Working for mom
The door to Gee Beauty invites, “Push, gorgeous.” Walk through on a typical day and you’ll be welcomed by two effortlessly stylish women (one in her late twenties, the other indefinably older) who share a certain something. Is it the conviction they project that any woman can be gorgeous with a little help? The quiet confidence with which the younger woman threads brows while the older plies her makeup brushes?
They work side by side like old friends grounded by trust. Yet they are also mother and daughter. Meet Miriam Gee, whose career-long passion for beauty inspired the shop’s birth, and her 50-50 partner, Natalie. “We’re like the right hand and the left hand,” says Miriam. “It never crosses my mind that she’s not equal to me.”
Gee Beauty belongs to a new breed of family business — the mother/daughter enterprise. The trend reflects both a continuing surge in women-owned businesses (up by 50 per cent in the past 15 years) and the profile of today’s typical female entrepreneur (over 40 and, increasingly, over 55).
Recruited by mom
Never have so many women been in a position to recruit their daughters as employees or full-fledged partners. For some entrepreneurs, the very thought summons nerve-jangling memories of teenage turf wars over clothes and curfews. But when the working relationship clicks, it allows the mother to enjoy her daughter’s company while savouring her success as a professional whose skills enhance the business.
Miriam Gee knew from the get-go that Natalie, the oldest of three keenly style-conscious sisters, was destined to run a retail business. “Instead of playing with Barbie, she played store with a toy cash register. She’d take my stuff and make me buy it back from her.”
Mostly, she raided her mother’s vanity: Miriam had all the latest colours and creams. As associate beauty/fashion editor for Chatelaine, where she spent a decade while raising the girls, she excelled at lighting the spark in ordinary faces. But she dreamed of pursuing her passion in her own place, on her own terms. Instead of yet another traditional day spa, she’d create a kind of drop-in centre where busy women could go for beauty girl-talk along with treatments tailored to their schedules.
By the time she was ready to launch, on a leafy Toronto street just across from a Starbucks, Natalie, a business graduate, was ready to join her.
