Elégance Spa & Beauty network
Elégance derives its expertise from its own Spa & Beauty Salon, which are a part of its training establishment.
Each school has its own spa and treatment salon, which receive genuine clients. The treatments are carried out by the students, supervised by their teachers, who expect a very high level of quality.
The professional expertise of the school and its managers is therefore transmitted to the students within a genuine professional environment.
Elégance puts its students in a real professional environment: the school’s beauty salon and treatment spa (spa-school, salon-school).
The trainees therefore spend each week performing supervised professional treatments (the trainers are always at their sides).
The student’s practical application of what they are taught therefore increases their skills throughout the course. At the end of the course they leave the school, not just qualified but already experienced and immediately ready to start work.
An essential player in the beauty, well-being and spa sectors, the Elégance Group encompasses several entities and exercises various activities, first and foremost vocational training.
The Elégance-Gontard School
The Elégance-Gontard Beauty and Cosmetics private technical college, founded in Nice in 1969, has trained over 8,500 students of all levels, and continues to train nearly 300 professionals per year.
It regularly obtains the best national success rates in the State certified Beauty diplomas. Thanks to its reputation and its professional network, it also has record employability levels. Its students and trainers are recruited to join some of the most prestigious names in the sector, both in France and abroad.
The school also trains an average of 250 foreign students or professionals (as part of a continuous vocational training programme) at its Nice site or in their country of origin.
The Elégance Spa & Beauty Académies, led by the Elégance-Gontard school, provide Beauty and Spa training as initial training, sandwich training, continuous vocational training and V.A.E. (Validation of Experience).
The Elégance Spa Académie
In 2005, Elégance launched the first Spa Académie in Europe and created the position of and training for a Spa Practitioner, followed by a Spa Manager.
The Elégance Spa Académie’s Spa Practitioner diploma was approved by the French Government in 2009, and the 100% employability of persons holding this diploma was audited by the Ministry of Employment through the CNCP (National Vocational Certification Commission).
The network of schools
Since 2009, the Elégance Groupe has developed a network of national and international schools. Based on the Nice school model, high-quality establishments have been founded in Montpellier, Vichy, Tarbes, Minsk (Belarus), Madrid (Spain)… Other projects are in progress, in France and elsewhere.
Many students from different regions have contacted Elégance, keen to join an Elégance Spa & Beauty Académie in their local area.
Aware of this growing demand, and based on its solid development model, Elégance is currently looking for new local partners, project leaders or existing establishments, able to respond to this need to provide high-quality training, which is synonymous with employability.
At the heart of the professional network
Elégance’s expertise comes from its involvement in the professional network, first and foremost as an operator of beauty salons and spas.
Elégance manages its own city spa (380m2) in Nice, where around 30,000 treatments are performed every year, plus a Beauty centre in Villeneuve-Loubet. These activities help to enrich its own experience and knowledge of the spa and beauty sectors.
Its business as an operator also contributes to its specific methodology, which is the very soul of Elégance and also the source of its exceptional success and employability rate. This methodology consists in training the students, constantly supervised by their teachers, in a real professional environment. This professional environment is the treatment spa and salon, which every Elégance establishment must have.
An Elégance Spa & Beauty Académie is therefore based on a model that ensures it is profitable in two ways, firstly as a training centre and secondly as a beauty salon and city spa. This model works and has been tested in various regions in France and in other countries. Above all, it ensures that the students who graduate from the school are not only qualified but already experienced and immediately ready to start work.
Jean-Eric & Stéphanie Knecht
More widely, through Jean-Éric Knecht, CEO of Elégance, Stéphanie Knecht, Director of the Elégance-Gontard school and their teams, the Group is closely involved in all the activities of the beauty, well-being and spa sectors, such as competitions, conferences, consulting, devising spa concepts, creating new spas & salons for third parties, recruitment, training, management, set-up and operational launch of well-being centres, audit of businesses, all focused on a client-centred approach and on business profitability.
This active participation in the development of the professional network, which is carried out by the ‘Elégance Audit & Consultancy’ and ‘Elégance Spa Management’ departments, helps to ensure perfect knowledge of the skills required for different roles and prepare the students trained by the Elégance establishments even more effectively for the roles they will fulfil.
