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Sensing a need for more ease and comfort for massage customers, a young entrepreneur decided to be first in what many people now recognize as a convenient way to get pampered: the home service spa.
Gahum Garcia, a massage enthusiast, put up Dial A Spa in 2005 with four other business partners to offer massage services to clients in the comfort of their homes where they can just sleep and relax afterwards without having to get up and travel back home.
With an initial investment of P400,000, Garcia and his partners started by advertising in the local dailies for therapists, although they obtained most of their therapists from referrals by friends.
?We started with only 11 therapists back then, with only two drivers to bring our therapists to and from the customers? houses.?
Garcia admitted there were challenges while they were first starting.
?When we put up the business, we never thought of having to face these challenges, although we managed to get by them eventually,? he said.
One of these challenges was the negative impression people had of home service.
?As Cebuanos naa man jud tay mga lahi nga pagtuo like sa home service naa jud nang mga binuang like ?extra services?? (we have this impression that in home service, there are always hanky panky such as ?extra services?),? he said.
He said that being the first in the industry to offer home service, they had to face the challenge by themselves.
He was proud to say that they were the ones who corrected this wrong notion.
?We were the ones who changed the whole stigma,? he said.
After a year of operations, they noticed more spas opening and providing the same home service, which he admits affected their business.
?When these companies opened, some of our clients did go to them, but they always come back to us because, according to them, we have better quality service,? Garcia said.
From only 11 therapists, they expanded to 15 with four motorcycles and two multicabs as service vehicles to bring their therapists to and from every customer.
Garcia said they deal with two types of clients and they have to satisfy them.
?Our internal clients are our therapists. We make sure that they have all they need including a decent place to stay while waiting for our customers to call,? he said.
Garcia said they even have videoke rooms in their office so their therapists won?t be bored while waiting for the customers.
They also bring them home after work around 2 a.m. Their operation starts at 2 p.m. and ends at 1 a.m.
?We give them commissions on top of the tip that they receive from the customers, subsidize their food and give them allowances, including travel allowance,? he said.
Dial A Spa also invests a lot in training.
?We do in-house training for new therapists, which we get through referrals; most of them are not experienced therapists, and we train them for three months with allowances,? he said.
Most therapists of Dial A Spa are mothers who had never worked before, said Garcia.
?We don't mind whether you finish a degree or not as long as you're trainable and you have a good attitude,? he said.
Garcia emphasized that they don't pirate therapists.
?We don't do that because for us, if you pirate people, you don't have control of the corporate culture you would like to inculcate to them; and I see people who allow themselves to be pirated as greedy and who only think of themselves. Bintahoso ba. So I don't like pirating, and I don't like people who agree to be pirated,? he said.
After four years of operation and hard work on research and development, Garcia said that they have finally given Dial A Spa a formal structure.
?Everything has its manual of operations already from human resource to massage manuals, and how our therapists should go about the whole massage session,? Garcia said.
Having institutionalized everything, Garcia said that they get more repeat customers as their therapists are said to be very consistent with their service and how they do the massage.
?Eighty percent of our clients are repeat customers and they are mostly from the A and B class in gated communities like Maria Luisa (Estate Park),? he said.
The increased competition has also proven very challenging for them. Now they are focusing on distinguishing themselves from these other companies.
?We were the first and as much as possible we want to step out again, lead and innovate in our services,? Garcia said.
They will be launching new product lines within the week and are currently negotiating for a satellite office in Mandaue City so that they can be nearer to some areas that they are servicing.
?Our office is located at Happy Valley and it's sometimes difficult to go to other areas from that location,? he said.
New offerings include an organic mix to their services like using organic oils as well as introducing the Hot Pack service in which a therapist will lay a hot pack on the back of the customer before starting the massage.
Dial A Spa offers competitive and value-for-money rates starting at P250 for basic massage and services to P350.
?We also add P50 charge if the location is very far like Consolacion and Lapu-Lapu,? he said.
Garcia also launched Cebu Home Service Massage in 2007, which according to him is more into the basic massage services only.
?For every service we only charge P180,? he said.
The number of customers daily has also increased from only a handful in 2005 to around 60 to 70 customers daily.
Increasing the number of therapists is not yet an urgent concern.
Garcia said he was wary of having so many therapists. Some might have to go home empty-handed since they didn?t get a customer on particular day, he added
?For us, it's still CSR [corporate social responsibility] for our employees. We'd rather turn down some customers and sacrifice more profit than having some of our therapists go home with nothing,? he said.
