H.E.R Spa is located in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. Opened in February 2022, it operated during evenings from a suite for much of its first year, and currently runs as a mobile spa. H.E.R Spa has been offering Relax VR since its inception, which continues to generate revenue and provide value to H.E.R Spa’s customers. After initially starting on the rental plan, then seeing how useful Relax VR was for clients, H.E.R Spa decided to purchase Relax VR outright.

H.E.R Spa is owned and operated by Britney Hill, a qualified mental health professional who works full time as a counsellor at a hospital.

Starting Out

When Britney Hill decided she was going to open her own spa, she knew she wanted to do something different. She also wanted to do something that would accommodate client needs at a time when COVID-19 was still very much present in the community, and above all she wanted programs that would help people relax.

After doing a lot of research on different programs and treatments, she decided upon three types of treatment:

• Virtual reality relaxation
• Salt therapy
• Mobile massage chair

This combination would allow her to offer fully touch-less and mobile services which would cater to clients’ convenience and comfort. 

Choosing the Right Equipment

Britney remembers trying VR-like goggles at game arcades, but she hadn’t tried more recent virtual reality headsets. 

When she came upon Relax VR’s website, she really liked that it focused on meditation and relaxation, and was just a single application. Other companies she’d looked at focused on a variety of different applications, not just relaxation. She also felt a subtle connection with the Relax VR logo as H.E.R Spa also has a butterfly in its logo. 

She decided to go ahead and try Relax VR with its rental plan.

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Implementation

Britney designed her offerings for convenience, so clients could take advantage of her services within a 30 min lunch break. 

In order to achieve this, she created the following offerings on her menu:

• The H.E.R Ultimate Experience/Multi Sensory Treatment ($49.95) (25 min)
  This complete range of services is like nothing you’ve experienced before. Receive 15 minutes of VR meditation paired with 15 minutes of chair massage plus 10 minute salt therapy services. This experience will leave you feeling healed, energized, rested and renewed! Go head treat your senses, you deserve it!
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• The H.E.R 15 Minute VR Relaxation Session ($29.95) (15 min)
  Only have 15 minutes to spare or just curious about what this H.E.R Spa is all about? Try out The H.E.R 15 Minute! It’s our most personalized VR session where you can choose how you want to spend your 15 minute break. Choose to pair a 10 minute VR deep meditation session with a 5 minute VR breath awareness exercise or just 15 minutes of Visual deep meditation. This 15 minute virtual reality session will leave you feeling Healed, Energized, and Rejuvenated! *This service includes Aromatherapy

Clients could also book longer or shorter packages with different combinations or add ons, but this was the core of her offering.

In addition to offering services to individuals, Britney also offered group bookings and spa parties.  She had an area where guests would get together, and then would take 2 guests into another room, where one would do the VR + massage chair and the other would do salt therapy. This way, she was able to expose a lot of her clients to virtual reality, allowing them to also share their experiences amongst each other.

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Marketing

Britney used multiple channels to promote her services, including Yelp, Instagram, Facebook, Next Door, Groupon, email, and word of mouth. 

One of the things she found most effective was posting pictures and videos of a client with Relax VR on, so potential clients could understand what virtual reality was. She broke it down in multiple pictures, including pictures of:

• The VR headset
• Locations menu
• The client looking through the menu
• The client looking through the VR headset and smiling
• The essential oils that go with the experience

She posted these pictures on Instagram, and also as a video and story.

Apart from Instagram, Britney also found word-of-mouth to be very effective. She does a lot of networking, gives out business cards, and told people about the services who she knew would tell other people. 

Britney also really liked the marketing materials provided by Relax VR, which she used on her initial website. 

Results

“Relax VR has been an excellent way for my new and returning clients to de-stress. They come in fatigued and burnt-out and leave feeling refreshed and restored! At H.E.R Spa, I pair the Relax VR with massage chair and watch the magic happen. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing that huge smile on their faces when they leave thanks to Relax VR!” -- Britney Hill

Over her launch weekend in February 2022, H.E.R Spa brought in $1,000 in two days, which impressed Britney. This included revenue from all her treatments - Relax VR, salt therapy and massage chair. Clients loved it.

Since then, Britney has found group bookings such as spa parties have brought in the most amount of revenue. Ninety percent of her clients are repeat clients, and a lot of them were introduced to H.E.R Spa through a group booking. 

Britney says feedback from her clients is that they like the whole service together. They like that it’s different, something they don’t get anywhere else. A lot of people also like the scent, the essential oils. They like the totality of the experience.  

After 12 months of renting Relax VR and seeing the benefit it provided to her clients, Britney decided to purchase the equipment outright.