Kiss and Makeup boutique has said goodbye to West Vancouver and relocated to neighbouring North Vancouver.
The store officially closed its doors in the Village at Park Royal location on July 31 and opened up the very next day at 1760 Lonsdale Ave.
Heather Huntingford, owner of Kiss and Makeup, says after 10 years at Park Royal it was time for a change.
"We're really excited for this, it's going to be good," says Huntingford. "It's going to be a good change." Huntingford says they realized they were heading in a direction that was not their own. "We're definitely looking at the national, bigger chain and want an independent store and really want to keep that independent feeling," she says, adding that her boutique was one of the first tenants in the original Village. "We feel like we've sort of found a new area that we can come in because we see there's going to be a lot happening on Lonsdale I think in the next few years. We're hoping that we're going to start a trend, that there'll be more boutiques like us coming to the area."
Huntingford says one of the benefits of the move is vetting through product lines they carry and letting go of the brands that have grown really big.
"Some of them migrated into Sephora and that's just not who we are - we like small," she says. "We want contact with the vendors, we want contact with our clients, you know, passing on feedback."
The boutique has even developed a "family feeling" in the store, says Huntingford.
"We know all of our clients that come in, we know their names, we know their husbands, we know their kids, so that for us is really important," she says. "We have clients coming in two or three times a week to say 'hi.'" The close relationship with clients also resulted in a strong reaction about the relocation.
"There's a lot of disbelief and shock," says Huntingford. "Some of the clients are wanting to picket outside of the store." But clients have also been incredibly supportive, she says.
"We just talk through what's happening, and what's happening in the Village and why we needed to move out and once that's established they're like 'OK, we understand where we're going,'" says Huntingford. "The space we've found being in upper Lonsdale, we thought was really convenient for people to get to, just right off the highway and so that was important."
Huntingford says they are working hard to return to West Vancouver as well, with plans in the works to operate two small stores.
"It's probably going to be the Grosvenor development, which we're just trying to get negotiated," she says. "Their whole development is going to be small and boutique and independent, so that's why it actually fits in really well with us."
Although they have vetted their product lines, Huntingford says they are taking along some of their staples, including skin care lines Tata Harper and Sjal, jewelry by Shereen De Rousseau, Becca Cosmetics and clothing by Monrow.
"We'll have Linacare, which we've carried since we opened, we love Linacare," she says. "We'll have Principessa, Ilia and RMS Beauty and those are all local makeup lines."
Clients can also expect to see a variety of new brands, including Verso, a retinol eight complex line, and Soleil du Jour, a mineral-based sunscreen.
"There was a period of time that I couldn't find any new sort of makeup lines and skin care lines that were small," says Huntingford. "And over the past few years there have been a lot of new ones emerging on the market. So lots of niche, small, independent, upand-coming lines." Huntingford says she finds her clients are more loyal to the local brands, buying two or three containers of the same product to avoid running out.
"We love the stories, we want a good story behind the line," she says. "Like who are we supporting so that we do talk about the brand and the creators and why it's in the store."
Kiss and Makeup will also be carrying new brands of clothing, including Cotton Citizen, which is a line of sweatpants, and All Things Fabulous, which includes raccoon and squirrel prints Huntingford describes as "really cheeky."
"We're sort of switching our focus away from dresses and wedding and all of those kinds of things and focusing more on day-to-day, sweatpants, Tshirts, jeans," she says. Using local, organic products is something Huntingford can relate to. She first got into the makeup business after suffering from severe allergies.
"I couldn't wear any makeup," she says. "I would literally react to it."
Huntingford was working as a cashier at Capers at the time and noticed customers with different skin care products.
"It was expensive back then and I was at UBC and I was wanting to go into medicine," she says. But after a year of thinking it over she decided there was something she could do. "So I went into the venture program at BCIT and wrote my business plan in six months and opened the store."
