Akhassa Natural Skin Care, Lisa and Roslyn Gillespie

Two American business women with Asian roots, Lisa and Roslyn Gillespie long considered collaborating to build an Asian oriented beauty line. The two sisters, who have spent the last ten years in the US, Europe and Asia, were seeking to create a line of natural, holistic skin care remedies and treatments based on an age-old Southeast Asian tradition that they remembered from their childhood. Daughters of an American diplomat who married into a large Thai family, they grew up in Southeast Asia. Their interest in Asian therapies and treatments was inspired by their Thai mother, who introduced them to traditional Asian healing remedies at an early age.

While Asian medicine and herbal remedies have always been a part of their family culture and cuisine, developing Akhassa has given Lisa and Roslyn a chance to work together and create modern beauty products based on the benefits of herbs, plants and fruits indigenous to Asia. Akhassa has driven the sisters to create products they love that encourage people to take a moment and reconnect through sense, touch and smell. With their fondest childhood memories being from Thailand, Laos and Indonesia they were inspired to develop products that embody the ambiance of Asia.

In their quest to recreate the essence of Asia, the Gillespie sisters researched traditional Asian holistic therapies and treatments utilized by leading spas throughout the region. One of the leaders in this field was Ytsara, a developer of professional spa treatments based on Asian culture and botanical remedies. Founded in 1999 by Mary-Eve Cadouin and Florence Jaffre.

In 2005, the Gillespies began collaborating with Ytsara’s founders to create a line of treatments that would enable anyone to a tropical spa experience and thus the Akhassa line of professional and retail spa products was born.