The story of Vita Skin Spa

 The story of the last 17 years...

I thought it was about time to tell the story of Vita. Some of you have heard bits of this but clients ask me all the time, how long have you been here, so here is what happened.

 

When I was 20, I trained as a sports massage therapist. The plan was never really to be a business woman but to do something that I loved and to do it well. I had previously been a dancer in London and found sports massage, after it helped my back problems. I realised I had a love for it, so swapped my dancing career for one that could help people and I was so passionate about it.

 

I started with a tiny treatment room above a hairdressers in town. Imagine a treatment couch and then imagine just enough room to walk around the couch with space for a small desk in one corner-this was how small my room was! But it cost me just £200 a month to rent, which was where I needed to begin as I was starting with no clients and had to build up. I quickly found some regular clients, some of whom still come to me now for massage and alongside my treatments, I worked as a waitress to fill my week.

 

After a year here, I decided to move. I had trained to be a Pilates teacher so needed some space for this and wanted a larger treatment room. On a search for something that I liked, I came across the ground floor of our current building at St Ann Street. So at age 21, in 2005, with £8,000 of my own savings and no business loans, I started the business. Apart from the big room on the right as you come in to the spa, the rest of the ground floor was one open space that had previously been an office. You will know from coming in to the spa now, we have built a lot of walls! Carpets were green and orange and the walls were blue!

 

The room on the left became a treatment room that I rented to other therapists, while the room on the right, became my treatment room. It’s still my favourite room in the spa as I’ve been treating in it for 17 years. It’s changed a lot now though! The space at the back was a Pilates studio with floor to ceiling mirrors - unrecognisable now as our reception, a treatment room and our sauna room.

 

So here it began, but was initially named The Well Body Centre and was more complimentary therapy focused. I then employed a beauty therapist and created Vita Skin Spa within one of the treatment rooms. Our treatment menu was on a postcard with a tiny list of treatments (it is now a 34 page brochure!). We didn’t offer waxing, which is now one of our busiest treatments and our offering was very modest. We had so many requests for double treatments that it eventually led us to wanting some double rooms. Our first brands were Dermalogica and OPI and we still use both of these today. Even this is scary when you start out as you have to buy so much stock, you wonder how you will ever use it! …You do use it.

 

Our turnover was tiny and I needed the support of my wonderful partner to be able to make ends meet. During this time I got married to Julian and we had our son Zachary.


The upstairs of our building had already been a large flat. I was desperate to have it but so scared that we wouldn’t get busy enough to fill the space. 11 years ago, I took the leap of faith. The lease happened to become available a couple of weeks after I had my daughter! Not great timing but we had to take up the offer and took over the rest of the building in January 2012. So, Amelia in tow, we refurbished the whole space and opened the upstairs in March 2012. We now had a room big enough to become a double treatment room and a gorgeous large open space, which became our relaxation room.

(At the top of the stairs. Used to be a bathroom and is now a little seating area)

(Vita’s bathroom - before we got our hands on it!)

(Our relaxation room in progress- With a little help from Zachary)

 

That year in the June, Julian took voluntary redundancy from his job as a sales director of 17 years and came to run the business with me. He is the king of processes. Forms were put in place, the business started to run like clockwork and I could spend time on the creative side and the marketing, which I love.

 

We took on a couple more therapists and it continued to grow. I read an article that year in an industry magazine about a salon that had 9 therapists. Wow, I thought, how does someone ever grow a salon that big? How would we ever get there?

 

Well, here we are, with a team of 25! 

 

In 2013 we went about refurbishing the downstairs to become part of the spa. Every bit of work that has been done to this building has been done by Julian, my wonderful Dad and myself. With a little painting help from some of our staff. For 9 months, we went about transforming the downstairs during the hours the spa was closed. Our routine was, put our children to bed, my beautiful Mum would come round and sit with them. Back to work at 8pm once the spa closed upstairs and work until the early hours of the morning. Some mornings we would be sitting on the stairs at 4 or 5am drinking tea and coffee trying to stay awake! My Dad and Jules put up walls, plumbed in a shower, laid new floors, new lighting. I painted and painted and painted. I painted for so many hours, I must now be a master painter. Not just walls - furniture, mirrors, chandeliers, chairs, frames - I painted everything. My Dad, by the way, held down a full time job as well as these crazy late nights! I am extremely lucky for my parents support. I couldn’t have built my business without them. We did the refurb in two stages so our reception actually became a treatment room at one stage (while the reception stayed upstairs), as the front part of the downstairs wasn’t finished so was closed off. My Dad often laughs when he sees that room, that I actually made him create a treatment room for just 6 months, to then knock down the wall he had built to create my reception. This was all in the plan, I wasn’t going crazy. We were so busy that we needed the room temporarily. 

