WHO IS THE SUGARING BEAUTY BOUDOIR: THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE BUSINESSMay 18, 2021News
Sugaring Beauty Boudoir – Rose Laure Agbazan
Written by Stacy Thomas
Photo by Angela Bliss
When Rose Laure Agbazan was a little nine-year-old girl in France, she told her mother that she wanted to be an esthetician. Fast-forward to 2021 and she’s now the proud owner of her own day spa in beautiful Squamish – a successful, bustling business that she grew by herself from only an idea and a seed of entrepreneurialism.
Before coming to Canada in 2015, Agbazan was in Angola, central Africa, where she created and opened a 15-room spa in an upscale hotel in Luanda. The experience was intense; not only did she oversee the management, training and operations of the sprawling spa, she also witnessed firsthand the heartbreaking gap between the abject poverty and extreme wealth of the area.
While living the life of “a princess” in the hotel, never having to cook, having a personal driver at her disposal, she would see children begging for food in the street. It was too much; she decided she needed to move on. When she considered where to go next, she remembered an internship in Montréal and a subsequent year-long working visa when she had travelled all around Canada as a student. With similar values and surrounded by beauty, she felt a sense of belonging while she was here.
“I realized it was a really good country to live in,” Agbazan says. “I feel like nature, the forest, the quality of life compared to France, it’s a better lifestyle for me.”
So she set her sights on Canada, and made her way to Vancouver – but when she got there, it wasn’t so easy. Even with her impressive resumé that included over a decade of experience including management, and a six-year bachelor’s degree in massage and esthetics, she struggled to find a job in the industry. She thought about trying Toronto but didn’t want to live in the cold. Agbazan was at a loss, wondering what to do next when a friend suggested she try Whistler. She thought she would give it a go for a season, work at a hotel, then move to Toronto the following summer.
Five years later, she’s still here.
Agbazan ended up working for two-and-a-half years at the Fairmont Château Whistler and began commuting from Squamish when she moved here after a year.
But she wanted her own spa. She opened those two back rooms and ran them by herself, two days a week. Even though she was tucked away behind another store and did most of her advertising on Facebook and by relying on word of mouth, her clientele built quickly, so quickly that after eight months she was able to quit her job in Whistler and begin to run her own spa full time.
“Nobody knew me when I opened, I had no clients,” she says. “I remember, when I started, I didn’t have anyone. I was going all day, and nobody was coming. After I got one client, I was so happy. The following week, I had two a day, I was like, ‘Yes! It’s getting busier, now I have two!’ And it got busier and busier, people were recommending me. That was a surprise for me because I wasn’t expecting to be busy so fast.”
When A.B.I. decided to give up their lease in the front part of the space, Agbazan thought hard about whether to take up the lease and expand. Would it be busy enough? Would she be able to fill four rooms? How would she cover double the expenses?
But her entrepreneurial spirit took over. She took advantage of some loan opportunities for young entrepreneurs and got to work, renovating, painting, choosing furniture, decorating, all on her own. She found other estheticians to work from the space. She had faith that her services were good and that Squamish wouldn’t let her down. And it hasn’t. It’s been over four years now since she opened, and it has only gotten busier.
“I’m really happy. And it’s good to do something that you really like. Every day I come to work, I love my job, even if I work six days a week. It’s difficult to do a business you don’t like. You need to be passionate and like what you’re doing.”
That passion has paid off, with a business that picked right up again after a two-month closure for Covid, with clients thanking her for reopening and just for being there. Not only that, she was voted Best Esthetician in the Squamish Chief’s 2020 Reader’s Choice Awards.
Even with all of these achievements that she’s done completely on her own, her proudest moment of all was when her mother, who first heard these intentions from a nine-year-old Rose, saw the spa in its original iteration; “When she came and she saw the spa, and she told me, ‘I’m very proud of you, it’s so beautiful, I wanted to cry when she told me that. Hopefully, she can see the bigger spa one day.”
