Lexi Miles Corrin recognized a void in the Canadian market for high-end and efficient waxing services at competitive prices back in 2012.
And that’s when she left her career as a management consultant and started WAXON Laser + Waxbar. Today, WAXON has 14 locations with half of them franchises and half corporate. All locations are in the southern Ontario region with the exception of one in Halifax.
“We have two new locations that we’re hoping we can get geared up to open this year. That will be York Mills and the Avenue Lawrence in Toronto as well,” said Miles Corrin, the company’s founder and CEO.
The company’s first location was in the Summerhill neighbourhood in Toronto. WAXON’s first franchise location was in London, ON, in 2017.
“Our predominant focus most recently has been in franchising. When I opened WAXON and started the business, at first I thought I could grow the business very quickly, 100 locations, franchise them all, no big deal in five years, and quickly learned that is not the best way to build the business or franchise business,” said Miles Corrin.
“So we had about four locations under our belt before we opened our first franchise location and had those running for quite a bit of time to kind of really learn the business and then opened a couple of franchise locations, took a step back, opened another corporate location, and again learned so many new things, and then really started to put a very big focus on franchising the business. And that’s where we’re at today, feeling a lot more confident in what we’re providing our franchise partners and the support they’re getting from us and the brand, and really setting them up for success in terms of training and things like that.
“We’re going to continue to approach our growth with a goal of opening 10 locations from basically now until the end of next year. Those are all franchise locations. However, we’re approaching kind of our five-year plan of growth as a combination of franchise and corporately-owned locations. I think it’s really important to do this and it’s a bit different from a lot of businesses, especially aesthetics out there, that we do both because I think it’s really important for us to stay in the game alongside our franchise partners. COVID’s a perfect example of that. We were right alongside experiencing the exact same things as our franchise partners were at the same time in a world that no one knew the right path to go down and we were navigating it all together. I know that actually brought us together stronger as a company . . . because we were in it with our franchise partners. So we’re approaching it with the goal to have a 50-50 split maintained as we grow and use our corporate locations as an opportunity to expand into new places.”
The company also has a pop-up every summer in Muskoka.
Miles Corrin said the company has talked a lot about using the pop-up as a form of marketing moving forward because it’s a great way to get the brand out there.
“For us, we focus solely on hair removal per se in terms of our service offering,” she said. “And that includes waxing and laser. However, as an overall company we’re actually a lot of more than that in terms of what we incorporate into the business. We provide a product offering. We have our own exclusive products that we develop and cater towards our clients’ needs.
“We kind of look at the inside of our business as a combination of our service offering, the education that we provide to the clients within the service also and also online and our blog as well as the podcast we have, and then our product offering as well. For us, it’s all about convenience, quality and providing it all at a very convenient and affordable price point. That’s where our differentiating point is.”
