s success comes via word of mouth.

"IMBIBE was built girlfriend to girlfriend," she says. "Women saw a real result in their own skin and energy and then they told the woman next to them, who told the next."

Scaling beyond the founder

As IMBIBE grew, the challenge quickly shifted from creating products to building a business that could thrive without Evans at the center of every decision.

"In the early days, I was the customer service, social media, formulator, delivery driver, content creator and even the website product photographer," she reflects.

"Today, I focus my time and energy on pulling the levers that will generate the biggest results and protect the three things only I can do: the formulation standard, my team, and the brand’s voice. Everything else can be built, hired or delegated."

But that doesn’t mean letting go has been easy for the mother of three.

"Learning to build the business so it didn’t depend on me doing everything was harder than any launch," she admits.

"But I’ve realized purpose doesn’t scale if it lives in one person. It scales when the standard is shared."

While she's proud of how far IMBIBE has come, Evans is already focused on what’s next: expanding into the United States.

"What excites me most is that we get to enter as a known entity – not a hopeful one," she says. "A decade of proof, a result women can feel and a standard I’ve never compromised on."

As the beauty and wellness industry continues to evolve and AI accelerates personalization and the desire for authenticity, Evans hopes the legacy she leaves extends beyond product innovation.

"What I’m really offering women isn’t a product – it’s freedom," she says. "If IMBIBE helped make ‘real science, properly formulated’ the baseline expectation rather than a marketing line, that’s the legacy I want."