Issue Date: May 8, 2005
Roving relaxation
Mobile spas will pamper you at home or work.
No time for needed pampering? No problem. Mobile spas will come to you. "With everything else going mobile -- pet grooming, coffee vendors, grocery shopping -- why not a mobile spa?" asks Elisa Muchmore, co-owner of Arizona Mobile Spa of Phoenix, which offers services such as manicures and massages in the privacy of your own home or office.
Most mobile spas are relatively new, but the services are catching on.
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Most mobile spas are relatively new, but the services are catching on, says La Brena Rent, who launched the QuietBeauty Mobile Spa in Long Beach, Calif., last March.
Here's how it works, whether for a wedding party, a girls' night out or a tough day in the cubicle: Licensed, uniformed technicians provide massages, facials and other luxury treatments. They bring all the equipment, including massage table, linens, lotions, oils, muds, mood-setting candles -- even music. "All you supply is water," says Kristina Schuff, co-owner of Puur Spa in San Diego, who has counseled about 80 mobile spa start-ups over the past year. Most mobile spa visits are to homes, but Boston's mobileSPA is among those that will come to your workplace. In the Los Angeles area, Infinity Spa makes regular "house" calls to movie studios; Puur Spa techs have provided hand and foot massages for a group of 20 golfers during an 18-hole round.
In general, mobile spa costs are competitive with those at traditional day spas. Best of all? "You get pampered without traveling to a spa, then losing the effects on the drive home," says Angelyn Anderson, owner of Chicago's Pampered Souls Mobile Spa Services. Why go to a spa when you can get a massage at work?
Salon smarts
Program teaches business savvy.
Who knew hair could be taken to such lengths? The new UCLA Executive Salon Management Program will give the professional salon industry a makeover of sorts when it kicks off for the first time next month.
Fifty salon owners from around the world will take part in the five-day intensive program.
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Consider: Program organizers say beauty salons generate annual global revenue of $140 billion. Most are small businesses, and many of their owners lack an advanced business education. Fifty salon owners from around the world will take part in the five-day intensive program on UCLA's campus, aimed at honing their acumen in subjects such as strategy, finance and leadership.
It's offered by the Anderson School of Management in partnership with the B.E.S.T. Foundation, a non-profit devoted to the growth of the salon industry.
"The salon business is a very creative business -- sometimes to a fault -- not worrying about details," says Alfred Osborne Jr., senior associate dean of the management school. One requirement for graduation: a salon improvement project, detailing how participants will put their education to work to improve their business. For more information, go to execed.anderson.ucla.edu/salon.
Contributing: Laura Daily, Elizabeth Kaye McCall
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