Spa-ing is estimated to be a $255 billion dollar economy

The spa concept once thought only for the pampering of the rich and famous has become a global phenomenon. According to the first-ever Global Spa Economy Report – the spa economy is estimated to be over $250 billion annually. The findings were unveiled at the 2008 Global Spa Summit in New York reporting the latest trends and numbers from 2007.

Beauty, nutrition and fitness increased the total revenues to $1 trillion
The spa industry brought in more than $60.3 billion in core spa industry revenues, such as spa facilities, capital investments, education, consulting, media, association, and events, plus another whopping $194 billion revenues in spa-related hospitality, tourism and real estate.

When broader spa-related industries such as beauty, nutrition, and fitness were factored in, the market exceeded $1 trillion. The global spa study from SRI International reports the spa sector is one of the first industries to organize at a global level and have a worldwide impact.

The study also split the total generated revenues by nation, the United States came on top with more than $12 billion, followed by Japan at $5.7 billion and Germany at $3.8 billion. The study included data from over 210 countries, ten times more than in previous reports.

To find more about the Global Spa Economy Report please visit Spa Trade at www.spatrade.com. Have any questions or comments please click on the comments tab below.

Dealing with Stress at the Work Place

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Job stress has become a common and costly problem in the workplace. According to a study, 40% of the American employees feel that their job is very stressful. As the issue of job related stress persist so will the employees work habits – ranging from extra sick days, decreased productivity, to even increased management problems. The cost of stress related problems to employers are estimated at about 150 billion dollars in the U.S. and 700 million pounds per year in the U.K.

Steps to relieve stress at work:

Step one: Practice non-attachment: Focus on the things you can change; distance yourself from those you can’t.

Step two: Cultivate an open mind and heart: Understand that you have strengths and weaknesses, and you will mistakes. When you do, take them as opportunities for learning, not a sign of incompetence or failure.

Step three: Balance realism and optimism: Distorting reality, either positively or negatively, can impede your ability to cope with change.

Step four: Develop confident humility: If the task is yours, act decisively; if it has been delegated to others, trust them to perform them task without interfering. This leaves both manager and staff to worry about what they are working on and not what the other person is doing.

Step five: Be constructive and impatient at the same time: Risk taking and urgency are important, but make sure staff feel safe when doing so by celebrating successes and dealing with failures constructively.

Have questions? Want to learn more about SXO's Spa Nutrition products? Please feel free to contact us via email at info@sequencexo.com or directly at (949) 608-7112.

Is your spa water aging your clients?

There are many different forms of water available for your drinking pleasure. It’s important to understand the benefits of each to ensure that you and your clients are drinking and topically using the right type of water for healthier skin and body. According to Dr. Dennis Gross, tap water contains heavy metals that can act as free radicals, which can destroy collagen. Even by washing your face with tap water can lead to impurities and heavy metals to cling to your skin, creating a breeding ground for damage to occur throughout the day.

What kind of water is best for you?

Ionized water
What is it?
Water treated with electrolysis to remove acidic particles, such as sodium, calcium, iron, copper, chloride and bromide. The water has been purified from most impurities except organic compounds.

Benefits:

• Acts as a natural antioxidant
• Helps with the body’s natural oxygen production
• Stabilizes body’s acid/alkaline balance – balancing the body’s pH
• The molecular structure of ionized water is smaller, which allows for easier passage into the cells and tissues
• Used externally, ionized water is beneficial for healthy skin, hair and scalp

Distilled water
What is it?
Water that has been heated to a boiling point eliminating impurities from the water as it vaporizes. Through a distiller, the vapor water is then cooled to become pure liquid water while the impurities such as the metals, ions, minerals, and contaminants are disposed of.

Benefits:

• Helps to flush out impurities from the body
• Allows the proper “flushing” of the blood through the kidneys, not having to have to deal with other impurities found in un-distilled water.
• No impurities, just pure H2O
• Acts as a solvent in the body by dissolving nutrients so they can be assimilated by the cell
• Collects “rejected” minerals and flushes them out as waste

Filtered water
What is it?
Water that has been filtered through a carbon based filter to remove chemical agents such as chlorine.

