Retail sales not only help boost the bottom line, they can help build a bond between you and your clients between session visits. Providing your clients with products for home use serves as a constant reminder of their relationship with your practice or spa, and their trust in your professional services.

The key to building a profitable retail component to your business is “prescription selling,” whereby your staff designs a skin care and wellness regime unique to each client’s needs. The regime is in turn tied to retail products for daily use---scrubs, body butters or lotions---that extend the treatment during visits.
 
A massage treatment is the easiest way to introduce your customers to your retail product offerings. Some of today’s massage lubricants enable you to create a sensory experience by adding essential oils or customized fragrances to an unscented massage cream, lotion, oil or butter. The oils and fragrances provide an opportunity to offer complementary retail products.

For example,

if you have a client who is looking to relax, you might add a lavender-based essential oil to your professional lubricant. Or to protect cells from damage, you might want to add a fragranced complex based on green tea, which is proving to be more effective than vitamin C and vitamin E in preserving cells. In turn, your retail lotions and body butters should include these same ingredients, so that the client can continue to benefit from them long after leaving your establishment.

In all cases, keep the message simple and approach retail sales as part of client education. Make sure your clients understand why you are recommending certain products and the best way for home application and use. 

Jean Shea is the founder and CEO of BIOTONE, a leading manufacturer of superior quality professional massage oils, cremes, lotions, gels as well as spa body-and-facial treatment products. Shea founded the company in 1980 and today continues to help create and manufacture all of the company’s formulas.

 

 

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