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from the Penticton Western News!
The
idea for La Maison Verte was born out of
necessity, as most good ideas are.
Owners, Jillian Dupont and Margita Heggie were
trapped in the car together on a short road trip for
their other respective careers when the idea sprang
to life. Obviously the wheel was not being
reinvented with La Maison Verte Eco Friendly
Housekeeping, the concept is as old as time, however
with a "green clean" twist this could really be
something different!
Having both grown up in homes that were immaculately
cleaned by their overachieving mothers, housekeeping
was forever on the foreground of their thoughts, it
was a necessity. However, time was an issue for
Jillian and Margita. Both were self-employed,
heavily involved in community and charity work, not
to mention their families....needless to say,
keeping a clean house was falling to the wayside.
Jillian decided to put some "feelers" out to her
vast email collection of local contacts and ask them
if they could recommend someone she could hire to
come clean her house. But WAIT! I need to back the
story up a bit, I am forgetting to mention one
important detail. Jillian's mother, Elyse, had just
come to stay with her for several months that
summer. Just a quick stop over before she moved to
South Carolina. In that time she cleaned, scrubbed,
disinfected and organized every square inch of
Jillian's home all using the ecofriendly cleaning
products Jillian had been using by Norwex. So you
can imagine the state Jillian was left in when her
mother moved on to her final destination, not only
leaving the country but also leaving a very high
standard of clean that Jillian would have a hard
time measuring up to.
Now back to the email...Jillian's email contacts
soon began to respond, one after the other, all with
the same reply. "I don't know of anyone, but I am
looking for a housekeeper too, so if you find
someone let me know!". That's not exactly the kind
of "help" she was looking for. However, being
someone with an entrepreneurial point of view, it
soon became obvious what she needed to do, there was
a need in our community that was not being met and
she was going to do something about it. Along with
her own vision for what the company would look like
and the brains and expertise of her good friend and
colleague, Margita Heggie, the idea of La Maison
Verte came to life.
As mentioned earlier in the story, Jillian and
Margita are too busy for the lives they already
have, how will they start and run a fledgling
business? Well that's easy - Mom will do it! Jillian
wasted no time in calling her mother Elyse in
beautiful Hilton Head South Carolina, where she had
just settled into a lovely new life filled with hot
southern days, ice-cold sweet tea and the ever
present scent of the ocean breeze. Jillian explained
her idea and asked Elyse to come back to Canada.
Without her the business would surely fail, with her
sky-high standard of clean and otherworldly level of
organization and efficiency this was the only way.
The rest, as they say, is history...Elyse came back
to the country and began running La Maison Verte for
Jillian and Margita and our happy customers will
tell you - we're sure glad she did y'all!
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Margita Heggie, Vice
President/ Owner
Margita and her husband Scott, along with their two
children, Seth 8 and Kooper 4, live in the beautiful
little town of Summerland. Margita was raised in the
lower mainland where she lived for 21 years. She
then attended university in Kamloops where she met
her husband. Margita has been in the financial
services industry for 10 years with almost 2 years
as a Financial Security Advisor in the Penticton
area. She is apart of JCI Okanagan, the secretary of
her PAC committee, an avid fundraiser for many
organizations in the community and in 2008 was
recognized as a Woman of Excellence in Finance at
the SOWINS Awards Gala. In addition to a busy career
Margita loves spending time outdoors with her
children and indoors enjoying whatever culinary
delight husband Scott has concocted. She has little
time for vices but manages to overdue her coffee
consumption on a regular basis, but we don't say
anything because she gets twice as much done.[
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