Eyebrow threading may be commonplace in India, but it took an ingenious Indian-origin entrepreneur, 43-year-old Vanita Parti, to introduce the popular Indian grooming essential to upmarket Londoners.
London-born daughter of Indian immigrant couple from Punjab, Vanita worked for British Airways after her studies. However, she decided to start a business of her own after having two children. “My father was in retailing and I always wanted to have my own business, something that I could build into my own brand. And because of my roots, it had to be something connected to India. It was the time when there was growing interest in Indian culture due to the influence of Bollywood,” says Vanita, who has two sisters and grew up with a strong connection with India.
She stumbled onto the idea of starting upmarket brow bars after she was unable to access a good threading technician in central London. The drive to convert fashion-savvy Britons to threading fans led her to create Blink Brow Bars, the open display service points in top departmental stores like Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Fenwick, and John Lewis.
Vanita started Blink with a £10,000 loan from her husband in 2004 by setting up her first brow bar in Fenwick. The process of setting up and establishing the business was tough, admits Vanita, and she made £150,000 in the first year.
Her success led to a lot of competition and recession did not help, but she is on her way to achieving an expected turnover of £5 million this year.
The demand from clients led her to open her first brow bar in Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue in New York last year and has brow bars coming up in Hong Kong and Sydney in a few months. “Italy has also shown a lot of interest,” says Vanita, who is helped in the business by one of her sisters, Nisha. She owns 20 brow bars in Britain.
Vanita, who is opening four new brow bars in Britain in the next six months, also plans to expand in the US once the New York bar creates the right amount of buzz.
Interestingly, more than 15 per cent of her clients are men and her brow bars have special packages for them.
Her next plan is to open eyebrow emporia, which will focus on eyelashes and eyebrows and offer premium treatments and products. She already has a range of eye cosmetics and plans to expand it.