Tag Archives: Dubai

Thoughts on Avon Closing Its Salon and Spa

avon7 753155 Thoughts on Avon Closing Its Salon and SpaOn Friday Avon announced that it is closing its salon and spa in Manhattan on June 16, after eight years of operation. Avon’s only spa is prominently located in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. When I heard the news, I naturally wanted to get more details, not only because we participated in a press event there on Monday morning but also because I wanted to understand: Why?

So I studied their financials (since Avon is a public company, the numbers are available), dug a bit deeper into their business model, and spoke with some of their management. The facts painted a different picture from the initial one I envisioned after hearing the somewhat shocking news. Here are some tidbits:

  • Avon was founded in 1897

  • Avon is the world’s leading direct seller of beauty and beauty-related products

  • The company did a record $8 billion in sales last year

  • Avon has five million sales reps worldwide

  • A $100 million state-of-the-art R & D center in Suffux, NY was just constructed

  • The company recently announced a “delayering” strategy to remove some management levels

  • Salma Hayek is the Avon spokesperson

  • Avon Wellness is working with Curves

  • The recently released Anew Clinical Eye Lift has done more than lift eyes – it also seems to have helped lift Avon’s stock price

    • Bottom line? The Friday earnings announcement, in which the closing of the Avon Salon and Spa was mentioned so briefly that it was almost a footnote, resulted in a 4% increase in Avon’s stock price!

    My guess is that while they made the decision to close due to corporate restructuring, they will likely be happy to give up what must be sky-high rents at Trump Tower and the high labor costs which are common in the spa industry (often over 50% of revenue). Smart business move – but probably a little hard on the ego.

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    A peek into the future of spa medicine

    dan 717880 A peek into the future of spa medicineI spent today going through medical tests at the WellMax Center for Preventive Medicine in La Quinta, California (near where I am vacationing and, yes, trying to resist the temptation to call my office). We met Dr. Dan Cosgrove (pictured at right), its founder, five years ago at an event here in the desert that Spa Finder hosted at Le Vallauris, a restaurant in Palm Springs. It was shortly after my husband, Peter, and I got involved with Spa Finder and at about the same time Dr. Cosgrove opened WellMax, his new-concept medical-spa, at the La Quinta Hotel and Spa.

    Truth be told, we thought Dr. Cosgrove was a bit “full of himself” that first evening we met. He kept going on and on about this new kind of medical practice he was introducing, and let’s just say the conversation seemed uni-directional. Well, a great deal has happened in the five years since that encounter. Having followed WellMax’s growth and progress, we began to suspect that Dr. Cosgrove’s eccentricity stemmed from genius more than self-obsession. Recently we heard it had become almost impossible to get an appointment with him personally anymore. So we decided to invest (and I do mean invest…more about that later) in the WellMax “intensive physical” to see what all the fuss was about.

    Suffice it to say that a few months after our initial physical in February, we are now more than impressed with Dr. Cosgrove and his “new medical spa” concept. Dr. Cosgrove discovered a growing mass on Peter’s kidney, which was successfully removed through surgery just weeks later – preventing a potentially serious condition in which he might have lost the kidney. And for me, while nothing of immediate critical concern was found, some interesting discoveries were made – including results from Predictive Genomics that are causing me to make some new choices.

    I think we have glimpsed the future of spa medicine. And wow, is it ever exciting!

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    Is it possible to have a vacation from the spa world?

    I just got an email from my office reminding me that I am on vacation. Yikes. I deserved that – and needed that. Here I am in beautiful Palm Desert, California for a week of r&r;, but I’m still checking email and “handling” things back at the New York office. Clearly I am not practicing what our spa industry preaches. I thought I was making progress.

    When I first arrived I was checking email hourly. Today I only checked four times. And I did squeeze in an afternoon massage! But they are right (and my husband agrees). It is time for me to take care of myself and just turn it off. Easier said than done though. OK, Laura, here is a promise: You won’t hear from me for the rest of the week.

    Wow, that feels good – but scary.

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    New spa concept looks promising

    coldwater 704787 New spa concept looks promisingColdwater Creek opened their first of many spas this month in Oregon. I spent some time going through the website and am very impressed with not only the site but also the spa concept. Coldwater Creek’s website has a great style, is well thought out, and communicates their brand, which looks to be a fresh direction. I love that their menu of services is simple (no more than four types of treatments in each category), the prices seem fair, and the décor is universally appealing without being pretentious. Now, if they can deliver consistently high-quality services, I think it will be a winner.

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    Secrets of the Golden Door

    LI 0167 11x1 734892 Secrets of the Golden DoorToday I received a gift from Deborah Szekely in the mail. It was a 1977 copy of the book Secrets of the Golden Door. (You can buy a used copy on Amazon.com for a penny now!) Deborah knew that my copy was buried in storage somewhere in California. The newly opened gift sat on my kitchen counter when my husband came home from work. He thumbed through it with a modest amount of interest. Suddenly, he noticed that I was the model who had demonstrated the exercises in the book. And that there was a silhouette of me on the cover. Yikes, that was 30 years ago!! In true “smart husband” form, he said I looked better today than in the book. Oh, the advantages of aging eyes.

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