esthetician

retail sales associate

associate manager

operations lead

marketing coordinator

Skoah Inc

I used to be a manager at skoah and there were so many issues with this company, it’s challenging to know where to begin. I unfortunately do not have enough time or space to discuss it here, but I will do my best. 

Unfortunately, I did not feel supported here and I often left my shift feeling drained, exhausted, and sad. 

I constantly felt pushed to sell more, more, and more. It was never enough and never appreciated. It felt like they did not care about the individuals who worked at the company, they only cared about making money. Relationships with staff and customers were completely undermined. If you weren’t selling, the relationship and connection didn’t matter. 

The personal lives of staff were also completely overlooked. There were many times where I was pressured to schedule my staff outside of their availability by upper management. There was an unspoken expectation from the upper management that the staff were to devote their entire life to skoah. 

For the amount of work I did, and was expected to do, I was not paid nearly enough ($18/hr - not even the living wage). I went above and beyond in my position and would often hear great feedback from the staff and customers. However, the upper management made me feel worthless, and I would often leave work crying because of how unkind and demeaning they were. 

I think Skoah has so much potential and there are some positives about the company: great products, great services, and great people. In many ways I am grateful for my time at skoah. I met so many great people, I learned a lot about skincare and products. I also learned a lot of great things about customer service and skincare education. I learned and grew a lot as an individual, and it helped me to understand where I want and need to be in my life (I am no longer in this industry). 

Overall, I am grateful for my time at the company but glad I no longer work here. 

Skoahs wages are low, they use tips as an excuse to not pay fair wages to their employees. Sometimes people don't tip after a 75 minute facial, so you only made around 13.00 after all that. plus front staff gets a cut of your tips.

It's almost impossible to receive a raise as you will have to consistantly sell $50 of product to every client for three months straight to receive a commission increase. Do that three times and they might consider giving you an hourly raise. They do not consider you as a person that's reliable, hardworking, honest, they care about how much you can sell. End of story. They also don't consider your first three months of numbers eligible for a commission raise. It will take you at least 6 months to get any increase in your income.

You get a phone call at 8pm the night before your shift with your start time. This makes it a joke to have a work life balance.

Skoah records and monitors employee and client conversations. This was confirmed in an HR email.

You will not be doing facials, you perform massages with added facials. They push their massage heavy facial and it ends up injuring a lot of estheticians as that is what you will do for 75 minutes straight, 7-8 hours a day. Youre expected to do 4-5 75 minute facials that include foot, leg, hand, arm, neck, and face massage. You don't actually spend a lot of time on people's skincare issues. 

I worked there before they decided to franchise, now they have independent owners which might help.

Obviously if you're an esthetician there isn't really any room for advancement. You could branch into skincare coaching, however they frowned upon this when I worked there.

The company itself is run very poorly. Working here was an incredibly stressful experience. They pile tasks on you and expect far too much for the wage you receive. The only positive working here was that the crew was extremely kind and friendly to me during my time. 
The work load was also very unfairly distributed within the team. They had 3 people working at the front desk and 2 people working a day, with one closing and one opening the store. Because they only had 3 front desk employees, we were overworked. With people working up to 7 days in a row. Being sick or having something come up was not an excuse. 
Overtime was looked down on by management even though it was not possible to get all of the closing/opening tasks done in the scheduled time period.
 The front desk is usually the part of the group that take the brunt end of any negative feedback from clients, so it’s easy to be emotionally exhausted by this job. 
Recognition is not something that happens here either. Most of my coworkers were extremely hardworking and dedicated employees that were not payed anywhere near a substantial amount for their work. 
They claim they have multiple benefits, bonuses & perks for working here but they make them difficult to use and often don’t pay out the bonuses if they exceed a certain amount. 
I witnessed multiple people get written up for bringing issues to management or have a personal issue with a higher up employee.
Overall, it’s not a bad place to bump up your resume or get experience in a fast paced environment by working there for a short period and I loved their products, but the company is cheap, shady and doesn’t show any support for their employees. 
There is a reason for the high turnover.

Skoah started off as a great company to work for while it was under corporate management. The atmosphere was very positive and everything was managed very fairly according to Skoah standards. Everything changed when they allowed a very unqualified franchisee to purchase that location. Apart from a couple of things that I was already in disagreement with, (i.e.: breaks, wages, tip outs, start times) there was a very obvious shift of focus when the new owner took over. All that mattered were sales, sales, sales, and I am not saying that sales aren't a huge part in business because they are, but when the morale between all employees had become so negative, sales should not have been the only concern. 

The level of unprofessionalism that occurred by the owner was unbelievable. It turned into a place that I did not want to go to anymore because of how negative and unfair the business had become. And that also showed by our customers going to different locations for their facials due to the radical change they all seemed to have noticed. 

I would think twice before applying to Skoah. Yes, it did give me knowledge of skincare, but I personally didn't feel like we were able to grow that knowledge ourselves since the information that was given to us was set up by Skoah, and Skoah alone. It was however a good place to start and see how you like the industry of beauty. The turnover of employees used to be very low, but it was exceptionally higher when the new owner took over, so that should also tell you something of the business structure when run by a franchisee.

