Rosa Perez comes from a family of scientists, so experimenting with ingredients and developing formulas comes naturally to her.
Two years ago, the Lynn Valley resident created and launched Spirality of Life, a line of natural skincare products, and fulfilled a dream she's had most of her life.
Growing up in Mexico, Perez admired her chemist grandfather who had a laboratory in the family home. It was at the end of the hallway on the top floor of the house, she recalls.
"I used to go upstairs when I was little and I saw all the tubes all together."
There, she would watch him concoct many of their household products - from cleaning solutions to shampoo.
"I learned a lot from him," Perez says.
Meanwhile, her mother had a PhD in science and focused her research on plants.
Perez says she always had an interest in cosmetics. She studied cosmetology at postsecondary school in Mexico and continued her education in Barcelona, Spain, where she graduated as a cosmetic chemist.
She deviated from the cosmetics industry for a while, taking a job in broadcast radio, but returned to her passion years later when she, together with her mother and her sister (a plastic surgeon), started a cosmetic and nutraceutical company and developed a natural skincare line.
In 1997, Perez left the business in the hands of her family when she and her husband moved to Canada. The couple have lived in North Vancouver for 16 years and have two children, aged 12 and 10, and two dogs.
When she arrived in Canada, Perez made it a priority to improve her English and then earned her esthetician certification from the Cosmetologist Association of B.C. She worked in the beauty industry, but what she really yearned to do was invent creams and cleansers of her very own.
Two years ago, while sitting in West Vancouver Memorial Library, she decided the time was right. Her children no longer demanded as much of her attention and she was itching to start a business. That very day she came up with the name Spirality of Life, inspired by her childhood habit of doodling spirals in the margins of notebooks.
The result of her efforts is a vegan cosmetic line with organic and nontoxic ingredients with no petrochemicals or parebens. Perez decided on the formulas herself and manufactures the products in a laboratory in Richmond, which she rents from a chemist.
Her line includes a Grapefruit Facial Cleanser, Grapefruit Balancing Toner, Booster Berries Moisturizer, Anti-aging Serum and Illuminating Serum.
What sets her products apart from other organic skincare lines on the market, Perez says, is the use of liquid crystals with the molecular structure (H2O)37.
Perez says this liquid helps eliminate toxic molecules and free radicals and also aids product absorption.
"This water is a very good carrier of the ingredients and also, inside the skin, it will help to promote the collagen and the elastic fibres."
She is slowly but steadily managing to get her products sold in stores. Currently, Spirality of Life is sold at select North Shore spas, Pure Integrative Pharmacy and Shoppers Drug Mart locations. It is also available at spiralityoflife.com.
