Andréanne's Journal - April 2025

Are we ever glad that March is over! April might not offer us the best weather, but the short sunny days really make a difference. And of course, this April at Womance is made extra special by our announcement of a brand new boutique! I was SO excited to FINALLY announce it, and I’m also relieved to have done it. I was a bit worried that the reaction would be “just okay” but you all seem really excited!

A side note for the people of Trois-Rivières: I can't wait to meet you in person, for real. Your city has been on my list of places to open a new boutique for a long time. We just had to wait for the timing to be right. We'll announce the opening date soon. :)

Opening a new store location is quite a task. For the first time, we've started working with a designer who is very knowledgeable about boutique design in the retail industry. I was lucky enough to do the other stores with my talented friend Pézie, who came to my rescue. We were always tight on time, so we worked with all the colours in my house! Flooring, curtains, etc. They turned out beautiful, but as we grew I wanted to take the concept of our stores to another level and I had some specific ideas in mind. In a few weeks, we’ll have a meeting to go over the initial plans. I’m excited, but at the same time, I always have a nagging fear at the back of my mind that I won’t like it at all! If you’ve ever had a designer draw up plans for your home, or even just one room, you know it’s a little nerve-wracking. You worry: “What if they don’t understand what I want at all?” Despite this fear, I’m still really confident it will all turn out well.

The Trois-Rivières store will be the first to showcase our new image. The goal is to recreate this image in the future locations we plan to open. Having a curated brand image can be demanding in terms of design and construction, but it provides clear direction in finding the right locations and warehouse. Labour can also be difficult to find. The challenge: hiring people who represent us well, including an excellent manager who can run things according to our standards while we are far away. My friends sometimes ask me if it stresses me out to open new stores because of the financial stress involved. They often ask me, “Aren’t you stressed out about opening a store so far away without being on site?” At first, that was my biggest fear, and I mean really big fear. I was so afraid that someone would call me on a Saturday morning to tell me that no one was there to open the store at DIX30! It’s really hard to solve a problem when you’re a 2.5 hour drive away! I was very lucky because Mylène, the manager we hired for our first off-site store at DIX30, is a real gem. She took all the pressure off my shoulders and I trust her completely. She quickly surrounded herself with a great team which really makes all the difference. And the stress that sets in afterward is: "Will there be people there? Will we achieve the expected sales?" Just because Womance is known to a certain clientele doesn't mean it automatically works when you open a store in a different city. There's a lot of marketing work to do beforehand, and it continues afterward! My constant fear? That sales won't be there.

An extra stress is that this new store will be MUCH bigger, double the size of the one at Carrefour Laval! That will give us plenty of room to get creative, especially in terms of design. There won't be two or three changerooms, but SIX of them! One of them will be extra large to accommodate moms with strollers. You’ll be really comfortable, I promise. We’ll do a short series on social media to show you everything behind the scenes, construction and everything. I can’t wait to show it all to you!

I also spent a week at school during the month of March, so that meant taking a week off work. If you follow me on social media, you'll have seen that I spent my weeks between the office, the road, Montreal, Laval and Trois-Rivières. It was really intense. I arrived at school burned out and left even more tired, haha! It's so mentally challenging, but I love it!

- Andréanne Marquis, founder of Womance and Sans-FaçonCosmétiques