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Allure Body Bar – Home of Alaa’s Revolutionary Quickzilian

For most couples, having a baby is an exciting, stressful and life-changing experience. For Frank and Alaa Abbassi, the birth of their first child not only turned their home life upside down, but it kick started a business idea that had been brewing for a couple of years.

We sat down with Frank – the co-owner of Toronto’s Allure Body Bar – to discuss how in the world he and partner Alaa thought it was a good idea to start a new business – and a new family – at the same time.

The idea came and we just said, Why not?

image of alaa and frank from Allure Body Bar

Alaa and Frank from Allure Body Bar

It wasn’t completely out of the blue – Alaa had been a practicing aesthetician for over ten years in New York and Toronto – but with the recession in full swing, she and Frank decided that a big change was needed.

“We sat down in 2011 right after the birth of my first-born. I said, “I want to do something.” And keeping Alaa’s career in mind, we talked about how the waxing could be huge for both men and women. I’ll handle making the men that come in comfortable and you handle the women. We became entrepreneurs from there.”

Toronto has a lot of spas so there’s a wealth of choice when it comes to getting a waxing done. But Frank and Alaa had a secret weapon that would help them not just stand out from the crowd, but leave it in the dust.

“Alaa had the idea. She created the technique to do a Brazilian waxing in 8 minutes. What happens normally when you go for a waxing it can take anywhere from half an hour to 45 minutes.”

Alaa developed the technique – we call it the Quickzilian – where she can speedwax, but without sacrificing the comfort and painless nature of our treatment.

And that, in a nutshell, is what sets Allure Body Bar apart. Alaa’s Quickzilian – and indeed all of their services – adhere to those three principles of performance: the comfort of the environment, the painlessness of the procedure, and the efficiency of the waxing itself. You really can be in and out in the blink of an eye.

image of a treatment room at Allure Body Bar

Because of Alaa’s technique, 85 to 95% of business comes from repeat clients and a lot of them are men. Gone are the days when a waxing salon was the sole domain of women. Frank was adamant at the start that ‘manscaping’ was not a fad, and that services designed for guys would be a hit. As a testament to the success of the venture, Allure Body Spa was nominated for NOW Toronto’s Best Beauty Spa in it’s first year of operation.

Alaa’s technique forms the base for all of Allure’s service and indeed, new aestheticians that come on board are trained in her style, as Frank explains.

“When the girls go to aesthetician school, they don’t teach them how to do Brazilians. Alaa didn’t learn it in school; her experience is the difference, and it’s something that we then teach here, in-house.”

Each new employee is given a three month training period that helps perfect the technique created by Alaa. The result is a staff of aestheticians that deliver fast, relatively pain-free results. They say ‘relatively’ because of the nature of the activity – there’s always going to some pain when we’re talking about hair removal. But Allure Body Bar prides itself on how comfortable they can make the experience.

As a man with a hirsute face, I’ve never considered taking advantage of the types of services that Allure Body Bar specializes in. But after speaking to Frank and hearing the passion in his voice for delivering a quality service and particularly the way he speaks so glowingly on the abilities of his wife and partner Alaa, it’s definitely the sort of business we can get behind.

Allure Body Bar is a waxing spa on Toronto’s Daforth Avenue. Specializing in their own creation, the 8-minute Brazilian wax – the Quickzilian – Allure offers a complete array of waxing services to men and women. Visit www.allurebodybar.com for details.