Sugaring Beauty Boudoir – Rose Laure Agbazan
Written by Stacy Thomas
Photo by Angela Bliss
When Rose Laure Agbazan was a little nine-year-old girl in France, she told her mother that she wanted to be an esthetician. Fast-forward to 2021 and she’s now the proud owner of her own day spa in beautiful Squamish – a successful, bustling business that she grew by herself from only an idea and a seed of entrepreneurialism.
Before coming to Canada in 2015, Agbazan was in Angola, central Africa, where she created and opened a 15-room spa in an upscale hotel in Luanda. The experience was intense; not only did she oversee the management, training and operations of the sprawling spa, she also witnessed firsthand the heartbreaking gap between the abject poverty and extreme wealth of the area.
While living the life of “a princess” in the hotel, never having to cook, having a personal driver at her disposal, she would see children begging for food in the street. It was too much; she decided she needed to move on. When she considered where to go next, she remembered an internship in Montréal and a subsequent year-long working visa when she had travelled all around Canada as a student. With similar values and surrounded by beauty, she felt a sense of belonging while she was here.
“I realized it was a really good country to live in,” Agbazan says. “I feel like nature, the forest, the quality of life compared to France, it’s a better lifestyle for me.”
So she set her sights on Canada, and made her way to Vancouver – but when she got there, it wasn’t so easy. Even with her impressive resumé that included over a decade of experience including management, and a six-year bachelor’s degree in massage and esthetics, she struggled to find a job in the industry. She thought about trying Toronto but didn’t want to live in the cold. Agbazan was at a loss, wondering what to do next when a friend suggested she try Whistler. She thought she would give it a go for a season, work at a hotel, then move to Toronto the following summer.
Five years later, she’s still here.
Agbazan ended up working for two-and-a-half years at the Fairmont Château Whistler and began commuting from Squamish when she moved here after a year.
But she wanted her own spa. She opened those two back rooms and ran them by herself, two days a week. Even though she was tucked away behind another store and did most of her advertising on Facebook and by relying on word of mouth, her clientele built quickly, so quickly that after eight months she was able to quit her job in Whistler and begin to run her own spa full time.
“Nobody knew me when I opened, I had no clients,” she says. “I remember, when I started, I didn’t have anyone. I was going all day, and nobody was coming. After I got one client, I was so happy. The following week, I had two a day, I was like, ‘Yes! It’s getting busier, now I have two!’ And it got busier and busier, people were recommending me. That was a surprise for me because I wasn’t expecting to be busy so fast.”
When A.B.I. decided to give up their lease in the front part of the space, Agbazan thought hard about whether to take up the lease and expand. Would it be busy enough? Would she be able to fill four rooms? How would she cover double the expenses?
But her entrepreneurial spirit took over. She took advantage of some loan opportunities for young entrepreneurs and got to work, renovating, painting, choosing furniture, decorating, all on her own. She found other estheticians to work from the space. She had faith that her services were good and that Squamish wouldn’t let her down. And it hasn’t. It’s been over four years now since she opened, and it has only gotten busier.
“I’m really happy. And it’s good to do something that you really like. Every day I come to work, I love my job, even if I work six days a week. It’s difficult to do a business you don’t like. You need to be passionate and like what you’re doing.”
That passion has paid off, with a business that picked right up again after a two-month closure for Covid, with clients thanking her for reopening and just for being there. Not only that, she was voted Best Esthetician in the Squamish Chief’s 2020 Reader’s Choice Awards.
Even with all of these achievements that she’s done completely on her own, her proudest moment of all was when her mother, who first heard these intentions from a nine-year-old Rose, saw the spa in its original iteration; “When she came and she saw the spa, and she told me, ‘I’m very proud of you, it’s so beautiful, I wanted to cry when she told me that. Hopefully, she can see the bigger spa one day.”
