Olha Frantseva: “I Want Everyone Who Comes to OF.LAMIMANI to Feel Truly Seen and Know That Their Wishes Are Heard”
In a new feature for BOMOND VIP, Olha Frantseva, a licensed beauty professional in the state of Illinois and founder of OF.LAMIMANI in Chicago, speaks about her professional reset after moving to the United States and her journey from practicing beauty specialist to brand owner with a clear vision for the future. In the beauty industry, it is easy to talk about growth. Far more difficult is to prove it every day through the quality of your work, technique, and attention to detail. Olha speaks precisely about this personal standard of excellence, her experience in international beauty championships, professional standards, and the importance of preserving an individual signature even when the environment around you changes. Today, her ambitions extend beyond a single studio. OF.LAMIMANI is envisioned as a brand that can grow, scale, and develop its own professional ecosystem. How do you expand while ensuring that a brand does not lose its character, professional education, and independent projects? We discuss this and more with Olha Frantseva.
There comes a point in every profession when well-executed work is no longer enough to define the limits of one’s ambition. Ms. Olha, when did you realize that you wanted not simply to work in the beauty industry, but to establish your own name within it?
I have always loved beauty in all its forms.
I enjoyed creating something aesthetic, working with details, and, most importantly, seeing a person’s emotions after the result.
For me, the beauty industry has never been solely about appearance. It is also about confidence, mood, and that moment when a person looks at themselves and genuinely likes what they see.
But at a certain point, I realized that simply doing my job well was no longer enough for me.
I wanted to grow professionally, refine my technique, participate in professional championships, and gradually move beyond the routine of working with clients every day.
That was when I understood that I wanted to build a professional name of my own.
Not simply to be a specialist people come to for a service, but to become a professional recognized for her approach, quality of work, and attitude toward her profession.
To me, having your own name in the industry is, first and foremost, about taking responsibility for what you do and maintaining a constant desire to become stronger in your field.
Today, I understand that this love for beauty, for people, and for continuous growth became the foundation of the professional path I continue to build.
Moving to the United States changed the professional rules of the game for you: a different system, different standards, a different environment. What did you have to rebuild within yourself in this new reality, and what, by contrast, became your strongest professional foundation?
Moving to the United States truly became a professional reset for me. I found myself in an entirely new environment where I had to learn the system, professional requirements, standards of practice, and nuances of communicating with clients all over again.
I had to build many things practically from scratch. I had to adapt to a new market, learn to work with a different audience, complete the necessary process to obtain my professional license, and gradually build my own client base. This taught me to become more disciplined and not to be afraid of starting over.
At the same time, my strongest professional foundation remained my knowledge, skills, and attitude toward my work. I have always been extremely attentive to detail and demanding when it comes to results. Even my clients often say that I am very meticulous in my work: I notice the smallest details and do not like leaving anything that, in my opinion, could be done better. I believe this quality has played a significant role in my professional growth.
Technique, attention to detail, and high standards for the quality of your work do not depend on a country or a language.
It was in the United States that I particularly understood how important it is not simply to adapt to a new environment, but to preserve your own professional signature. I did not want to completely conform to what was already established in the market. Instead, it was important for me to understand what could distinguish me as a specialist and what value I could offer my clients.
So this move taught me to combine two things: to remain open to new rules and standards while at the same time preserving my own vision and professional principles.
A studio of your own always begins with a certain vision: what should the place you create under your own name look and feel like, and what does it mean to personally stand behind it? How did you initially envision OF.LAMIMANI, and what from that original idea remains unchanged today?
When I first envisioned OF.LAMIMANI, it was important to me to create more than simply a studio where high-quality beauty services are provided. One of the central ideas from the very beginning was an exceptionally client-focused approach.
After moving to the United States, I noticed that the approach to service here differs somewhat from what I had been accustomed to. I wanted to create a space where attention was given not only to the procedure itself and its result, but also to how a person feels throughout the entire visit.
It is important to me to listen to the client, understand their wishes, offer them tea or coffee, and create a comfortable atmosphere. I like expressing care even through small gestures. For example, after a procedure, I give clients small gifts, such as cuticle oil. These may seem like little things, but I believe genuine service is built from precisely these details.
I often think about how I would want to feel in the client’s place. It is important to me that a person never feels like they are simply another appointment on a schedule. I want everyone who comes to OF.LAMIMANI to feel truly seen and know that their wishes are genuinely heard.
A great deal has changed since the studio opened. I continue to develop as a specialist, new knowledge, services, and professional goals emerge. But the original idea behind OF.LAMIMANI remains unchanged: to combine high-quality work with the most attentive and human approach to every client.
In beauty championships, the result is no longer determined by a client’s subjective impression. It is assessed according to precision, technique, and professional standards. What brought you into this environment, and which moment or experience from international competitions do you still remember as particularly significant?
For me, participating in beauty championships initially meant stepping beyond my usual work with clients and testing myself specifically as a professional. I wanted to see my actual level, understand my strengths, and at the same time identify what still needed improvement.
