IMAGINE SPA MANAGEMENT

Those of you who have read my earlier blogs will know that I love stories and that I am constantly learning from other businesses and their best practices. Today I want to talk about our own business. We’ve always tried really hard to focus on customer service and have set out to create the “friendliest health clubs and day spas” recognising that as contract managers we can’t always control the quality of the facilities that we operate but that we do have complete influence over the staff and the service they deliver.
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I’ve just returned from this years SPATEC conference in Split Croatia. To be honest I generally try to avoid too many conferences and exhibitions as they tend to eat up valuable worktime but SPATEC is only three days and provides the opportunity to experience a European Spa first hand whilst meeting a number of other leading operators. Aside from the odd presentation the main purpose of the event is to create a series of meetings between suppliers and operators – it almost like professional speed dating!

Every year I go I’m always sceptical of whether there is any suppliers that we are not already aware of and doubt whether there will be anything new that will be of value to Imagine Spa Management. But every year I always come away with a great new idea or product and this year was no different.
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Our business has grown out of operating health clubs – we’ve been running them now for over 20 years! In that time we’ve learnt that virtually all members will live or work at most 12 minutes away from the club and that 90% of our members will pay us up front by direct debit. So that means that from a marketing perspective we need to concentrate on the immediate vicinity of where we are based with leaflet campaigns and strategically positioned banners whilst the main focus of our message is to get people to visit our Club – to give us a try before they decide which Club to join. The number of people who join or clubs without having visited them first is negligible.
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I had an interesting experience the other day that taught me such a lesson about keeping what’s special about you as an organisation as you grow. About not losing the DNA of the business as you add in the structure to enable growth. You see I love the clothing brand “Fat Face” – out of work you’ll mostly catch me wearing their clothes and I love the story behind the brand. About two guys who went out for a ski season and needed to earn some money so they could stay on in the resort and keep skiing, so started selling sweatshirts and clothes out the back of a van and from such simple beginnings a whole brand has developed with one of the most recognisable shops on the High Street.
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As anyone who works for our organisation will tell you – I love stories. I think they are such a powerful way of communicating a message and I will always try to use stories to amplify any points I’m trying to get across in staff training and presentations. On this website we have devoted a whole page to tell our story. But on this blog I want to tell the story of one of our spa product house partners – VOYA. This is a family owned product house based on the West Coast of Ireland that deliver a range of spa treatments based on the healing properties of seaweed. They own one of the last remaining seaweed bath centres in Ireland at their beautiful location in Standhill, Sligo where their centre overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. At their height of popularity there were over 300 seaweed bath centres in Ireland where people went to enjoy the healing and restorative properties of seaweed.
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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.
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I love Starbucks! I have this ability to sniff them out and have been known to plan my meetings around Starbucks locations to ensure I get my favourite caffeine fix. Probably the clearest indication of my love for Starbucks is that when I collected our first born from hospital we stopped off in Starbucks before we took her home! No wonder that even now, at the age of 4, she still asks to go to Starbucks whenever we are out shopping together – it’s like going home for her!
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