Meeting with Suzie
Friday at the end of the day, Suzie welcomes us with a big smile in her store with pink walls. The owner of Beauté Africa is a businesswoman who knows how to transmit her sparkling energy to the customers who enter her shop.
Open since four years, Beauté Africa offers make-up, wigs, hair products, but mostly hair extensions. The rows are full of them : curly, blue, smooth or pink, there's something for everyone! Radiant, she tells us about her passion for the world of aesthetics : "Why beauty products? Because I like this! It's part of me, it's part of my daily life and that's what I wanted to do."
In Haïti, her mother ran a shop : "I was always there to help her. It was a food market, but there was a cosmetics section and I took care of that. So I grew up with this idea of having a business." The family arrived in Quebec when Suzie was 8 years old. A few years later, she followed in her mother's footsteps : "I'm the next generation. When my mother sees me doing that, she's really proud, she's happy."
Suzie loves her job as a shopkeeper : being her own boss has its advantages! But what she prefers are humain contacts : "They come here, I give them advice and they feel good because I'm always happy."
The young woman chose to settle in Saint-Leonard for its calm and accessibility, but also because there are not a lot of cosmetics shops, an advantage for developing her brand. Suzie does not rule out the possibility of expanding and multiplying Beauté Africa. "What I would like is to have a least five Beauté Africa : I'm aiming for Longueuil, Laval and Rependigny. There are a lot of customers in that area who ask me to move around a bit. It will become a chain!"
