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February 11, 2011
Tools for a deep relaxation
Israeli entrepreneurs court the world with bath and body products.
MICHELLE DODEK
Shanie Bar Oz knows what she wants. A 32-year-old graduate of Herzliyah’s Interdisciplinary Centre with a degree in law and business, Bar Oz wants to make the world a better place – and make some money along the way. Co-founder of Lavan, a bath and body shop featuring unique Dead Sea-based products with natural scents, she is driven to make her newly opened Downtown Vancouver shop into a big business story.
”I’m looking for someone huge to partner with and I want these products to go boom!” said Bar Oz, commenting on her current search for another company to form a partnership with her line of bath and body products.
Open for just four months, Lavan is developing a niche for itself on Granville just south of Robson Street. Bar Oz believes this area of Granville just might be the next Robson, drawing high-end shoppers to high-end stores, but being less intimidating for customers of all sorts.
She explained, “If I was walking down Robson and I saw an elegant store like this, with chandeliers and beautiful-looking products, I might be scared away. Here, we welcome people in and they see that we are selling luxury that they can afford.”
The product line is designed and created entirely in Israel, using plant-based ingredients and is 100 percent paraben free. Many cosmetic and body products contain parabens, she explained, chemicals that are known carcinogens.
“If I wouldn’t want to eat it, I wouldn’t put it on my body,” exclaimed Bar Oz after demonstrating a tempting facial peeling mask, containing peach, papaya, pear, cucumber, grape, apple and lemon, just to name a few of the natural ingredients.
Bar Oz emphasized that the goal of Lavan is to make it easier for busy people to take a bit of time for themselves, to relax and rejuvenate in a healthy, natural way. She believes that we all need to pamper ourselves, and she seems to have found the recipe to make that process easy and enjoyable.
Stepping into Lavan feels like a luxurious experience. Window displays feature the ultimate bath experience and reed diffusers greet customers with clean, rejuvenating scents that don’t overpower the senses. Shelves with simple glass bottles of colorful bath gels and milky soaps line the walls of the shop, but it is the fountain in the centre of the store, with its tall brass spouts and foot-activated streams of water, that draws people in. Once the friendly salesperson offers a complimentary salt scrub and body butter application for your hands, a relaxed state is achieved.
“Our goal was to make an oasis. We help people stop for a while, and relax. We hand out soap samples on the street in front of the shop and invite people into the store. Once they are here, they have a chance to experience a moment of relaxation,” said Bar Oz.
And Lavan is located just where many Downtown residents or shoppers need to find a moment of respite. Located on the bus mall filled with the hustle and bustle of commuters and tourists, Bar Oz said she and her partner, Yogev Leader, chose this particular location because of that hustle and bustle just outside their doors. Also optimistic about the proximity to Robson Street, they have not been disappointed. Staff members said close to 70 percent of their clientele are tourists who have spent the day shopping on tourist-friendly Robson.
Leader and Bar Oz came to Vancouver three years ago and fell in love with the city. Because of Vancouver’s multicultural nature, they felt that opening their first store here could reach everyone in the world.
Asian tourists have been among their best clients. Lavan is featured in a Japanese tourist guide to Vancouver and the Tourism Vancouver maps display Lavan prominently in the lower right-hand corner both in the English and Japanese versions.
Prominently displayed both outside and inside the store are “Products Made in Israel” signs. According to Bar Oz, customers from everywhere, including Arab countries, are very enthusiastic about Israeli-made products. When creating the store and the products, pride in Israel was part of the package. The name Lavan, which means white in Hebrew, was chosen to represent purity and cleanliness but also to bring Canada and Israel together with the color the two countries share on their flags.
This is the kind of thoughtful purpose put into Lavan. All the containers are glass and can be returned to the store for a credit, recycled or easily repurposed, and Lavan assures that the massage oil does not stain sheets, a wondrously relaxing promise. The staff demonstrates the skin-care line, taking care to emphasize that even a busy person can easily use a beauty regime and see results with Lavan products.
“I don’t know why anyone would ever use anything else after trying our products,” said Bar Oz with total conviction. “This beautiful product line drives me, and this is just the beginning.”
Located at 850 Granville St., Lavan products can also be purchased online at lavanlavan.ca.
Michelle Dodek is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
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