(What is now our reception..was temporarily a treatment room for 6 months)

We knocked through the wall to join the, once separate buildings, into one. Bare in mind this messy work was being done at night and before we could leave to sleep we had to clean the whole place as clients were coming to the spa upstairs the next day.

(Knocking through to join 2 buildings into 1)

 

We worked weekends and didn’t leave. Takeaways were very normal. The front of the ground floor was my favourite. Two days of peeling off wallpaper-7 layers if my memory serves me correctly. Down to the plaster and we found some incredible finds in what is now our ground floor double room. The oldest part of the building. On the wall, a past owner of this building had written his name and 1847. Wow, what a find! An old safe in the wall from the 1800s had been covered by layer upon layer of wallpaper. 

More painting, more new flooring. We had two weekends in a row where we thought we were going to finish so we worked through Saturday, Saturday night into Sunday and all day Sunday. Hoping to finish and not have to return the following weekend. That night, I was painting the door to one of the treatment rooms and I was so tired of painting, I was crying, wishing the painting to end! By the way, it never ends…I paint the whole spa once a year and our wax rooms every 2 months! See…master painter!

 

I love the creativity of the business and love bringing out our in house designed treatments. We designed our signature rituals a few years back and now design new seasonal specials every two months. We took on the wonderful Natural Spa Factory products from Bath. Gorgeous natural products and such a good brand to work with as they let you use their products to create your own bespoke treatments which many other brands don’t allow you to do. This is how we can be different. 

 

In 2015 we entered our first big awards,The English Hair and Beauty Awards. We had already been named a Wahanda Top rated spa two years in a row, had received salon of the year from Bioslimming and had been named (to our surprise) as one of the Daily Mails 5 super salons in 2014. 

 

So, we decided to enter a big one. It had been a tough year for me as my Mum was ill and I lost her to cancer just 10 days before the awards ceremony in Manchester. The team had all bought new dresses for the occasion, we had our minibus booked. I wanted to stay at home in my bed but I knew I had to muster up the courage to go, so I did. Little did I know, we were to win Spa of the Year South West at those awards! An amazing night for the whole team. Mum was looking down. We’ve now won 36 awards since 2015!

 

In 2015 we became a Cancer Aware Spa. Training the whole team with Wellness for Cancer. We can now offer spa treatments during all stages of cancer. A very proud achievement for me.

In 2016 we also won the business supporting charity award for the work we have done for the hospice. You may know that we have been raising money for them since I lost mum in 2015.  We even had the whole team do a Tough Mudder!

 

In 2020, our Winchester spa was born. We saw the building in October 2019 and got the keys on the 1st Feb 2020. 

 

 

Little did we know that during our 7 week refurb, Covid would arrive! Our opening day was the 19th March and on the 20th, Boris said all spas must close the following morning, so after our launch party (that wasn’t a party because no one was allowed to go to events but we celebrated with our wonderful team), we then had 1 day of trading before 4 months of lockdown. 

 

Of the two and a half years Winchester has been open, we’ve been closed for ten months of it. But, we are so proud of what we have grown there is such a short time. We already have some amazing, loyal clients and we are growing every month. We are number 1 on Tripadvisor, have so many 5 star reviews and our team is still growing.

 

Both spas have managed to survive through Covid, thanks to our amazing clients who supported us all the way through and we are so grateful for each and every person who visits us.

 

So now you know…If you have been coming to us for years or you are new to Vita, you know how we got to where we are today. 17 years on from when I very first started.

Thanks for reading

Love Nikki xx