THE story of how Daphne Petrakos came to own the Giselle's skin-care and spa chain is a real nail-biter.
Actually, being an ambitious young woman with a stressful sales career, Petrakos was the nail-biter.
Daphne Petrakos has built Giselle's from one small shop to a three-location, 135-employee operation.
Back in the late 1970s, she ventured into Giselle's in the hope that having her fingernails beautifully manicured would stop her from gnawing on them.
It worked, and Petrakos became a faithful customer at the tiny salon founded by Giselle Roeder, a European-trained esthetician, then located on Academy Road at Niagara Street.
Petrakos, who was then 30-ish, discovered pedicures and facials, and booked herself a standing appointment. The last Friday of every month, a Russian lady named Alla would "shine her up." But Petrakos wanted more.
"There were no body services in the city," recalls the spa boss, who speaks in a brisk, forceful manner in her private office, while keeping her all-important cellphone tucked in her cleavage.
"I wanted a body facial. I wanted everything done, just like my face -- exfoliated, moisturized... Alla invented one for me, which is still on our menu."
When Petrakos gets an idea, she insists on making it happen. "If I set a goal for myself, I'll do almost anything to attain it," she declares. "Hard work doesn't scare me.
"My weakness is impatience. If I want something, I want lots of it, and I want it now. My greatest strength is perseverance."
The River Heights-bred Petrakos earned a commerce degree at the University of Manitoba in an era when there were fewer than a dozen female students in the entire faculty. With her take-charge, decisive personality, she knew she wanted to buy a business with an established reputation that was both service- and retail-based. One day she realized that her future could lie in the esthetic services that were giving her such a boost every month.
In 1983, assuming that Roeder must be reaching retirement age, Petrakos approached her to see if she would sell Giselle's.
"I'm a little bit embarrassed about that, because she was several years younger than I am now," laughs the greying 58-year-old, who wears huge dark-framed glasses and pokes fun at herself with references such as "Dinosaur Daphne."
Next year will mark 25 years since Petrakos took over the business, which by then had moved to Grosvenor Avenue. She hired the incomparable Alla, who stayed on for two decades.
Founder Roeder retired to Vancouver, but still comes in for treatments when she visits Winnipeg. "It's very cute," says Petrakos of the spry senior. "She still is very proud of the stores, and often will give me a little critique."
Roeder's granddaughter now works at Giselle's. Grandchildren of the original customers come in for treatments. And Giselle's has become a local empire, with three locations, its own school of esthetics, and a huge menu of services ranging from "Jamu Asian spa rituals" to couples' packages featuring chocolate massages.
Petrakos has won a slew of awards as an entrepreneur. Just as her no-nonsense look defies the beauty-industry stereotype of a heavily made-up matriarch with dyed hair and an unnatural tan, her spas are sleek, contemporary and not the least girly. On this day she's dressed all in black. The colour scheme at her Grant and Kenaston spa is pure Daphne: grey and black, with accents of vivid red.
The pretty cameo logo that has been a strong brand image for Giselle's now includes a square-jawed gent, indicating the growing demand for male services. (There's a new $245 Steel Toe Special treatment package for the "hard-working guy.")
The pre-Christmas period is hotter than a steam bath, with an unending parade of men buying gift certificates (though Petrakos won't disclose how many) and women booking appointments to get plucked, waxed and buffed for festive parties. Giselle's retail side, managed with flair by Petrakos' loyal lieutenant for 20 years, Randal Newman, offers indulgences from decadent bath products to elegant home decor items.
By its very nature, Giselle's is a luxury domain (a full day at the spa can cost $457). That means Petrakos and her staff of more than 100 have never escaped being a topic of gossip for the network of River Heights, Tuxedo and Linden Woods ladies who lunch. There are some who whisper that the business is in trouble. They've been whispering it for 25 years, shrugs Newman.
"I think that's a Winnipeg trait," he says. "When you're at the top of your game, it's time for them to topple you. It's always there, it always will be there. So you just ignore it."
CERTAINLY Petrakos, a spa pioneer, has seen more and more competitors enter the field. Giselle's has lost the title of largest day-spa chain in Western Canada to Eveline Charles. That chain has locations in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Kelowna, B.C., but it has outside investors and includes hairdressing, Petrakos notes.
"There is more competition now. We're not a hotel or a resort," she allows. But her customers are extremely loyal, she says, and many who sample the upstart spas come back to Giselle's because of her "sensible" approach, which is "not about glamour" or fad treatments.
Newman is so in tune with his boss that he knows her every mood and anticipates her every word. He describes the half-Greek Petrakos as having a Mediterranean lust for life.
"She is intense ... bigger than life. Everything she does, she attacks with a gusto. There's always food, fun, spontaneity..."
Petrakos' father John, a Greek-born restaurateur who co-founded the Junior's Drive-In burger chain, died when she was just 13. He had a profound influence on her, instilling a strong, gutsy work ethic and high expectations, as well as an appreciation for the finer things. It sounds as if she still idolizes him.
He was a sophisticated diner -- not a burger guy -- who showed her how to eat caviar, and how to trim and light a cigar.
"My dad wanted me to have a strong European influence. In those days, the city was pretty white-bread. He would teach me how to eat imaginary food ... squab, quail, pomegranates ... Sometimes if he was having a little treat of something very grown up, he would wake me up to share it."
Part of Petrakos' outsized personality is a temper, Newman says, but she rarely unleashes it. And what many people don't realize is that she is deeply generous. Throughout the years, Newman says, she has given a hand up and a chance to many women who needed jobs, especially single mothers and women in difficult relationships.
Ask about her own relationships, though, and the divorced Petrakos cuts off the discussion like an esthetician ripping a waxing strip off a bikini line.
And does she have children?
"Why don't you just say I'm not married?" she responds.
Her more reflective side is the one that comes out at her historic cottage, where she escapes year-round. "It's my most special spot ... to rejuvenate and get my creative energy going," she says. "I feed foxes and deer. I wear clothes with holes in them."
She is also inspired by a profound love of vintage blues and jazz recordings, which she collects. Though she's not an avid traveller, she's an anglophile who fuels her love of British dramas like The Tudors when she sits up watching TV.
"I watch TV late into the night and I'm up really early," she says. She has always averaged only four to six hours of sleep, but is making an effort to get more.
What about spa treatments? Is she her own best customer?
"My vision was that I'd be having services from morning 'til night!" she remembers about buying the salon on Grosvenor.
"Then I was doing everything -- answering phones, doing the money, cleaning the bathrooms, making the teas and coffees, doing the laundry. A lot of times I'd have to give up my appointments for customers. I was definitely less pampered once I owned the spa."
These days, she tries to stop envisioning her next innovation long enough to pause for regular manicures, pedicures, facials and body treatments.
"They tell me I'm a very bad client," she admits. "I have a bunch of things done at once, and I try to make them skip steps."
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