A fresh 23 years old, Vancouver’s India Daykin may not be the typical business owner. But entrepreneurship runs in her family.
There is her mother, Rosie, who has the celebrated Butter Baked Goods. And her cousin, Claire Mandell, who opened Joyride nail salon. So really, it’s no surprise the UBC graduate decided to go the same route. Her choice of industry? Cosmetics.
India Rose Cosmeticary opened mere weeks ago, coincidentally, across the street from Butter. And while Daykin is pleased to be near her mother (“You know, free food,” she jokes), her shop is wholly her own: her vision, her talents, her goals. Sweetly designed, the 450-square-foot space offers an array of beauty goods, from hair care to skin care to makeup. “I wanted to create somewhere that I wanted to shop,” Daykin says. Though she studied art history in university, she ended up going to Blanche Macdonald part-time on top of her degree, joining the makeup artistry program. It was then that she realized she cared more about lip lines than painted lines, and immersed herself in beauty blogs to discover the best of the best.
Among India Rose’s offerings are Strange Invisible Perfumes, a fragrance line out of Venice Beach for which Daykin is the first stockist in Canada. She is also the only Canadian retailer of cult Parisian skin care brand Joëlle Ciocco; Daykin even travelled to the French capital to train with Ciocco herself, and while she was there, learned from the team at Cosmetics 27 (she carries their stuff, too). There are Christophe Robin hair products; Egyptian Magic creams; Rouge Bunny Rouge cosmetics. “I essentially cold-called all of them just to see if they would even consider talking to me, let alone letting me sell their line,” she says of the brands. Though young, her knowledge and passion undoubtedly helped her win over her coveted choices. “I was trying to create a very well curated selection of products in one store that I think are the best—so not necessarily whole lines of everything, but things you can’t get everywhere else, things you read about on beauty blogs but don’t know where to find—all in one place,” she explains. “I don’t really think there’s anywhere else in Vancouver that has this same approach; obviously there are boutique beauty stores that are fantastic, but my angle that I was really going for was that it is a hard-to-find collection.” That means a mixture of offbeat favourites, lesser known treasures, and even some stuff you probably haven’t heard of but will surely love. With this, Daykin has done all the grunt work, all the research: we just have to show up.
As a sort of happy coincidence, India Rose’s selection specializes in products that are organic, natural, and cruelty-free; aside from retail and product knowledge, Daykin offers makeup sessions and lessons. Located in the seemingly far away Dunbar area, India Rose is part of a revitalization, and Daykin is eager to see how the neighbourhood develops over the next year. If her go-getting family has anything to do with it, its success is surely imminent.
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