I remember when I first heard about Massage Envy on the internet, I was really excited, than I was mad and became frustrated.

Massage Envy was founded by John Leonesio in Scottsdale in 2002, Massage Envy is a membership-based and single-visit provider of massages and other body-oriented services. Currently Massage Envy operates 420 franchises in 36 states with another 350 under-development, pretty impressive in just 6 years.

Friend or Foe?

I came across Massage Envy right about the time I started working on my own idea’s of building a massage business franchise. As a massage therapist at that time for nearly 9 years, I knew right away what Massage Envy success meant for me as a small massage business owner. You see my time as a male massage therapist was constantly being questioned, why did I want to do massage, what kind of massage was I going to be doing, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. I also knew from experience how difficult it would be to get the approval from the city regulators and licensing officials. Massage Envy is literally helping to change all that for future massage businesses.

Massage Envy’s success is everyone’s success, if you have plans on opening up a massage facility of your own. They are literally deregulating (or I should say getting pre-approvals) from all the cities and counties licensing officials, cutting through all the red tape for anyone coming in behind them. Massage Envy is pre-approving other massage establishments that want to take up space around or near other Massage Envy businesses.

• Massage Envy is using their time and money for getting local cities and regulators approval for their license to open a massage business.

• Massage Envy is logging in hundreds of hours in various court rooms, fighting for city permits and licensing approvals, when they are being challenged. Massage Envy is paying good money in attorney fees to fight these challenges, less you have to pay.

• Massage Envy is doing all the test marketing for different regions and demographics across the United States that they occupy, which you won’t have to. All you would need to do is see what Massage Envy businesses are well and which are not doing so well it is easy as that.

• Massage Envy aggressive expansion is bringing more individuals to massage, who may not have gotten one before because of price and negative perceptions.

• Massage Envy is the experiment, from which you can look to and learn from.

With all this said, Massage Envy is Friend. But, for all that they are friend for, they are also my foe. Not only to me but to all professional massage therapists and bodyworkers out there.

• They pay less than industry standards, the average massage therapist makes about $15 - $18 per 50 minute massage. Exploiting massage therapists straight out of school and subjecting them to less than admirable working conditions and pay.

• Massage Envy’s aggressive expansion plans will decrease the value of getting a massage, not increase it. Massage customers will continue to expect to pay less not more for their massages and future competition will only see more drops in pricing structure. Unless you change that business model.

• Massage Envy’s failure to recognize, their unique opportunity. Massage Envy can introduce many first time massage goers and individuals who seek “spa massages” to a better quality massage that is more therapeutic in nature. I believe that this could raise our level of professionalism within the massage industry to higher standard, not less.

• No in-house training program for massage therapists to increase their knowledge base.

So I ask you, “Is Massage Envy Friend or Foe?”

One day when you decide to open up a massage business for yourself, make sure that it serves the massage therapists (your employee’s) as well as your clients.

Maybe with their latest buy out by Veria, things will get better at Massage Envy. But I don’t think so, Veria only bought them out so that would have a platform to market their own health related products to a already captured-ready-made audience.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!