During my 7 months of working at skoah it was the worst time of my life. First off, training was very stressful, i would go to work at 10 am and leave at 8pm and all of it was just facials back to back training. I was relatively relieved after training but work was just as bad if not worse. The manager didnt seem adequate at training or managing and we would have one on one talks if we were 1 minute late for a facial or said something that was not preferred to a customer. I would have anxiety from all of this. During 3 months, all three of my coworkers were fired which left all the estheticians to do front desk work which we were never trained to do. While the estheticians were doing front desk we would get yelled at and have meetings whenever we would have questions or did something incorrect. They would tell us if we have any questions we can come to the manager but whenever we did we were treated dumb. Once they fired all front desk, I had to cover so I would come in at 10 am and my last customer I would have to check them out myself which was very uncomfortable. On top of that, I had to close alone which turned into a 11 hour shift. This would go on forever and we dont get overtime pay. Another thing is our hourly pay is so low, basically minimum wage and it would be less stressful working at a cafe or restaurant because you dont have sales goals. It felt like we were always being watched or listened 24/7 working there and they will just fire you randomly if you made a little mistake. They manipulate, gaslight and make you very vunerable working there so you become very controllable.

While I appreciated the opportunity to gain experience in the spa industry and work with clients, I found the work environment to be quite stressful. A significant emphasis was placed on sales performance, retail product sales, and consistently meeting revenue targets. At times, it felt as though sales metrics were prioritized above other aspects of the role, including client care and employee well-being. This created a high-pressure environment where employees were expected to consistently meet specific targets and performance expectations.

I also found the training process to be very fast-paced. Training was condensed into approximately one week and involved a large amount of information in a short period of time. There were multiple quizzes throughout the training period, followed by a test at the end, which made the onboarding process feel rushed and overwhelming at times, particularly for those who are new to the industry.

Additionally, I found the workload and scheduling expectations difficult to manage. Long shifts, often ranging from 10 to 12 hours, were common, and there were concerns regarding expectations around overtime compensation. The combination of extended hours, intensive training, ongoing sales pressure, and performance expectations contributed to a demanding work environment that was not the right fit for me. While some employees may enjoy a highly sales-driven and fast-paced workplace, I personally found the expectations challenging and the overall atmosphere stressful

I've had some terrible jobs in my career. Skoah was one of the most demoralizing, unpleasant environments I've ever worked. If you are an Esthetician out of school you can do some much better. This corrupt company takes advantage of it's employees (particularly BIPOC employees) there is no room for advancement, the pay is abysmal, you are a cog in a wheel and the pressure to sell is astronomical. If you don't sell, you won't get put on the schedule it's that simple. If you do sell (like I did) your reward is getting overworked on the schedule. There is no praise, no incentives for hard work. The owners are greedy narcissist who live in a mansion in Vancouver off their workers back. You always low level feel like you're in trouble, they spy on your conversations with coworkers and customers with cameras installed in almost every space except the treatment rooms. There is high turnover, the company wastes their time posting rebuttals here defending themselves, talking about long term employees. I worked in the same location for 2 years, I guess that's what they call long term and in that time I saw at least around 20 girls filter through as SCT's. Don't do it. 

Hours are unreliable, you wouldn't know your start time until the night before. You don't know what your end time is too but they'll schedule you in from opening to close for open bookings just incase someone calls in last minute. You get to stay there for a minimum of 3hrs if you only get one facial. I get paid just the minimum wage, tips are 100% mine, no commission on products unless you're consistent at an average of $35 or more per facial for the whole month, then you'd get a minimum of 5% and so on depending on how much you sell. Your rank will also depend on your sales that week that will also determine your schedule too. Management is okay, they are nice but they mostly care about is making sales and getting people to sign up for memberships.
It is a great stepping stone for people looking for experience but if you're looking for a long term profession, and a good pay that can pay your bills, this wouldn't be it.

 This is a good place to start your career but you need to find a new job after one year because you will not advance very far in this company.  They have a lot of nice sounding core values that they want the employees to emulate however the owners do not do these things themselves.  They actively discourage the estheticians from having their own client base by having customers go see different estheticians for each treatment.  They care less about whether you are providing a quality skin care service for your client and more about whether you are selling memberships and their products.  The district manager for the Vancouver area was heard in a management meeting saying that it was empowering to fire estheticians who are under performing.  I say get your experience and get out.

I worked here for just under a year and from the time I had started until I had stopped working at Skoah it was non stop emotional stresss. From staff, and clients. They expect an incredible amount of workload from the staff with little to no guidance on what they are expecting. The managers will go days on end without replying to emails, texts, calls, regarding in shop issues and or out of shop issues regarding being sick etc. They will fire you without cause if they dislike you, there was extreme amounts of favouritism in this company. The managers conduct themselves very unprofessional as they will talk poorly about clients after they leave shop, talk behind their employees backs while they are at work with them, and give no resources to properly complete tasks. Do not work here. The most enjoyable part of this job was getting to learn about skin care, other than that it was awful. 

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Esthetician 20 salaries reported	$19.20 per hour
Retail sales associate 15 salaries reported	$19.23 per hour
Associate manager 3 salaries reported	$21.00 per hour
Operations lead 1 salary reported	$70,000 per year
Marketing coordinator 1 salary reported	$45,000 per year

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