Stephanie’s does Kandy proud

It is usual to find beauty parlour's with the smell of hair being treated with chemicals but at ‘Stephanie’s,’ - winner of a number of awards over the years, it is a nice aromatic smell that greets visitors and clients.

Owner Corrina Sansoni commenced her business at home and catered to her neighbours. Soon she found that she had a wide clientèle even with her neighbours such as dressing up brides, providing gift items, doing needle work, patch work, wall hangings, etc. It was time to expand her workplace and she then decided to open up an outlet at Katugastota as ‘Stephanie's Gifts and Styles’ which formed the base for her future operations. Corrina proudly says that her first customers were her neighbours.

From this venue at Katugastota, Corrina says that even the Katugastota outlet became too small and she decided to go into a larger area because by this time, the clients had increased sharply from the earlier regulars.

She says her initial clients in Kandy were mainly teachers and church goers and other working women. With newspaper advertisements and other media publicity the clientele expanded to include people from other areas and such distant places such as Anuradhapura.

With this the result was to shift to Kandy town and to form a limited liability company and added that her son is also a director now. Corrina is the Secretary of the Women's Business Chamber and she says that she works very closely with them and was awarded training periods in India, Malaysia and Thailand. She says she learnt special therapy programmes in India especially on skin treatment for women. This, she said, is very special sinnce a woman’s skin is different from men. “The skin of women has to be specially treated,” she added.

She won a prestigious award at the recent Sri Lankan Entrepreneur of the Year. Corrina made her mark in treating women’s skin, which was part of her training in Bombay. Here, she said that she was given a solid grounding on the aspect of the skin of women, especially for facials.

Looking back, Corrina says that she is very satisfied with her achievements and hopes to encourage young girls in and around Kandy seeking to become self employed.

She has commenced conducting classes in Beauty Culture. She added that even in remotest villages in the country, women have become beauty conscious and with this trend she said that she hopes to train women in these areas to look after their skin and also do their own beauty culture business.

The Kandy entrepreneur emphasises that beauty culture should not be confined to weddings and functions but should be applied as a daily need. She said that it would not be long when women would consider been conscious of this fact and some do, even now.