Hello! Who are you, and what business did you start?
Hello, I am Alma Curry, the founder of Meridian Spa. I started a local spa in Greenwich, London as a solopreneur in 2017, which is making £30K/Month right now. I built this business five years after launching my first venture, Meridian Fitness.
The vision was to provide a wellness space to my clients where they can relax their minds and bodies. We offer full body massage and laser hair removal services for women and men. However, Spa days and Swedish Massage are more popular among Spa gift card holders.
Whenever we talk about fitness, we associate well-being as well. If we look around, what would anyone require after spending a hectic day? Well, a good massage is enough to relax the stiff muscles and calm a stressed mind.
Massages have been a pretty common ritual for acquiring health and well-being. Statistically speaking, around 48% of the people last had a massage solely for health and wellness, mainly if we are talking about people taking massages in Spa. The stats show that 42% preferred Spa to get a massage than any other means.
Meridian Spa offers all the kinds of massages in the market. After keen observation, I have tried to enlist the most helpful and, somehow, the most demanded massage and found the experts in the field to deliver the best services.
We offer a variety of packages intermixed with other treatments to keep it economical. However, let alone this business allows me to make £30k GBP every month, yet we are looking forward to increasing the revenue generation by integrating new strategies.
What's your backstory, and how did you come up with the idea?
Well, if I just put it in words, my vision was clear and associated with the idea of fitness and well-being. Fitness isn't just having a toned body or lifting heavy weights but a relaxed mind and body as well. My simple approach was to make well-being more reachable to the people alone, so I decided to open up a Spa and fitness center together. Or you can perceive it as a smart business as well. A whole week of a fitness-trained body must require some relaxation, and they will be up for a good massage to relax their bodies.
Since I had a pretty clear vision of a fitness business, I knew a spa would perfectly go with it. All I was looking forward to was making it more workable and easily available for the people. However, it was more about making the newly emerging skin treatment and other facilities available for everyone at economical prices. To make this happen, I thoroughly researched different Spas, took help from multiple expert resources, and intermixed the traditional practices with the newly evolved treatments. I was pretty hopeful that I would turn out to be good, and no doubt it did.
Honestly speaking, as I was looking forward to launching a fitness business alongside, it had been packed with financials. All of the savings were going into the fitness business, so I had to take a loan from the bank. I knew at that time it was a big risk, but I had no other choice, so I took the chance, and it worked. It turned out to be a great success for me. I couldn't believe it because it was something like my biggest dream come true.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
It is really fun how I planned everything with precision but forgot to align all the menu cards or services we are providing. Until the very end, it wasn't decided what we were going to offer and how much it would cost. However, somehow, we managed, and with the help of the initial starting cost of services, we made the whole list but kept it economical as compared to other spas.
At first, I just had a team of three: a professional massage therapist, a beautician, and myself, but later on, before the launch, we decided to hire a team of developers to launch the spa website alongside. As I talk about the experience, it rushes my adrenaline. Everything was pretty chaotic, yet the most adventurous and worth experiencing.
The next step was to grab all the permissions and clear all the legal documents.
- As per the legalities, I registered my business with all the required documents, including the business plan.
- The next thing was to obtain a premises license. However, I have to pass through the local council of Greenwich.
- Last but not least, the next thing was to get health and safety compliance. It covers pretty much all the appropriate insurance.
Describe the process of launching the business.
However, there were some difficulties when the work was all around the finishing line. But my experts had my back with the strategies as they were qualified yet experienced. They helped me out with the work strategies and asked me to let it go with the pace,
After we were done with the basis, everything narrowed down to the launching day. As I already had a vision in my mind, my core focus was on the people doing fitness training and the audience who have been looking forward to some economical treatments.
However, It didn't precisely market it in a particular area because it wasn't easy to target such an audience without many resources or digital marketing. In particular, We tried to market or provide awareness at local conferences or reached out to some salons to spread the word.
At the launch, the amount invested was almost up to (£20K) by keeping it controlled and low. However, the whole business cost me around (£120,000) initially.
Moreover, the best thing I did was to collaborate with a few local influencers and a coffee shop that provided free coffee and eatables on the launch and, in return, got 1% off every client who booked an appointment on the launching day.
This strategy quite helped us, and we managed to get 20+ appointments for massages and facial touch. However, we gave away free coffee coupons to our first customers.
First Version of Meridian Spa
On concise notice, our UI/UX designer developed a tremendous first-launching web design.
