A Unique Beauty Salon Requires Unusual Space

Beauties Lab opened a new iteration this fall on Laurier Avenue West in Montreal. The move to this new location — and the buildout of their space — created opportunities to grow their client base as well as rebrand their business as one that focuses on self-care and wellbeing.

Founded by professional makeup artist Léa Bégin, the salon integrates green, inclusive and ethically sourced products into beauty routines. Employing 11 people, it offers services such as facials, back treatments and eyebrow tweezing and also sells beauty products, makeup and self-care items.

The first Beauties Lab boutique comprised 400 square feet (37 square meters) in Château Saint-Ambroise, a heritage building constructed in 1882 that now houses commercial lofts, located in the Montreal neighbourhood of Saint-Henri. At the beginning of the pandemic, the boutique next door closed, so Beauties Lab expanded into the space, doubling in size to 800 square feet (74 square meters).

With a larger store came more demand. “We are victims of a growing popularity that wasn’t planned,” Bégin said. As a result, she started looking for an even larger space in the summer of 2021. But finding a suitable location wasn’t as easy as she expected.

After having no luck finding a space in her much-loved Sud-Ouest neighbourhood, Bégin thought she had struck gold when another unit in her building became available. But a disagreement with her landlord over the renovation process forced Bégin to keep looking.

At that time, Bégin had already started the design process with interior designer Sabrina Barazin, founder of Sabrina Barazin Studio. She then hired Laurent Abergel, a real estate broker and advisor at Cresa. Abergel and Bégin decided to expand their criteria to include more neighbourhoods.

Their search was particularly difficult due to the unique services offered by Beauties Lab. “There are a lot of things that we need in a space because our concept doesn’t exist,” explained Bégin. “We are not a spa, we are not a boutique and we are not a classic beauty salon either. For us, it looks more like a residential space than a classic commercial space.”

In the spring of 2022, Abergel found the current space in a historic building constructed in 1880. At the time, the building was occupied by a couple of architects who also lived in the space, and who were in the process of selling it to real estate company MTRPL, which specializes in mixed-use urban development. “I wasn’t able to go visit the space because people still lived there, I had to look at pictures,” Begin said. Only after the building sold to MTRPL in May 2022 was Bégin able to tour the space.

At that time, Bégin hesitated between the second and the third floors, with the second floor being a bit bigger. She ultimately chose the third floor, which can be zoned residential or commercial, and signed a 10-year lease. “It’s a bit smaller than what I looked at initially for our needs, but I couldn’t have afforded a larger space because it’s priced by the square foot,” explained Bégin.

Once the space was secured, Bégin and Barazin started working on the layout and design in July. Beauties Lab opened its doors on October 12, 2022. “We delivered this project more quickly than usual, since we had already done the design concept,” said Barazin. This was “incredible, since usually projects of this type can take six months to a year to complete.”

For Léa Bégin, this space ticked all the boxes, starting with accessibility. Laurier metro station is under a 10-minute walk away and there are street parking spaces nearby. Also, an elevator provides access to the third floor.

Bégin was looking for a space that was centrally located in an area with good foot traffic but she did not want direct street access. “We are not about quantity, we focus on the quality of services, interactions and products,” Begin explained. “When you have direct street access, you need to hire more employees, and [that creates] other types of problems. There might be more traffic, but at the end of the day, there are more costs related to that.”

Natural light was another important aspect. “Our brand is about an abundance of natural light,” she said. “When people enter, it has to be luminous.”

Bégin was also looking for a space with unique style and cachet, and the space on Laurier Avenue West, with its large windows, high ceilings and gorgeous views, ticked all the boxes. “It has to be cozy, it needs to have a soul when you enter the space,” she said. “It cannot be just concrete like any other retail space.”

Because it is also a store, “the focus needs to be on the products” without overloading the space, according to Barazin. Therefore, she worked with a cabinetmaker to create custom cabinets to store products. They were finished in a medium-colored wood, “which creates a more refined feeling” she explained, than an all-light finish that can appear washed out.

The woodwork was enhanced with the use of beige wall paint. “I think that Léa and I sourced every shade of beige that wasn’t too warm or too cold,” explained Barazin, laughing. “At one point, there were 20 paint samples on the wall; it just got ridiculous, but we really nailed it. We really got the best one.”

Some elements from the two previous buildouts of Beauties Lab found themselves in the new space to ensure continuity, like a reproduction of a Gustav Klimt painting, Die Jungfrau, which also belonged to Bégin’s father. When a meaningful item is used, “it speaks to the space, it adds to the feeling,” explained Barazin.

In the previous salons, shelves were made from plywood. Barazin wanted to use plywood in the new space but in an elevated way. “We designed a shelf in a squiggle shape made out of plywood, so it has an intentional design and look. It’s not just a cut piece of plywood that’s drilled into the wall, but it’s still plywood,” she said.

“We do always try to recycle as a studio,” said Barazin. “If something works, then why are we going to replace it?”

In addition to design elements, it was also important to consider functional elements of a beauty salon, like a washer and a dryer, because treatments such as facials require constant washing of sheets and towels. If the washer and dryer could not have been accommodated, the space would not have worked, Bégin said.

Costs were not yet finalized when LoopNet spoke with Bégin, but she estimated that furniture costs were between 70,000 and 80,000 Canadian dollars (US$52,241 to US$59,699), electronics cost about $5,000 and labour costs totaled around $100,000.

Despite these costs, many elements were cut from the budget. For example, at the beginning of the project, Bégin and Barazin planned for a sink in each of the three treatment rooms but because the installation required extensive plumbing work, these renovations would have cost $20,000. Instead, skin specialists fill their jars with water from a common sink between treatments.

Bégin and Barazin also wanted to build a chic shower in the bathroom, but to demolish and recreate a shower can cost $10,000. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on the shower, Barazin chose a red velvet curtain that cost $600 which hides the existing round shower. “It gives the bathroom a luxe, sexy feeling, and the team can keep their shower. It doesn’t need to be visible for the clients because it’s not for the clients [to use],” she said.

For the red bathroom, Barazin collaborated with local tile company Arta Ceramic. “We didn’t do a huge renovation of the bathroom, we just dressed it up, so we redid the tile on the floor and on the wall, and we followed it with red paint,” Barazin said.

At the moment, Léa Bégin is not thinking about opening a second store in Montreal. Instead, she is considering a second location in Saint-Lambert, on the South Shore, where she lives.

“I grew up there, so for sure a big part of my community is there, but there is also a big part of my clientele there,” she explained.

Cachet, parking spots and the central and accessible location of the suburban locale are other important aspects to consider, Bégin said. “In Saint-Lambert, there is no offering like ours, so I think that a second store there [in the future] would be logical.”