Every week, columnist and journalist Karine Gagnon invites you to a major interview with a notable personality from the Capitale-Nationale.
Very early on, Andréanne Marquis understood the importance of loving her work and listening to her instinct, which she does brilliantly by running her successful companies Womance, whose head office is based in Quebec, and Sans-Façon Cosmetics.
Listening to your instinct is in fact the mantra of this young woman from L’Isle-Verte, “on the land side”, in Bas-Saint-Laurent. “Entrepreneurship, yes it can be learned, but there is still a part deep inside you that is perhaps innate,” says this passionate creator, always looking for new ideas.
She gives the example of the artist whom we watch on stage and say to ourselves that he has it in him, and the other whom we observe while thinking that he will have to work hard. “I think I was made to do what I do, it works well, it’s progressing well. I’m learning to make plans, but basically I’m really an instinct girl. We women are the same. I really listen to him.”
Then her parents, also entrepreneurs, always told her brother and her that we had to see our work as a part of our life and not as a task. “Arrange to do something you love,” they insisted.
Many experiences
The path to get there was dotted, for Andréanne Marquis, with experiences as varied as they were enriching. This is what allowed her to understand what she really wanted. Because it wasn’t so clear at the start, she explains.
As a teenager, she worked at Botanix, the business of her parents, horticulturists by profession. Then, she decided to explore different fields: she found a job in a courthouse, and did accounting in a company. “I tried a lot of things,” she says.
Then, she saw a student job offer in politics, in the office of Liberal Minister Laurent Lessard. She had no idea who he was, or even what the acronym for his department, Municipal Affairs, meant. But she was curious.
“What I really liked about politics was the fact of changing things in concrete terms, but also the hard work. I had never seen people work hard like that,” says the woman who is still very interested in everything that happens on the political scene.
This foray made him want to return to school, in political communications in Ottawa. Then, she embarked on an adventure where she learned a lot again.
A spectacular flight
At 22, she auditioned to participate in Occupation Double in California in 2012. She was selected and even won with her boyfriend at the time. At that age, she notes, we don’t have many worries. “They called me happy for no reasonshe remembers with a laugh. For me, there was only positive, I would not be where I am today if I had not done that,” considers the one who dreamed of traveling.
When she returned, after landing a few hosting contracts and becoming co-owner of a swimsuit company, she had a lot of questions about her future.
Then, she decided to return to her first love: politics. For a year and a half, she was deputy press secretary to Minister of Education Yves Bolduc.
Photo Stevens LeBlanc
She thus had the chance to work closely with Yasmine Abdelfadel, now a columnist, a rigorous woman who worked so hard. “She made me want to get into politics,” she says.
Then, the idea of starting a business started to pop into his head. “People asked me a lot where I got my clothes and that inspired me for Womance,” she says.
Initially, she sold her own clothes from her apartment in Montreal. The call from Quebec was felt, however, and that’s where Womance really took off.
And it was quite a flight. After opening a few pop-up stores, the company’s turnover increased. After nine years, three stores are in operation, in Quebec, Laval and Quartier DIX30. Andréanne Marquis wants to double this number soon.
A total of 56 employees work there today, half of them full time. Everything is created in Canada and manufactured overseas, in an industry considered one of the most difficult.
“We have a very committed, very recurring clientele. We release new products every two weeks, although in limited quantities.”
The greatest risk
Then the entrepreneur had the idea of launching into the manufacturing and sale of Quebec cosmetics, with Sans-Façon Cosmétiques. She noticed that her friends were not buying products made in Quebec, and that there was a lack of new products since Lise Watier.
“Naively, I said to myself, I’m going to do it. I understood why nothing had happened. It’s really expensive, and it was Womance who paid for it, because a financial institution would never have gotten involved in this.”
Here again, Andréanne Marquis was a great success. Its “vegan, gluten and paraben-free” skin, hair and makeup products are available in major pharmacies.
“We are super proud. There was a big storm, and I don’t think I’ll get back into that again today. But it’s by far the best risk I’ve taken.”
Not to be missed, Wednesday evening at 8:30 p.m. on MAtv (channel 9 (Hélix et illico), 609HD (illico)), the show Karine’s Notebook about Andréanne Marquis.
