A Pirovette into Beauty: The founder's Story

"As a child and throughout my years of rigorous ballet training, I learned that to be good at something, first you need to have the passion for it and then a lot of focus, dedication and hard work. I have over 23 years of experience at the senior level in the beauty industry. Why not use my years of proven knowledge and expertise to provide women with products and service they well deserve?"

-Yassman Rousta

If Yassman Rousta has an edge, it is the one you find around a flame: the soft glow born of a passion. She may seem to nourish herself on the ordinary air, like the rest of us; but like those with a passion, she gives back something extraordinary in turn, the drive and spark from which companies are born.

Yassman a Canadian born in Tehran of Azeri parents who immigrated ti Iran during the Russian revolution. She attended university in Canada, getting a bachelor's degree in economics and at the time pursuing her interest in dance by preparing young students for their Royal academy of Dance exams.

"I was sure I could never find another passion in life like ballet," she says.

"Until I learned about the world of beauty."

 
By a serendipitous turn of events while working at her first job in an insurance office, Yassman was offered a position as a consultant/cosmetics department head at the reputable Canadian department store Eaton's. Yassman attended not only the store’s management training sessions, but also various product knowledge training seminars offered by different cosmetic brands. "It was an invaluable learning experience for me," she says.

Three years later, she joined one of the industry's largest internationally based luxury product groups and thus spent, in her own words, "twenty wonderful years working with Christian Dior" in a number of positions in sales and training, and finishing as director of education and performance management.

In her work, Yassman trained thousands of beauty consultants, fragrance advisers, makeup artists, estheticians, education managers, sales representatives and others, Her training programs included all aspects of product knowledge for skincare, make up and fragrance with specific emphasis on skin and its aging process, ingredients and their effects, products and their claims, massage techniques, salon services, competition, coaching and customer service, etc. You name it, Yassman did it.

"I enjoyed listening to my trainee's realistic, hands-on stories. They were the ones who had direct contact with customers. They asked me lots of valid questions that were based on their customers' needs and concerns. I was challenged to understand these concerns and investigate and find the best answer."

With her many years of senior-level experience in the beauty industry, the time had come, Yassman felt, to start her own company using her knowledge and expertise to provide women with products and service they deserve. She has listened to them, and now she would give something back: her company, Neange.