You can be touched here. Where? Everywhere!
The things we like about spas and saunas;
Steam bath.
Facial scrubs.
Deep tissue therapy.
I like the spa business; I like barbershops with spas because they tend to give better services. The last time I went for a haircut in a spa they gave me a glass of wine as I wait for my turn. They told the wine is just for clients who have come for the massage not haircuts but since I am lucky they will give me a glass of red wine. They wanted to give me coffee but I have had enough of black coffee. Too much caffeine is not good for your balls in case you never knew. You sweat a lot and it leads to smelly balls.
The spa business has been booming. A friend of mine who runs a spa at the coast tells me Nairobians have given the spa a bad name with our poor services. But not really, my neighbor is opening a spa; she started with a salon and it went well. Now she wants to give her business a personal touch. She wants to relieve stress. Manicure and pedicures were not giving her enough cash it seems.
Men enjoy the spa more than women. The majority of clients in these spas are men. They also like a steam bath. It is for opening your pores that have been clogged with dust that you accumulate as you hustle in the streets.
Another thing men enjoy is facial scrub. A man’s face can be so rough, like the back of a Baobab tree. After a good scrub, many men say they feel relieved and soft. Their faces had been dry all along. And the spa people usually prefer male clients because they tip more. Women don’t tip I tell you. They are very economical with their money.
All a spa needs is a good environment. A serene location, it is not like a barbershop that you can just throw by the roadside next to a mutura joint and no one would care. Spas attract bourgeois clients, and it needs a calm environment. A spa is somewhere you go for a treat. A spa is those places for relaxing after a long weekend, a Zen place.
If you are to run a spa in Nairobi what you will need to focus on are good masseuses. There are very few good masseuses here in Nairobi, that’s why people would prefer massage at the coast as opposed to Nairobi. Coastal people are well trained on how to touch better than Nairobians. There are places to touch if you want to give the best experiences; the knee cap, the elbow, the small of the back, the arms, the shoulders, etc. these places are rarely touched, and yet they are more sensitive than you might think.
Just like every business, the spa has its days. You can’t go to a spa on Monday, maybe you can but it will be a bit odd. You see, if you run a car wash, you expect a lot of work on Sunday; people were driving around on the weekend. And now they want to start the week with clean cars. If you run a supermarket you expect a lot of business towards the end month. If you run a bar you will expect a lot of money on Friday and Saturday, a good club should make a million over the weekend.
If you run a spa, you should see a lot of clients on Friday and Saturday too. That’s when people want a treat. They are fatigued from a long week’s work. Or they are going for dates, they need their nails polished.
Beauty is something people value a lot. Yes, it fades with time but even at 70, you still want to take good care of yourself. That’s why the beauty industry is one of the most luxurious in the world. A spa is not really under the beauty industry, it doubles up as a health industry because massage is good for your mental health as much as it makes you look younger.
It is not because people like being touched that’s why they love the message, okay that can be a reason. It is just good to treat yourself with a full body massage. I treat myself with a full-body workout and so to each its own.
Nice Weekend!