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November 3, 2008 New ventures

Pampering to go | A chat with Jody Newman of I Do Spas in Sidney

Founded: March 2008
Employees: 11
Startup costs: $30,000
Projected revenue, year one: $11,500
Projected revenue, year two: $16,500
Contact: 441-0008
www.idospas.com

Describe to me what your company does.
Well, we’re Maine’s first mobile day spa. What we do is we provide all the essentials for people to host a successful, fun, relaxing spa party at their home, place of business, bed and breakfast, special event or hotel. Indoor, outdoor. We provide facials, massages, manicures, pedicures, bridal hair, makeup, hand and foot reflexology with the energy work.

And what’s your background related to this kind of work?
I was an entrepreneur before. I owned my own website company because I have a background in design, in art, but I’ve been in this industry for about four years. I’ve been working at a spa business as a nail technician. That’s what I do, I’m a nail technician.

So why decide to launch a traveling salon? Why did you think there was a need for that kind of thing?
Well, I found that there was a need for the service in that particular industry because we were doing parties [at a spa], but they weren’t large parties. So people were getting left out — whether it was a bridal party and it happened to be a mother-in-law, the mother or cousins that came in out of town, that type of thing. I thought to myself, “Hmm, there should be an answer for this.” So I started doing research to see if there was anybody in Maine doing a travel spa type of thing and there wasn’t anybody in Maine. So I searched a little bit further and checked different states and found that there were women doing onsite massages or onsite facials or onsite hair but there wasn’t anybody doing everything so I just figured it out, putting things together.

I think the hardest part is getting to do the manicures and pedicures because there’s so much equipment that’s involved, but the massage tables are already designed [to be portable], the facial tables are already designed, so I was really lucky and found some wonderful people that helped me out.

How did you fund the launch of the business?
Well, I used my own savings because I ran into some obstacles. I went to a couple of banks and because this hasn’t been done, the banks were kind of, ‘Eeeeh.’ So I had savings, pulled other resources together and made a really good list of exactly what I needed. I went out and purchased things. I made a lot of things [like pedicure stools and stands]. Just really did some bargain shopping and I saved a lot of costs for myself because of all the design aspects of everything with my website; that would have been a huge cost.

Who are your primary clients? Is it mostly wedding parties?
You know, it’s half and half. This weekend we have a party of 10 ladies up in Sugarloaf, they’re having a girls’ night in. That’s a big party. They’re all having two to four services each. I think we’re so new and, because we’re trying to get the word out, that a lot of brides don’t know [about the company], but we’re actually going to be the premier spa for Maine Vows and they’re launching their website in January so we’ll get a lot of out-of-staters, which would be specifically for bridal parties and that type of business.

So what’s been the biggest challenge so far in terms of growing the business?
The biggest challenge has probably been the economy and the way that we’ve managed to get around that is we’ve had to lower our prices. We had to adjust them; we wanted to keep business going and luckily I have great therapists who are all in this together. We cut [prices] right in half. We just lowered the prices about three weeks ago and that’s enabled us to do the big party this weekend.

What’s the long-term vision for the company?
My long-term goal is to be able to franchise and be able to give more jobs to other therapists. Because this industry is really hard to make a living and you have a lot of moms and single mothers and that type of thing, and they love the industry, they love the beauty industry, making people feel good and that type of thing, but it’s hard to make a living doing it because there’s not many jobs, especially in this area. So my goal is to create more jobs.

Interview by Sara Donnelly

New Ventures profiles young businesses, 6-18 months old. Send your suggestions and contact information to editorial@mainebiz.biz.

 

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