Andrew Rudnick snickered when he first saw a medical spa offering Botox and laser hair-removal services on a visit to a Las Vegas mall in 2002. He laughed at the thought of someone — anyone — shopping for the latest fashions, grabbing a bite to eat and then, oh yeah, strolling in for a quick shot of Botox to zap out a nasty wrinkle.
“I couldn’t understand why anybody in a mall would walk in and have their legs lasered, never mind Botox,” he recalled. He parked himself on a bench near the spa and watched in amazement as shoppers strolled in. He owned a weight-loss and laser center in Boston at the time, and the sight was a revelation. “I counted the traffic in and out and saw the revenue, and said, ‘Wow! This is a retail business.’ ”
Returning to Boston, he scouted retail locations. He dropped the weight-loss part of his business to focus on skin care and laser treatments, renamed the company and opened his first Sleek MedSpa that same year. He has since opened six more — near Boston and in New York and Florida, all in upscale malls or retail areas. “It took off like a bat out of hell,” he said.
Thanks in part to television shows like “Extreme Makeover” and “Nip/Tuck,” the number of Americans seeking chemical peels, laser procedures, Botox shots and wrinkle-filler injections is soaring. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, such “noninvasive” treatments have increased more than 700 percent since 1997. Botox received Food and Drug Administration approval in 2002.
The stampede of doctors and entrepreneurs rushing to fill that demand has left some doctors and plastic-surgery trade groups wondering about the expertise of some of the people providing these services. For many Americans, price and convenience come first, with few questions about the experience and qualifications of the person injecting the treatments.
…While Sleek MedSpas lack the feng-shui ambience of a traditional beauty spa, they don’t exude the sterile atmosphere of a doctor’s office, either. The spa in Boca Raton is contemporary and sophisticated, Mrs. Wanderley said, with videos of cosmetic procedures streaming across a flat screen, skin-care products lining another wall and before-and-after picture brochures scattered around the waiting room.
And it’s convenient. “I can be in and out in a half-hour,” she said, and “it gives me an excuse to go to the mall afterward to do a little shopping.” If a procedure causes redness or bruising, the spa offers a convenient back-door exit to the parking lot[LOL].
Mrs. Wanderley acknowledges that 10 years ago, she would have thought this “way too excessive and ridiculous,” she said. “But now I’m one of the bozos on the bus.” She started out requesting microdermabrasion facial treatments and has since added Botox shots and Restylane filler injections to her medspa repertoire.
Mr. Rudnick estimates that 50 percent of his company’s mall clients are walk-ins like Mrs. Wanderley. Sleek MedSpa’s revenue, which was $1.5 million in 2002, surged to more than $14 million in 2007, Mr. Rudnick says, and he expects that total to double this year. Profit margins are in the 20 to 25 percent range, he said, and over the next four years he expects to open 40 more locations in 25 cities.
Sleek MedSpa is among dozens of companies operating medical spas, often called medspas. Hannelore Leavy, founder and executive director of the International Medical Spa Association, estimates that there are 2,000 to 2,500 medspas nationwide, up from 25 in 2002.
There has also been a surge in the number of nonsurgical cosmetic procedures. Of the 11.5 million cosmetic procedures performed in 2006, more than four in five were noninvasive treatments, according to the aesthetic plastic-surgery society. From 1997 to 2006, the number of surgical cosmetic procedures rose 98 percent, and noninvasive treatments jumped 747 percent.
…Marian Salzman, author of more than a dozen books on cultural trends and current affairs, said she predicted 10 years ago in “Next: Trends for the Near Future” that cosmetic procedures would become mainstream.
Affordable and walk-in cosmetic surgeries were among the trends she had forecast, Ms. Salzman said. “I used to say they’re going to be as prevalent as salons,” she recalled, adding that “people used to roll their noses up at me and say it’s obscene, it’s ridiculous.”
The youngest boomers, those born from 1955 to 1964, are driving the trend, she said. “They will do absolutely anything to prolong youthfulness to stay in the game,” she said, “and if that means a filler here or Botox there or hair implant there, then so be it — they’ll do it.”
At the same time, television shows helped make cosmetic procedures appear safe and stylish. By the time the Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil went under the knife in 2005 before millions of viewers on “Remaking Vince Neil” on VH1, cosmetic surgery had truly arrived in mainstream America.
“Virtually every office patient I see talks about the reality TV shows,” says Dr. Paul Wigoda, a plastic surgeon who runs a cosmetic surgery business in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., owns the MeDaySpa in Miami Beach and is medical director of two Sleek MedSpas in Florida. After watching the shows, he says, patients feel more comfortable about the procedures.
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