As a massage professional, your clients see you as a valuable source of information on flexibility and muscular pain relief.
You can ethically build on your reputation to become the source of hard-to-find massage products that your clients can use for their self-care between sessions, or purchase as holiday gifts.
MASSAGE Magazine’s coverage of how to launch a retail component in your massage office or online includes these seven articles. A recap and link to each is offered here.
Holiday Retail Success
You have time before the winter holidays arrive to begin selling massage and spa products that will augment your sessions and build client loyalty, as well as increase your income.
You have a relationship with your clients, and retailing is simply another avenue of supporting your clients in their wellness. Launching a retail component of a massage practice requires understanding some elements of consumer purchasing behavior.
Many commercial merchandisers start their holiday buying marketing campaigns in September—then there’s the major push with Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Kwanzaa and Christmas. Consumers are barraged by these holidays’ advertisements, decorations and festivities.
As a small-business owner, you can ride the coattails of these promotions to generate additional sales for your practice or expand your product lines.
How You Can Make Money Selling Self-Care Tools
All professional health care and wellness providers can boost profits by selling self-care products that help people ease chronic pain and achieve good health. Yet most providers don’t do so, thinking it will be too expensive or complicated, requiring business acumen or a bookkeeper to make sense of it all.
While there are things to learn, applications to fill out, and small investments to be made—usually in the form of purchasing inventory—adding retail sales to your business income is neither complex nor risky. It’s not just a matter of making more money; it’s adding income by helping people, your clients, feel better in between sessions.
The 8 Things You Must Know about Selling Retail in a Massage Practice
Creating a retail component to your massage business, both in-person and online, is a great way to increase your business’s bottom line.
Adding products that you can sell to your clientele, especially when doing so online, can create revenue streams that are not tied to the hours you are physically working.
Additionally, the right products can uncouple your manual labor from your income, allowing you to leverage your time for other things, both in the personal or business realm.
As massage therapists look for ways to improve their bottom line, many are looking to alternative sources of revenue through the sale of products such as facial and body creams, books, candles and inspirational products. Most massage therapists seem to believe that if the item is sold over the counter, there are no restrictions. This is simply not true.
Rock Your Retail: Kinesiology Tape for Self-Care
When it comes to adding retail to your practice, kinesiology tape is both simple and effective. There are a couple models of approach.
The first step is to create a wholesale account with the kinesiology taping company that you use. This is often as easy as a short application process found on the company’s website. As a medical professional, you will be eligible for discounts, typically up to 40 percent off retail pricing, plus additional benefits depending on the company.
Once your wholesale account is set up, it’s as simple as placing your order. The volume of inventory you stock has everything to do with your client load, how much and how often you use tape in your treatments, and anticipating how much tape you will send home with clients.
11 Things You Don’t Know About Retail Sales
As a massage therapist, you sell every day. What do you sell? You sell your time, expertise and ability to identify and respond to clients’ needs. If you don’t expand your sales into retail products, you will miss a valuable opportunity to better support clients while making more money.
“During the California Gold Rush, it wasn’t the people panning for gold who made the fortunes,” says massage-business expert Irene Diamond, R.T. “It was the smart retailers selling shovels, pans and blue jeans.
“When you choose to add retailing to your business model, you add a higher level of customer service as well as increase your bank account,” she said.
How to Use Retail to Help Clients and Your Bottom Line
“How do I make more money?” It’s a common cry among massage therapists.
Have you wondered the same thing?
Of course, the first thought therapists have, as the way to increase revenue, is to get more clients. It’s true the more clients you see, the more money you can make. But because of the physical nature of massage, there is a limit to the number of hours you can provide massage. It’s pretty agreed upon that a full practice for a single practitioner is about 20 hours of hands-on appointment time.
So, what happens when all your appointment timeslots are filled in your calendar? If you’re like many successfully booked therapists, once you hit your schedule cap, you actually can’t fit in any additional clients. So even though you do generate a nice income from seeing all those clients, you will reach a limit on your income.
7 Ways to Promote Retail, Retain Clients and Make More Money
If you are not retailing products in your practice, you are missing valuable opportunities to help your clients.
Plus, you will be losing business income that can be derived from retail product sales. Here are seven tips for efficient retailing practices for massage therapists.
Here, learn how to choose a product manufacturer and the right products for your practice; dicuss product benefits with clients, display merchandise, and more.