New Image MedSpa Blog

I attended a recent meeting of physicians and medspa owners, where a self-proclaimed "expert" espoused his opinion of what's wrong with the people who come to seek services at a medical spa.  Frankly, I found the entire diatribe offensive, but out of respect for my peers, I sat through it and had time to reflect on what this so-called expert was saying.  In his opinion, medical spas should always charge for a consultation.  Medical spas and esthetic physicians should never offer discounts for services.  In fact, he said "if the person cannot afford a $3000 procedure, then don't bother with them, move on to someone who will offer a profitable sale".

 And herein lies the dilemma -- for a medical spa to operate profitably, it has to achieve a certain volume of clientele and a balance of reasonably priced (i.e. profitable) services.  In this industry, margin is determined by many factors:  cost of equipment and medicine, labor fees for staff, malpractice insurance (don't get me started on that one!), and the usual business expenses and overhead.  In this tough economy, many practices have either shut down or are significantly cutting back on services.  New Image Medspa made a strategic decision to operate our medispa to deliver a high standard of quality, while at the same time setting prices that were affordable to nearly every segment of our population.  We borrowed a bit from both Walmart and Niemen Marcus.   From Walmart, we borrowed the approach of working proactively with our vendors to lower our cost of supplies and materials, we watch our expenses.  From Nieman Marcus, we borrowed  a bit or two as well, like paying our staff a high wage to ensure that they care about what they do and how they treat our clients; we continue to maintain our facility to a high standard of upkeep to make sure that even though our prices are generally lower than most offices, we want to make you feel like you are in fact visiting a high-end practice.  

The question I have on mind is this -- for people looking for these services, does having a lower price turn you off believing you're not getting the "exclusivity" of a high-end office, or are lower prices and just honest, caring, good service a recipe that reaches across the income brackets and demographics?