They achieved immense success on the beach volleyball court for the past 10 years. Now they are hoping that success continues - this time in the business world - with their launch of a new skincare business.
Tsawwassen’s Megan and Nicole McNamara are now former Team Canada beach volleyball players. They graduated from South Delta Secondary, and were part of the only (so far) provincial senior girls volleyball championship team.
They then went onto play for UCLA for four years, where they won back-to-back NCAA beach volleyball national titles before playing for Team Canada and a pro career overseas.
They moved to Toronto where the national team headquarters are held.
They became licensed aestheticians when tournaments were cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and began building their business when they moved back to Tsawwassen.
“That is when we decided to start planning for life after sport,” said Megan. “Our tournaments resumed, and we then moved back to Toronto for the summer, played a few tournaments, trained in the fall and then we decided that we wanted to move back to B.C. in 2021.
“We had to give up all our national team funding and set up our training centre essentially here in Vancouver. We played two full seasons, qualified for world championships, and had a good couple of years.”
Face Club was recently launched by the sisters.
“It was definitely a hard decision [to retire] and there was a lot of emotions, but the last few months of our careers we started to get more and more excited about life after sport and that’s when we knew that maybe our hearts were ready to move onto the next chapter,” said Nicole. “There are days where we miss it, but overall, we have been playing since we were 12, so it was just time to start the next chapter.”
Nicole said they have both struggled with severe hormonal acne, so the business and mission is a personal one.
“We started with skincare, it’s been an emotional issue for us,” she said. “We found a lot of brands and products that we loved. We are strictly online for now, but next year we want to open a clinic.”
As they live in Kitsilano, Megan said the initial thought is to open a clinic in Vancouver.
“We touch a lot on the lifestyle points and current skin conditions and goals and then recommend what products would work,” she said. “We have been getting great feedback on the products and lots of word-of-mouth purchases. Most of our orders have been Vancouver-based. We want to expand right across Canada, so now we are working on different marketing strategies to get our products into more people’s hands because we know once they try them, they will love them.”
The sisters come from a very entrepreneurial family…their dad started his own business, there uncle and grandpa as well, so they have lots of mentors guiding them.
“With our dad, he knows all the ups and downs of the business aspects,” added Nicole. “The support has been amazing. We both feel very lucky that we have been able to go from one passion to another.”
Learn more about Face Club on instgram @faceclubskin and their website at: www.faceclubskin.com.
