The Right Touch
Whenever he had an hour’s break from his stressful job as a retail clothing executive, Joel Doti used to slip away for a rejuvenating massage. Upon his retirement in 1992, Doti was casting about for a new enterprise when the thought occurred: Why not open a massage clinic that combined his interests in alternative therapy with 30 years’ experience in business.
Five years later, Doti’s brainstorm has grown from one 700-square-foot massage clinic in Costa Mesa to a chain of 11 Bodycentres in Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles counties that is growing 30% each year.
Doti’s keys to success in the competitive massage business: charging a rock-bottom $39 for a one-hour massage in a field where $60 hourly rates are much more common and locating his clinics in strip malls and industrial parks.
The low prices have helped Bodycentre capitalize on changing attitudes toward massage, as baby boomers with high-pressure jobs seek holistic ways to relax, soothe tired muscles and ward off aches and pains.
“People are stressed out and they’re looking for healthy alternatives, and I wanted to tap that market and make massage affordable to a larger demographic,” says Doti, a trim 60-year-old who eats no red meat and partakes regularly of the circulatory massages, colonic therapy and other alternative health treatments offered by his clinics.
As Bodycentre expands, Doti has also adopted an unorthodox approach to growing his business. For one, he opened his own state-certified massage school to provide a solid employee pool for his operations. And he promoted exclusively from within, recruiting Bodycentre massage therapists who displayed business acumen to manage new clinics.
Finally, he no longer owns any of the clinics--he has sold them to handpicked former employees and now collects a consulting fee or a percentage of the profit in exchange for handling all the advertising and marketing. Doti also remains the corporate director responsible for setting policy for the firm.
In order to own a Bodycentre, Doti requires people to become a certified massage therapist and work for him first to learn how the Bodycentres are run.
One who went this route is Katrina Hill, 34, who started as a customer after an auto accident in 1995. Hill, then a national sales manager for a linen company, got to know Doti and became more intrigued with massage.
Doti encouraged her to become a licensed therapist and start working part time at his clinic. Later that year, he offered her a full-time job managing his new Fullerton clinic. Hill left her sales career with few qualms, saying her new career was more interesting and paid roughly the same money.
Ten months later, Hill purchased the clinic from Doti--she declines to name the price but says it was “reasonable”--then opened two more Bodycentres in Redondo Beach and Buena Park. Today, she and her husband, Caj, who scaled back a bank job to join his wife in the massage business, plan to open four more stores in the next year.
Says Hill: “Joel has a real knack for finding people who have potential and giving them an opportunity to make money and do something they love.”
But not everyone approves of Doti’s business strategies. Ahmos Netanel, president of Massage Therapy Center in West Los Angeles, a respected and upscale clinic whose clients include chief executives and celebrities, believes it’s impossible to give a high-quality massage for $39, especially when therapists work all day with five-minute breaks between customers.
“This is a labor-intensive service business, and the cost savings have to come from somewhere. That means you hire cheaper, less experienced therapists,” Netanel says.
He doesn’t see Bodycentre as competition.
“Is McDonald’s competition for Spago?” Netanel asks. “I’ve heard from thousands of clients over the years and when they get a massage, they want it to be a profound experience, not a sloppy one.”
Doti bristles at the idea that his employees are less than par and says the Bodycentre’s 170 licensed therapists each have from 100 to 1,000 hours of training and are as good as any in the field.
“It does not take a genius to have good hands,” says Doti, who trains employees at his West Pacific Institute of Body Therapy, which averages 12 students per course for a 100-hour class that costs $400.
Part of the training for therapists, 90% of them women, includes learning how to politely ward off sexual advances from clients who want more than a standard massage, which happens in 10% of cases, says Doti.
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Using tricks learned in the rag trade (Doti was a senior vice president at Clothestime Inc.), he also hires undercover “shoppers” to pose as customers and check the efficiency of the therapist and make sure everything is on the up-and-up. Department stores employ similar tactics.
Doti’s rise from retired rag trader to massage maven happened quickly. A longtime aficionado of massage, he discovered the benefits of colonic therapy when an infection he developed in the large bowel was cured by colonic treatments, in which water is introduced into the colon via the rectum to eliminate toxins.
After retiring, Doti went back to school and became a colonic therapist in 1992 and a massage therapist a year later. (The colonic industry is unregulated; massage is regulated by each city, which can require therapists to attend anywhere from 150 hours of training in Los Angeles to 1,000 hours in Tustin at a state-licensed school.)
Doti opened his first Bodycentre in Costa Mesa in 1994 with two helpers. Within months, the facility had grown to 3,000 square feet (the average Bodycentre is 2,500 square feet). Additional clinics soon opened in Fullerton and Irvine.
Doti says the company has grown debt-free and that not one of his clinics has failed. It takes from $30,000 to $40,000 to open each new clinic, and they usually operate in the black after the first month, he adds.
The Bodycentre founder won’t reveal sales or profit figures, but he concedes that he spends $5,000 per month on advertising and that repeat clients account for 60% to 70% of his business.
When patrons come in, they’re given a card to fill out and can choose among circulatory, shiatsu or other massages, depending on the skills of the therapists available. The bulk of the business is massage, with colonic hydrotherapy accounting for 15% to 20%. Bodycentre also offers body wraps, scrubs and facials.
The firm keeps overhead at a minimum by picking locations with reasonable rents in medical offices and strip malls, which increases the firm’s visibility.
Karen Menahan, managing editor of the trade publication Massage Magazine, calls Doti’s location and pricing a savvy business strategy.
“I haven’t heard very often of a full-body massage being done in a mall setting like that. If the therapists are properly trained, that’s a great way to introduce people to the concept of massage,” Menahan says.
Indeed, more people are discovering the benefits of massage-- and not just baby boomers who have embraced holistic therapies. Massage Magazine has seen its circulation jump from 80,000 to 100,000 since 1992, Menahan says. This summer, Life magazine ran a cover story on the healing power of touch in which medical experts extolled the therapeutic benefits of massage.
Cities that once zoned massage parlors as adult businesses have acknowledged this shift by redrafting municipal ordinances to accommodate and regulate massage clinics that offer everything from traditional Swedish or circulatory massage to colonic therapy, acupuncture and electrolysis.
And droves of middle-class people are embracing an alternative therapy that was once thought to be the province of the very rich or the very sleazy--especially when the price tag is almost half of many other salons.
Doreen Adams, 66, stumbled across the clinic by leafing through the Yellow Pages three years ago and is now a regular Bodycentre patron in Costa Mesa.
“Joel has healing hands,” Adams says, reclining on a massage table as Doti rubs scented oil onto her legs. “And the price really helps.”
Looking ahead, Doti sees Los Angeles and Riverside counties as the promising new markets--a Marina del Rey Bodycentre opens in November--and looks for cities with a large number of professionals and a progressive attitude toward alternative therapies.