Benefits:

• Ensures that only organic minerals are retained in the water
• Helps to remove synthetic compounds, which turn into vapor at relatively low temperatures leading to toxins in the body if not removed

Have any comments or questions? Please email us

Complexion Boosters: Keep summer skin beautiful

Summer is well under way! It’s the time of year where we need to protect our skin from the damaging effects of UV exposure that can lead to wrinkles, photo-aging and even the beginning stages of skin cancer. In recent studies, researchers have found that an array of antioxidants can protect specific skin cells against UVA and UVB induced damage. Exposure to UV light accounts for 90 percent of the symptoms associated with premature skin aging, and most of the effects by age 20.

Keep your skin youthful from 20 to 60

Skin in your 20’s: Your skin tends to be more stable than in your teens, usually oiliness and spots will disappear. You really do not see any visible facial lines yet, but if you look closely you will notice your expression marks will start forming. Some men and women will still see some acne depending on hormonal changes and cravings.

Solution: Make sure your diet is full of antioxidants like lutein, gogi berry, mangosteen, tomatoes and blueberries to support sun protection and skin elasticity. Drink lots of water and avoid smoking.

Skin in your 30’s: This is definitely a decade where you will begin seeing any overexposure to smoke, alcohol, pollution and UV light on your skin, that occurred in your teens and 20’s. You will begin to notice visible fine lines around the eyes and mouth and your cellular repair process begins to slow, which leads to weakened collagen. Skin may look duller and darker and may take longer to recover from late nights or stress.

Solution: Spend a little more time on learning what is good for your body. Choose the types of foods that enhance your metabolism, energy and provide beautifying properties from within. Supplementing with antioxidants like pomegranate, grape seed, green tea and alpha lipoic acid, which provide protection from free radical damage (the rusting effect of our cells). Increase your diet with vitamin A, E and C to boost your immune and diet for healthy looking skin and body. Try Sequence XO’s Fusion antioxidant supplement to help protect your skin. Learn more about our products

Skin in your 40’s: Wrinkles and spider veins will become more apparent during this stage of our lives if we did not protect our skin in earlier decades. Discoloration, uneven skin texture, dryness and dullness are more apparent.

Solution: Avoid yo-yo dieting, this will only add to dullness of your skin and create havoc on your hormones. Instead try portion control and don’t forget the most important meal of the day – breakfast. Women who eat breakfast tend to be 10 pounds lighter than woman who skip it all together. Try drinking your breakfast with yogurt, protein blended with a low-carb antioxidant beauty mix, like Sequence XO’s Radiance beverage powder. Learn more about our products

Skin in your 50’s and 60’s: Pigmentation and sagging skin are usually the biggest problems in this stage of our lives. Unless you have exercised regularly, you will see the effects in loss of tone and muscle. Also cellular regeneration and circulation will slow causing flaky patches, dullness, goose pimples and fragile skin spots.

Solution: Diet and exercise is very important to keep skin and muscles healthy. Increasing your protein and essential fatty acids like omega 3’s are crucial in keeping bones and joints healthy. Adding supplements with antioxidants, essential fatty acids, phyto-nutrients, protein and minerals are very important to the health of your collagen (muscles, connective tissue, joints, skin, hair and nails). Try Sequence XO’s Radiance to boost protein and phyto-nutrients in your diet. Learn more about our products

Have a question? Comment? Please email us, we’d love to hear from you.

Spa Professional: Customer Retention

It has been observed that in business, the idea of the “80/20” rule reigns supreme. Essentially, what this rule indicates is that 80% of your business is generated by 20% of your clients. Taking the 80/20 rule into consideration, it is more important now than ever to make sure your customers keep coming back to you. We have reached a point during these economic times where people are more selective on where they spend their money. Customer retention has become one the key factors in ensuring that your business flourishes and succeeds. Business is more than just completing a transaction. Building a relationship with your clients creates a bond that will ensure future business and buzz.

Here are a few ways you can ensure customer retention:

Follow up and follow through

If your clients have recently conducted business with you, follow up with them by sending them a “thank you” card with an added incentive for them to come back for a different treatment.

If you have clients that have not visited your spa in a while, send them a mailer or card that gives them an incentive to come in. The note will remind them that they are important to you.

