Angela Turovskaya, Founder and Director, Wellness United
Vision, passion, perseverance, determination and dedication are amongst the absolutely vital qualities an aspiring entrepreneur needs get their journey off to a strong and solid start. With experience, the skills of leadership, managerial, problem-solving, decision-making and time management grow from strength to strength and these capabilities keep you moving forward on the road to continuous success.
Angela Turovskaya’s entrepreneurial journey began when she discovered a fascination for the beauty industry. This intense interest steadily developed into a passion, leading her to leave the corporate world behind. Angela vested time into studying multiple beauty therapy courses which took her on a path from treatment to management roles. After managing several prominent spas in the region, she recognised there was a lack of diversity in the market concerning the concepts closest to her heart: clean, sustainable and ethical beauty brands and luxury niche perfumes. To bridge the gap, Angela launched her own professional venture ‘Wellness United Inc.’ in 2015. Wellness United quickly became one of the region’s top suppliers to spas, salons and retailers looking for alternative lifestyle brands.
Seeing this success, Angela wanted to reach out directly to consumers and launched ‘BALMESSENCE’, an online boutique dedicated to exclusive clean, sustainable, ethical beauty and selective luxury fragrance brands.
Supporting Natural Beauty through Business
Supported by her degree in business management and professional experience through her previous corporate roles, Angela steadily developed her ambitions. Her vision gave her the motivation to keep moving forward and gave her an opportunity to work towards a bright future in setting up her own company.
“Wellness United started off as a small company, with just a few people and one brand. Our distribution channels were limited to small beauty salons. Since then, we have grown to represent over 20 high quality brands and launched our ecommerce vertical – BALMESSENCE, the online boutique for ethical, natural and sustainable beauty products alongside selective ranges of luxury fragrances. Our B2B distribution channels have grown to include prestigious 5-star spas, malls, concept stores, department stores and fragrance stores. We are now expanding into clinics and selected pharmaceutical channels,” Angela says.
Since 2015, Wellness United has been supplying premium quality, clean, ethical and luxurious international brands. It’s the mother company of all the verticals under its umbrella: B2B distribution and B2C retail, careful to support only natural, ethical and sustainable beauty partnered with selective luxury fragrances. Whilst Wellness United is primarily a distributor, BALMESSENCE is its ecommerce division, an online boutique for ethical beauty and opulent perfumes.
Throughout all her ventures, Angela is an advocate for products made from clean ingredients, recognizing that industrial, synthetic ingredients may be very harmful to us and the environment. The company deeply values beauty brands whose philosophies firmly lie within a vegan, fair-trade and cruelty-free mindset. The premium fragrance selections come from the highest quality artisan family houses of perfume.
BALMESSENCE has successfully grown, beginning with just 10 brands to offering over 70 hand-picked beauty and fragrance brands today. “We are enjoying great interest from many of the world’s leading luxury and premium beauty brands in joining our e-boutique in order to make amazing, clean and results-oriented products available to customers in the GCC region. We are focused on growing our e-boutique to become the regional leader in sustainable beauty products. Along with high quality products, we also aim to provide great technological solutions and excellent customer care,” Angela says.
“At present we are in the middle of a very exciting journey of rebranding BALMESSENCE. We want to relaunch our online boutique in the first quarter of 2021 as a more upgraded platform focused on delivering the best of the best in ethical, sustainable beauty and fragrance. We shall announce the new name of the platform in January 2021 as we launch many exciting new products,” Angela goes on.
Finding Success on the Entrepreneurial Journey
As a successful business leader, Angela personally believes in vision, dedication, honesty, resilience, and enthusiasm as essential ingredients to business success.These values have a profound and transformative effect on any business endeavour by giving employees a sense of purpose, optimism as well as motivation and mutual support to overcome challenges along the way.
“I liked that even before there was demand for ethical, clean and sustainable beauty in the GCC region, many of our team members already understood and imbibed our company’s unique differentiating factors and our values. I’m so thankful to their dedication and belief which allows us to keep moving forward,” Angela shares.
Angela believes that while every entrepreneur faces challenges or setbacks, support from peers, colleagues, family or friends along with focus and determination can strengthen their growth. Further, they must master the skill of giving and receiving fairly, become a diplomat with a firm attitude and develop focus as they may face setbacks from time to time.
Offering her valuable advice to young and aspiring entrepreneurs, Angela concludes, “If you want to be an entrepreneur, partnerships are at the core of it. You can be as driven and independent as you can be, but when you’re building a business, there is always someone else involved. Whether it’s a client, partner or employees, learn to value them and use their skills and strengths as assets to grow your business.”