IMAGINE SPA MANAGEMENT

I always remember when I first started researching the spa market the one thing that intrigued me was the power of the product houses. It reminded me a little of the gym equipment suppliers in the late 80’s around the time when the health club market was beginning to grow. At that point in time Nautilus were the market leaders and they propogated the myth that if a gym wasn’t kitted out with Nautilus people wouldn’t join. And, for a while, operators believed them. In reality of course what members wanted was equipment that worked and didn’t break down regularly, with advice on how to use it from friendly, qualified staff. The name of the manufacturer on the side of the equipment was completely irrelevant.

Very quickly operators came to realise that the way to choose your equipment supplier partner is to find one who is great at servicing and maintaining equipment, has good first time fix rates and call out times below 48 hours. The rest was pretty irrelevant to be honest.

So it’s been interesting as we have begun opening spas to meet with the product houses, many of whom, talk about the fact that the consumer will choose a spa depending upon what product house they use. It’s five years now since we opened our first one and I can honestly say that in all the enquiries that we’ve had, no-one has ever asked about the products we use prior to making a booking. What our spa guests want is the sense that they are really being looked after, made to feel special for the day and a friendly therapist who gives a great treatment irrespective of what products she uses in the treatment.

Furthermore some product houses even go so far as to demand how much, and which products, you buy from them in your opening order, what treatments you put on the menu, and even what you call those treatments! I think they have lost sight of who is the customer in the relationship!

So just in case any product houses out there are wondering what it is that us operators are looking for then here are a few personal pointers:

• Work with us to produce a simple menu that suits our target market and then support that with a few retail products that our therapists can understand and work with. A 100 retail lines will just not get sold and we’ll both be disappointed
• Let us start with a really low order when we open the spa. Our cash flow is tightest at this point so we need all the help we can get and holding a massive stock, much of which we will never shift, is not helpful
• Let us be creative and unique with our treatments – it’s what will make our spa memorable and different for the guests. We need to develop our brand and not yours thanks! But we need your help to achieve this
• Don’t just give us a load of therapist training up front and then make it difficult to get more training after we’ve opened. It’s regular training that will ensure our therapists deliver a consistent and high quality treatment and it’s in both our interests for this to happen. Better still, help us to develop our own in house trainers rather than make us send every therapist to your training school with all the associated travel and accommodation costs
• Marketing – accept that we might have our own ideas and campaigns that we want to run with. We might like to tie into some that you organise for all your spa clients but if we want to be different then support us with our campaigns – if what we do works well then again we both win.
• Understand that retail is not everything to us! Our profit margins are greater on treatments than they are on retail – we know it’s the other way around for you - but if you help us grow our treatment business first and foremost, and you ensure our therapists understand your products then your retail sales will increase as the volume of treatments goes up and we’ll both win
• Please remember it is our spa and not yours – so don’t get too precious about what we do with our treatment names, website and brochures. If we decide not to use your logo or name - so be it. What you should be focussing on is how much business we generate and therefore how much of your product we keep buying.

Thanks for listening!