Personalize your interaction

Your clients appreciate a memorable experience. They will tend to come back to a place where they are greeted and treated with a more personalized approach. Welcome them in your spa with a smile and by first name basis if possible.

Listen, listen, listen

Your clients will appreciate your efforts in understanding their needs and applying they’re suggestions. Good customer service and functional selling comes from listening and implementing what your clients are asking for. Again, sending a “thank you” card with a note that asks, “what would you like to see during your next visit” will initiate an interactive relationship with you and your clients.

Become a Resource

Individuals are always looking for more information. Why have your clients go to someone else if they can get the information they are looking for from you. Create an environment in your spa that provides educational information relating to the industry. Provide information relating to wellness and health for your clients. Being more than a place for pampering and more a destination for resources will drive your clients to visit your spa or your spa’s website more frequently. More frequency will ultimately drive more business.

Referral Business

The most reliable revenue growth comes in two forms: repeat sales and referral business. The better your skills for generating referral business, the faster your client base will grow leading to increased revenues and a healthy bottom line. There are many ways to help increase your referral business without having to have to spend a lot of money in advertising and/or marketing. In fact, enhancing your referral business is one of the most cost effective ways to increase your client base. It also helps yield a very lucrative ROI.

Three simple ways to assure a successful referral program in your spa.

Be Memorable
Competition is fierce in the spa industry. After all, we are in an industry that is constantly growing. By introducing something new in this arena, you will have to have something that your clients will talk about to their friends and family, which in turn will push them to recommend your spa to them. Examples of incorporating something memorable may include:

- A unique type of spa treatment
- A different kind of service never before experienced
- A new retail product that is untraditional in the spa industry
- The way your staff meets and greets your clients

Be Personable
A genuine “Hello” is hard to come by these days. We tend to worry so much about our revenues and profits in this difficult economy, that we tend to forget that client satisfaction is one the most important aspects of good business Don’t forget…this is a people industry! Be more personable to your clients by:

- Remembering their names
- Let them hear you smile with your positive attitude
- Engage in conversations with your clients using open ended questions
- Follow up with thank you notes or letters

Provide an Incentive
Having a referral program in place that allows your clients to benefit as they refer other clients is an excellent strategy to increase your referral business. Think of cost effective solutions that you can provide as an incentive to motivate your clients to refer their friends and family. These incentives may include:

- A free spa treatment after a defined number of referred clients
- Gift certificates to your spa
- Free retail products
- A gift basket with content to drive them to come back

Spa Biz: Marketing strategies to increase new clients and returning guests

As economic woes continue, spa businesses must become a little more creative in effort to increase profits. There are many new ways to generate sales leads today: email campaigns, website optimization, social media, podcasts, but even with all these options, direct mail remains one of the most powerful lead-generating tools – and the best part is that it can be pretty inexpensive.

Here are some ideas:
1. Postcard – Simple postcards are a terrific way to generate leads. They’re easy to print and pretty inexpensive as far as mailing goes. You can use a variety of online printers or even your own printer and apply stamps and address labels by hand. If you have a much larger mailing list using an online printer to do all the work for you can actually be more beneficial and less expensive in the long run!

• Postcard message: Postcards can generate a phone call or help drive people to your website. Since postcards are small your message should be familiar and easy to understand for your customers. Simple and direct – people don’t read postcards as much as they glance.

2. Flyers – Print up a well designed flyer, fold it, affix a mailing label and a stamp, and throw it in the mail. This kind of guerrilla tactic is dirt-cheap and can produce fantastic results.

3. Invitations – This is a great opportunity to not only introduce a new treatment, product or just a way to say thank you to your guests by inviting them to an ‘exclusive’ event at your spa. You can easily head to your local office supply store or use an online printer (our favorites www.uprinting.com and www.vistaprint.com) to purchase pre-made invitations. If you have a much larger budget then have a professional design the invitations for you. The key is that your customers will feel special that you thought of them for something exclusive.

• Use your vendors – Setting up a party can be expensive, so to minimize some of your costs ask your vendors to help with either free samples, basket donations or by co-hosting the party with you.

If you have other great inexpensive marketing ideas and would like to share them please email us at info@sequencexo.com. We’ll feature it in our next Nourish.