Business is booming. For decades the rich and famous have been stroked and soaked at places like the Golden Door in Escondido, Calif. ($5,250 for a week). But pampering is going mainstream. The number of U.S. day spas that offer a full menu of rubs, pedicures and wraps jumped to 3,000 last year from fewer than 100 a decade ago, according to Dayspa magazine. JCPenney has opened day spas at 19 of its stores and expects to add five to 10 new ones each year. Not surprisingly, given all these pampered people, the Labor Department projected a 44.7 percent increase in job openings for manicurists between 1996 and 2006. Massage is now for the masses, too. Thirteen percent of Americans received at least one rub from a massage therapist last year–up from only 8 percent in 1997, according to the American Massage Therapy Association. ““Ten years ago people looked sideways at it,’’ says Gordon Miller, executive director of the National Cosmetology Association. Today the bashful don’t even need to disrobe. Places like Minute Massage near the Chicago Board of Trade offer 10-minute chair massages for $12.50.
The burgeoning number of treatments is part of Americans’ growing fondness for ““little luxuries,’’ including $3 coffee drinks at Starbucks, that don’t ““break the bank,’’ says Northwestern University marketing professor Mohan Sawhney. ““But if tomorrow the stock market dives and we go into a recession, a lot of this stuff will start to disappear. There will be a lot of empty spas.’’ For now, though, Americans are forking over $35 for pedicures without getting cold feet. ““We’re more oriented toward entitlement than deprivation,’’ says Boston psychoanalyst Stephen A. Appelbaum.
To stay ahead of the mass marketers, upscale salons are adding ever more unusual services and are courting corporations and other new clients. Mario Tricoci’s 12-day spas in Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and Illinois offer pumpkin peels and pedicures and milk wraps. ““That’s how Cleopatra stayed so lovely. She had milk baths every day,’’ says co-owner Cheryl Tricoci. To be Cleopatra for a day, prom-bound girls, brides and bridesmaids are renting out the whole place. But the groom doesn’t have to feel left out: spas report that about 20 percent of clients today are men.
Americans are also creating their own mini-spas, outfitting their homes with gadgets such as Sharper Image’s Private Masseuse ($249) back massager. And they’re installing hot tubs in record numbers. Last year they bought some 300,000 of them (about 10 percent more than in 1997), mainly to reduce stress and ““build relationships,’’ says Suzanne Stearns of the National Spa and Pool Institute.
Need a little nurturing but don’t have much time or money? The new book ““Victoria Bath & Beauty: The Fine Art of Pampering Oneself’’ recommends bathing with scented soaps and hanging up lace towels. Deborah Gray-Young, 46, a writer, has her own inexpensive treat: curling up with a cup of hot tea and a good book. Still, she wouldn’t say no to a nice massage.
BIRTHS ON THE RISE