But I am naturally quite competitive, especially when it comes to professional development. So after my first competition, I became genuinely captivated by the experience. I started thinking: if I was able to achieve this result, what could come next? I wanted to keep trying, set more challenging goals, earn new awards, and continually raise the professional bar for myself.
I remember my first victory especially well. It was a very important moment for me because, for the first time, I received recognition for my work not only from clients but also from a professional jury. At that moment, I felt that all the hours of practice, my attention to the smallest details, and my high standards for myself were truly producing results.
Later came other international championships and new awards, and with every experience, my professional drive only grew stronger. For me, it is no longer simply about a certificate or a place in a ranking. Every competition gives me a new goal and the desire to surpass, above all, myself.
An award captures only the final second of a process, leaving everything that preceded it outside the frame. What professional transformation within yourself do you consider the most important result of participating in international championships?
I have always been quite meticulous about my work and attentive to the smallest details, so I cannot say that championships were what created this quality in me. But they gave me the opportunity to look at my work from an entirely different, more professional perspective.
When your work is assessed according to specific criteria and professional standards, you begin to understand even more deeply what truly makes a strong result. For me, the most important change was precisely this: I learned not only to see what could be improved, but to understand more clearly why it could be improved and what specifically required attention.
After reaching a certain professional level, another question naturally emerges: what do you do with the knowledge you have accumulated? When did you begin wanting to move beyond practice into education and judging, and what do you feel is missing from today’s professional environment for beauty specialists?
I would not say that I want to move from practice into education and judging. For me, these are rather opportunities to expand myself as a professional and develop in several directions at once.
Recently, I had the opportunity to try myself as a judge and evaluate the work of other specialists. I genuinely enjoyed the experience. It was fascinating to look at the work from an entirely different perspective: to analyze technique and details, recognize strengths, and understand what lies behind the final result.
Moreover, while judging, I once again saw just how many talented specialists there are today. Some of the work genuinely makes you stop, look more closely, and even feel inspired yourself. I like the fact that the professional environment continues to grow and that specialists keep raising the professional standard.
Education is the next stage I am only beginning to plan. I work across several areas: manicures, pedicures, brows, and lashes. Over the years of practice, I have accumulated experience in each of these fields that I genuinely want to share.
That is why my plans include creating my own educational courses where I can do more than demonstrate techniques. I want to share practical knowledge, nuances, and my own experience of working with clients.
I want to create education that leaves a specialist with more than a particular algorithm to repeat. I want them to understand what they are doing and, more importantly, why they are doing it. Perhaps this is what I sometimes feel is missing from modern education: there is an enormous amount of information, but genuine professional understanding develops when you can see the logic behind the technique.
Teaching others means moving beyond demonstrating your own results and beginning to define what truly deserves to be called professional work. What standards would you like to pass on to other specialists, and according to what principles would you personally assess their work?
For me, professional work is not simply about achieving a beautiful result. First and foremost, it is about proper technique, safety, precision, attention to detail, and understanding exactly what you are doing and why.
These are the standards I would like to pass on to other specialists in the future.
It is important to me to teach more than simply following a particular sequence of actions. I want a specialist to be able to analyze a situation, recognize the individual characteristics of a client, and understand that the same technique will not necessarily work equally well for everyone.
When it comes to judging, one of my key principles is to separate personal taste from professional assessment as much as possible. I may or may not personally like a particular style of work, but as a judge, I have to evaluate it according to established criteria: execution technique, cleanliness, symmetry, precision, and compliance with the requirements of the specific category.
And perhaps another principle that matters greatly to me is that an assessment should help a specialist grow. If I deduct points, I need to understand and be able to explain exactly why. Because behind every competition entry there are hours of work, preparation, and a great deal of effort on the part of another person.
The American beauty industry is not particularly kind to those who stop at what they have already achieved. Where would you like to see yourself within it several years from now, and how far are you prepared to expand the boundaries of your own name?
In several years, I would like to see OF.LAMIMANI as more than a single studio. My plans are to gradually expand the team and, in time, open several additional locations.
At the moment, I am drawn to the idea of two or three strong studios that share the same standards, approach to work, and attitude toward clients.
At the same time, I do not envision OF.LAMIMANI as a huge chain or a franchise with dozens of locations and a large number of specialists. At least for now, that is not my goal. I want to preserve a certain sense of intimacy within the brand, so that even as it grows, I can understand what is happening inside it, know my team, and feel confident about the level of service our clients receive.
I am quite demanding when it comes to results, and I do not want to build a business around the principle of maximizing the number of clients served in the shortest possible time. If quality work requires a little more time, I am completely comfortable with that. What matters far more is that the client leaves satisfied and wants to return.
At the same time, I want the OF.LAMIMANI name itself to grow alongside the studio. In the future, I see it encompassing not only beauty services, but also our own educational projects, a strong team, and a professional community.
So for me, scale is not necessarily about the number of doors bearing the OF.LAMIMANI name. What matters far more is creating a brand that can become larger without losing its character.
Author: Olha Frantseva
