Massage Envy The Multimillion Dollar Massage Franchise

Virtual Entrepreneur:

David and Anne Glover, 48 and 46, respectively, recently opened their 4th Massage Envy establishment in Houston.

Beginnings: The Glovers met when they were both working at the accounting firm Arthur Andersen in the early 1980s. They fell in love, got married, had 2 children and assumed the traditional roles of married life. David eventually became part owner of a commercial real estate investment firm, while Anne was the primary caregiver for their children. She calls herself ‘the volunteer champion of the world - school, community, church, junior league. I enjoyed orchestrating high-level events. It was good practice for organizing multiple franchises.’

When David retired from his business in his 40s, he didn’t want to retire for good, so he and Anne looked into purchasing a franchise. ‘We could have gone into real estate, but the prices were so outrageous,’ says David, ‘and we wanted to have a business that had cash flow right away - something that was a quick startup.’

Next Steps: ‘We went through business brokers,’ says Anne, ‘and looked at a lot of franchises, some that were brand new and others that were kind of scary.’ In their case, scary did not necessarily mean bad. Anne had been interested in a sandwich franchise, but once she saw all the food inventory and thought about having teenage employees, she changed her mind. The couple considered a gym franchise but figured it would be clobbered by bigger gym and fitness center franchises, and then they considered a tutoring center. ‘But we would have gone head-to-head with [competing] learning centers,’ Anne points out. ‘I kept thinking, Where is the niche?’

They had similar feelings about a hair salon franchise they were considering. ‘It wasn’t a new business concept or model,’ says David. ‘Basically, people are already getting their hair cut somewhere.’

Then they found out about Massage Envy, a massage clinic that operates similar to a gym - customers pay a monthly membership fee and make regular appointments or impromptu ones, usually getting massages the same day they request them, which is a rare occurrence in the industry. Read on.