Issue #95: Introducing... Brand Builders
Brand Baby's new series featuring up-and-coming founders who are building in public. First up: Natalie Felikian, Founder & CEO of LAV 💫
I am so excited to be kicking off a new series here on Brand Baby: Brand Builders! Brand Builders is a series featuring emerging founders who are building in public. In each issue, we’ll unpack their approaches to marketing, the importance of sharing founder-first stories, and how they run a brand while being the face of it.
Our inaugural Brand Builder is Natalie Felikian, the founder of LAV – a healthy, single-serve salad dressing brand available on Amazon, Walmart, and other retailers.
Natalie is building LAV in public and crushing it. Our conversation covers how she leverages authentic, personal storytelling to connect with audiences and grow her brand (and so much more). I’m so excited to share her story. Let’s dive in!
Let’s start with your background. How did you start LAV?
Natalie: I’ve always been interested in nutrition, cooking, and food. Health became important to me in high school – I loved eating healthy because I felt so good. I would take a salad every day for lunch. It was an easy thing to throw in my bag: throw everything in Tupperware, take it to school, pull it out at lunch.
I got an internship one summer at a protein bar brand, and I was taking a salad again for lunch like I always did. I would pack my dressing in those little Tupperware containers, and when I got to work it either leaked in my bag or left my hands a little oily. Every night when I pre-portioned dressing, it was such a hassle. The salad was easy, but the dressing was not.
I kept thinking, why is no one making single-serve dressings with clean ingredients? It didn’t make sense to me. When I realized nothing like that was on the market, I thought, I have to do this. I would use this every single day. I know so many people who would do the same. Every corporate girl packs a salad.
That’s how I came up with the idea. I wasn’t searching for anything – it came to me while I was in college. I knew that if I was going to do this, it would be inspired by my heritage, with flavors I grew up eating. The name came from that too. I wanted an Armenian word. That’s how I landed on LAV. And the tagline Dress Well worked perfectly because “lav” means “well” in Armenian.
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It took me a good two years to get from ideation to launch. Things took longer than I expected. I originally launched with two SKUs. I sold through my first round of product and realized I either needed to really dial in or figure out what I was going to do next. I made tweaks to the formulation based on feedback, edited the packaging, and made upgrades. I relaunched in July of this past year with four SKUs and a much clearer direction.
You’ve taken super strong social-first approach to LAV. How would you describe your approach to social media?
Natalie: We’re a social-first brand – that is my bread and butter. Building something teaches you your strengths and weaknesses, and I know my strength is marketing and brand.
Social is my main focus. Every day, my first thought is what I’m posting and how it reflects the brand. I’m chronically online because you kind of have to be. I try to stick to my content pillars while being on-trend. Living and breathing TikTok is the name of the game.
My goal is somewhere between educational and fun. I want people to come to the page and feel like they’re at home, like they’re hanging out with family. Leaning into that and leaning into a founder-first brand has been my goal from the start. Unless you’re coming at a product with a huge round of fundraising, there’s no way to stand out besides just being yourself. I try to focus on that and how people feel when they watch my videos.
I do all of it, and I don’t know that I’ll give it up anytime soon. It’s my favorite part. I love sharing the product, the growth, and making people feel a certain way through content. It’s what keeps me going.
What’s a transformative moment that LAV has had on social?
Natalie: TikTok has had the most of those moments. I launched on TikTok Shop in July, and that changed everything.
TikTok Shop videos require a call to action and story that makes people want to purchase. I created a founder story video and it immediately went viral. I realized that what moves the needle is telling the story that’s unique to me. That was what that video was, and I saw the direct conversion to sales, and I was like, that makes sense.
The Bethenny Frankel bit that I did of trying to get her to post – I posted 25 videos making Supermodel Snack and every single video went viral. I looked terrible in these videos, the snacks were weird, but people were into it. When she did post, it wasn’t about her posting as an influencer – it was more about committing to this thing and the fact that she did it organically was huge.
When I post things that feel really true to me and they do well, it feels really good. I made a couple of videos about making salads with my family. Even if I’m not directly using LAV, it’s still related to the brand and is a good feeling when it resonates.
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How do you determine what to share online? Do you have any personal boundaries or guardrails on the content you share?
Natalie: My personal Instagram is private. I try to keep it very specific to the brand. If I put other people in the video, I always ask if they’re okay with it. Sometimes I step back and am like, there’s a lot of people watching. Not everything needs to go viral, and that’s okay.
How do you manage both running your business and producing content (while being the face of LAV)?
Natalie: I’m still doing 80% of everything. My sister does help me. She’s part of my team, so she will manage certain aspects of operations and backend stuff. We have a couple agencies we work with to run ads, but for the most part, I’m doing most of it. It’s not easy, but I’m young and I’m very hungry for this business.
Another issue is that every time I have tried to outsource, I wish that I had just done it myself. So I just figure it out.
What marketing experiments are you hoping to pursue in 2026?
Natalie: I want to do more experiential marketing. That’s one goal of mine – to get out more and do more in the wild.
I want to try to continue to find new ways to show use case and be very strategic with influencers. I’ve been sending the product to a lot of nurses – a lot of people who meal prep. I want to show how people can use LAV in their day-to-day on the go.
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What advice would you give to another consumer brand founder who’s looking to start building in public?
Natalie: Don’t overcomplicate it. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel – you are the differentiator. Tell your story. Start a series. Be consistent. Show your product. It feels awkward at first, but you learn by doing. It gets easier with time.
Thank you so much to Natalie for her insights. I highly, highly recommend following LAV on TikTok for founder-first stories & more 💌
And if you know a founder who’s building in public and might be a good fit for Brand Builders, please leave a comment below! I’ll be in touch. xx
loveee the series! i need to feature LAV soon in CPGD!