By Robert Luckock
MARIGOT—To lose a child to cancer at a very early age must be devastating for any parent, and it was no different for young mother Yolanda Gregoire
As much as it was heart breaking to spend the final days with her young son, the loving and bonding experience was both uplifting, productive, and ironically led to Yolanda entering an exciting new phase in her life.
Yolanda is a softly-spoken young lady from Dominica; a spa therapist and aesthetician and now a small business entrepreneur who has just launched her own perfume line. 
Resident in St. Martin for the past 16 years and married with two children, it was in 2010 that she first received the news that her son Zachary had an imbalance of red and white blood cells, and was diagnosed with cancer.
“Eventually we had to go to France to get specialised treatment for him,” Yolanda relates. “I ended up spending five months with him in Lyon from April to September 2014. We spent a lot of time talking about our dreams and what we would do together and what he would do when he gets out of hospital. He knew that I loved fragrances; jasmine, lavender etcetera, and he would send me out to the parks in Lyon to pick flowers and bring them back.
She says Zachary awoke something in her that had been there from childhood but had long been dormant.
“As a little girl growing up in Dominica we had a rose garden and I remember picking rose petals, blending them together and loving the different scents that they gave off. We would talk about fragrances in that hospital room and at a certain point Zachary said why don’t we make our own perfumes? That was the moment he inspired me to create a perfume.”
Sadly Zachary never got to fulfil his dream and died in hospital in September 2014, aged 11 years.
“I think in some way with the conversations we had he was preparing me for a new future. He wanted me to promise him that I would create a perfume and of course I did make the promise. We also wrote a little book together in the hospital.”
On her return to St. Martin, Yolanda got started by linking up with the Tijon Parfumerie in Grand Case where in April 2015 she took a one-day course in mixing in their laboratory.
It has resulted in two fragrances, Zonisha named after her daughters Zoey and Glenisha and Zac’s named after her late son.
Zonisha is described as an eau du parfum, “a sensational scent that opens with top and middle notes of sweet pea, jasmine, honey, pear, raspberry and freesia and finished with a base note of light musk.”
Zac’s is an eau de cologne, “a masculine scent that opens with top and middle notes of white tea, ginger, bamboo, and teakwood and finishes with base notes of musk, amber, oak moss, and Cashmere woods.”
Production is still in the early stages, Yolanda adds, but the feedback from people who have tried the two perfumes has been very encouraging.
“Locals and tourists love it,” she enthuses. “I think by next year I will be more advanced, with my bottles and packaging in order.”
Her project was picked up by Initiatives St. Martin, the organisation that helps new start-up businesses with interest-free loans after a recommendation from French-side Chamber of Commerce Director Magguy Gumbs. Initiatives monitors the progress of the business, giving advice along the way.
And she acknowledges she would not have been able to start without Tijon.
“Tijon has been very helpful and encouraged me all the way,” Yolanda notes. “It takes about three hours to do the blending, to get the unique scent that I want. You mix, you smell, and your brain tells you what you want. People have asked me for the recipe but Tijon said don’t ever give that secret away.”
So far her two perfumes are sold at Tijon Parfumerie in Grand Case and at Indulgence by the Sea at the Divi Hotel on the Dutch side. But naturally she wants to broaden her market in the Caribbean.
Asked how she wants her perfume business to evolve, she replies: “Next I want to do something sassy and spicy in a perfume.”
