For most couples, bath time is simply part of the daily routine. For Brentwood residents Victoria Thain Gioia and Greg Gioia, it became the inspiration for an entirely new business. The husband-and-wife founders behind the new children's body care line Fipl are no strangers to building brands. Victoria is the co-founder of Perelel, the groundbreaking OB/GYN-developed supplement company that has become one of the most trusted names in women's health. Greg most recently served as VP of Finance at Airtable after leadership roles at Quibi and Goldman Sachs. Now, after years of building separate businesses, the pair is joining forces on their most personal venture yet.
Both New York natives—Victoria from Rye and Greg from Buffalo—the two met while attending Harvard Business School. They eventually moved west to Los Angeles, where they built their careers, had children and became part of Brentwood's thriving community of entrepreneurs and young families.
The idea for Fipl was born at home. "After building Perelel around the idea that what goes into your body during pregnancy and motherhood truly matters, I couldn't stop applying that same lens to my own kids," says Victoria. "Once you start reading labels closely, you can't unsee it. The kids' category was full of products where the ingredient lists didn't hold up, or they were for teens and moving into stages that our kids weren't ready for. We wanted this to be a stage where they were just kids learning about good hygiene."
With four young children and plenty of shampoo and body wash disappearing from the bathroom each week, the couple saw a gap in the market. "Greg and I kept asking why clean, genuinely safe formulations couldn't also be products our kids were excited to use once they graduated out of the baby category," Victoria says. "Fipl came out of that gap. It felt like the right next chapter because it's the most personal version of the work I've always done.”
The brand's name tells the story. Fipl is an acronym built from the first letters of their children's names: Finn, Imogen, Pippa and Lachlan. "Finn is eight, curious and thoughtful, the kind of kid who's already trying to start his own business," Victoria says. "Immy is seven and deeply sensitive and caring; she's our empathy barometer. Pippa is five and pure spunk; she has opinions about everything, including which products she'll actually use. And Lachlan is our two-year-old, the happy baby of the family." Each child helped shape the company in different ways. "The mission—clean without compromise, joyful without gimmicks—came directly from designing for four very different kids under one roof,” she says.
As with many family businesses, each founder has naturally found a role. "I am running the operations of Fipl, where Tori has focused on the overall brand strategy," Greg explains. "It has been natural to find our lanes, and we catch up on work in any and all free moments: chats after bedtime or a strategy session while driving to a kid's football game.” Raising four children has also given the founders a built-in product development team. “They're our testers in the most literal sense: scents, textures and packaging they can actually open themselves,” says Victoria. “They keep us honest, because a kid will tell you immediately if something doesn't smell right or feel good."
At its core, Fipl is designed for children in what the founders call the "in-between years"—those years after baby products but before teen brands. "It's the everyday essentials, formulated to high safety standards and designed for real family routines,” says Greg. “We vet our ingredients rigorously and we're transparent about what we leave out, so parents don't have to do the label-reading we had to do." At launch, the line includes a Daily Cleansing Shampoo with aloe and jojoba, Daily Hydrating Conditioner featuring argan, shea and sunflower oil, Foaming Body Wash formulated with coconut-derived cleansers, cucumber extract and hyaluronic acid and a Botanical Detangling Spray with chamomile, panthenol and amodimethicone. But the company is about more than what goes into the bottle. "It's also about the beauty and mayhem that comes during bath time," Greg says. "The art of growing up and ending each day with a ritual."
Victoria brings significant experience to the venture. She launched Perelel after becoming frustrated by the lack of personalized nutrition options available when she was pregnant. "Perelel started from my own pregnancy, when I realized the prenatal category was generic and one-size-fits-all despite pregnancy being anything but," she says. "We wanted to build OB/GYN-developed supplements designed for the specific stages of a woman's life." Today, the company serves women throughout pregnancy, postpartum and beyond. "The throughline has never changed: rigor, real clinical grounding and seeing women where they actually are,” she explains.
Those lessons are now shaping Fipl. "From Perelel, I'm bringing an obsession with product quality, the discipline of building credibility and expert insights from day one rather than retrofitting it and the belief that trust is the entire business," Victoria says. "The difference is the audience dynamic. With Perelel, the woman is both the decision-maker and the end user. With Fipl, parents are the buyers and gatekeepers, but kids are the users and they have to actually want it. So, you're solving for a parent's standards and a child's experience at the same time, which raises the bar on both."
For the Gioias, Brentwood has been an ideal place to build both family and business. "It's a community that genuinely blends family life and ambition without forcing you to choose," Greg says. "Being surrounded by other parents who are building or pursuing their own paths is grounding and encouraging. A lot of Fipl was pressure-tested in real conversations with other families, and the community is a place where the personal and the professional naturally overlap, which is exactly how we work."
Looking ahead, Victoria hopes the company becomes more than a successful product line. "I hope Fipl becomes a name parents trust instinctively, the way they want a shorthand for 'this is safe and I don't have to investigate it,'" she says. "Beyond the products, I want it to stand for a standard. Proof that children's products can be held to real rigor without losing the joy and playfulness that make childhood what it is." hifipl.com
“I hope Fipl becomes a name parents trust instinctively. Proof that children’s products can be held to a real rigor without losing the playfulness that makes childhood what it is.”