Final version of the trends
However, as time evolved, we updated our web design as well to keep up with the market trends. Undoubtedly, this upgrade is helping us a lot with the extensively increased number of sales.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Whenever you are looking forward to starting your own business, make sure to follow a few things:
- Enhance the unique characteristics. What's the special thing you are offering more than others? Make sure you add up everything in your marketing campaigns.
- Give importance to what your customers are saying. What are their problems, and how can you improve them? This will help you to understand in what areas you require growth.
- Make sure you follow all the recent trends in the market. It's better to incorporate new strategies to fulfill the demands.
- Marketing is the key. The more you put into marketing, the more you will get it back. It helps your business grow further.
My initial plan was to hop onto SEO(search engine optimization) and optimize it according to the local area research. After we were satisfied with our SEO plan, we began receiving traffic and sales. Our internal marketing team developed a thorough strategy, including optimizing sponsored and organic search engines.
Furthermore, the Facebook Ads were used to reach potential clients using Facebook ad analytics. Moreover, a few more strategies, such as Google ads and PPC (pay-per-click), raise fitness awareness and eventually generate leads. However, another collaborative approach was used to gain the client's trust.
Whenever you are going to start a business, make sure you have a clear vision of what you are doing and why you are doing it. If you are headed, it will be easy for you to make any business functional.
How are you doing today, and what does the future look like?
I am more than happy to share that Meridian Spa is doing great in the market overall. Whether the overall traffic online or the retained loyal clients, the spa has been generating quite a good business. The following are some of the annual sales statistics. Let's dig into them.
Meridian Spa makes about £350k annually on average. However, total costs, including rent out, maintenance, employee salaries, etc., account for 55% (£152k) of revenue earned. Additionally, the business's profit is represented by the remaining 55–50% of the funds, or roughly £198-£200k.
Thus, if we talk about the last 12 months, the total impressions reached around 2.82M, which is impressive.
Following are the sales quantity of the services provided in the last 12 months.
The profit is growing well with different strategies that we have been using, including PPC, FB Meta ads, and SEO. As you can see in the following statistics, in just the past five months, the rate of Pay per click has been recorded at 6.95k, which is quite impressive.
Additionally, if we discuss further goals, we look forward to improving our email marketing strategies more, as they have been beneficial in the last 12 months. Moreover, we are looking forward to opening more branches and increasing the number of services.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Keeping growing means always learning and trying new things. You can't just enhance your business unless you don't try. I still regret not getting into digital marketing when I launched my business. Things would have been way better, and business would be at another level.
Well, during the time period of COVID-19, the spa business wasn't going quite well. The sales were down, but afterward, in the upcoming years, we covered all the losses and got back on track real soon with the help of digital marketing. Now, I have a team of almost 40 members, all of whom are hard-working yet experts in their domains.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Our first choice was to integrate WordPress into the content management system. Well, we had thought about shifting it to another platform but dropped it as it has been offering great services.
However, there are a few other tools, including Adobe, to enhance the speed of the website. Thus, for security control and protection purposes, we have integrated Cloudflare.
Many platforms are used in marketing to attract more potential customers. Facebook's Meta library is used as a platform for running advertisements for awareness purposes, and it demonstrates a great reach of people. However, to enhance email marketing, the best solution is Klaviyo, which we have been using as it ensures customer satisfaction.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Books in particular that have been influential start with "Why" written by Simon Sinek. This book allows you to think of the vision behind the business you are going to start. Thus, I think it is essential to have a built vision before you start a business. It gives you a clear path to take.
However, for the podcast, I would rather suggest the podcast of Tim Ferris. He is an author and entrepreneur who interviews top performers from various fields on his podcast. The wide range of guests and topics, from business and investing to health and creativity, provides a diverse set of lessons for entrepreneurs.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
The best I could give to one is whenever you are going to start a business, make sure you have a clear vision of what you are doing and why you are doing it. If you are headed, it will be easy for you to make any business functional. Furthermore, after having a clear vision and thoroughly studying the whole market, it is very time-consuming yet vital to stand a business on a strong basis. Once you observe the market very keenly, you will learn about the loopholes, and once you are in the market, all you have to do is fill the loopholes, and you are all good to accelerate your business growth.
When starting a service-based business, make sure you are keeping the interests and needs of the people you are targeting in check. You can do this by filling out the survey and grabbing feedback from your own client once you are in the market. It is very effective as if you are serving what they require, which is the best strategy.
Lastly, never go out of the trend if you lack in this domain. Believe me, you are never going to make it unless you are very lucky. Always evolve your business with the trends, e.g., ensure your social presence is highly essential, and always target the right audience.
