Massage on-demand app comes to St. Louis - STLtoday.com

[massage]

With just a few taps on a smartphone, you can hitch a ride in a stranger’s car (Uber), enlist a stranger to mow your backyard (GreenPal) or hand over the leash to your beloved pet (Wag!).

In another twist on the gig economy, it soon will be possible to use an app to invite a stranger to come to your St. Louis area home or job, set up a massage table and therapeutically slather your unclothed body with fragrant oils.

Soothe, a service providing on-demand massages in more than 30 cities, is expanding to St. Louis, beginning June 30. The Los Angeles-based company is launching here with 25 therapists, and promises to respond within an hour to requests within a 20-mile radius of the St. Louis city center.

Owner Merlin Kauffman, 30, who founded the company in 2013 just before he graduated from Harvard Business School, admits that just five years ago, the service probably wouldn’t have been viable.

“There was still too much anxiety,” he said speaking by phone from Los Angeles. People were too edgy to trust a web-based company with making such an immediate, intimate connection, he said.

Then an innovative personal car service disrupted everything people took for granted.

“It’s good timing with Uber because this (service) is possible now,” Kauffman said.

He said people have more confidence in technology to bring strangers together safely thanks to networks of digital trails that can track and monitor everyone taking part in the services.

He also follows the highly rated Uber’s seamless payment practices. Customers enter their payment information in advance and the transaction is handled in totality by the app. No money changes hands between the customer and the provider. There’s no credit slip to sign or the annoying calculation of how much to tip (it’s already included).

Soothe clients can request Swedish, deep tissue, sports and pre-natal massage for individuals and couples from 8 a.m. to midnight paying $99 for an hour, up to $169 for two hours. The therapist gets 70 percent of the fee.

Both clients and providers are encouraged to rate each other which encourages both to be on their best behavior. Kauffman said the best therapists are selected for when services are needed, so they’ll be offered the jobs first as they become available. And once clients have used a particular therapist they can request them again when available. But for the first encounter clients can only request the gender of their therapist.

Unlike Uber (which allows both drivers and clients to see each other on a locator map and review mini profiles before mutually agreeing to the trip), you can’t reject or skip a therapist responding to your request on Soothe.

Kauffman said the service won’t appeal to everyone because some people are more selective about their therapist and “I know some people go for a massage to get out of the house and to enjoy a spa experience.”

But some people, like him he admits, often want a massage immediately and can’t be bothered to schedule some future date and time to relax. He also hates the notion of driving in traffic to and from a soothing experience.

No local backlash


Notably, his introduction of the service in dozens of cities has caused very little consternation. That’s much different than the rebukes and controversy that’s followed services like Uber in a number of cities, including St. Louis. There’s a big difference to explain this.

Soothe employs trained and licensed therapists (rather than laypeople) and many of the therapists continue to work at spas and salons while using the app for supplemental income. Recruiters in each community vet and access each therapist before they join the ranks.

“I’m in support of massage in general, so anything that allows more people to receive a massage and to spread the message of how great a massage can feel is great,” said Sara Newberry of Sole Shine Massage in Maplewood. “If something like this can come to town to promote that feeling, then two thumbs up.”

Newberry said that she didn’t feel it would compete with her business because she’s not your run-of-the-mill massage facility. She and her therapists specialize in barefoot massage therapy. There are special tables and apparatus installed in the ceilings to enable therapists to carefully stand on or over clients as needed to perform the unconventional technique. Needless to say, it’s not especially portable, and Newberry said clients find the experience (starting at $85 an hour) is worth the wait.

Some Sole Shine clients schedule weeks in advance but often slots are available within a week. Newberry said the idea of them getting a quick massage fix with an app probably won’t discourage her regular customers from scheduling a follow-up with her.

Anne Childers of Indigo Massage and Wellness said she likes the idea of Soothe in theory, but she has reservations. She worried about the toll it might take on therapists.

Lugging a huge massage table in and out of a car and into a home isn’t easy. Then there’s the labor of the performing the actual massage and then packing up for the next stop.

“I’ve already heard a few people talking about maybe doing it part-time and I’m of two minds on it. I want people to be able to work as much as they want but I’d also prefer that my therapists be happy and able to make enough money with their work here,” Childers said of her studio in Benton Park. She’s expanded to eight rooms and 14 therapists, plus an acupuncturist and two receptionists.

She says that as a local business owner who lives within walking distance of her studio, she thinks her clients know she’s invested in making her business the best and in supporting the community. And she said that’s valuable to many clients.

“Ultimately, I’m not really excited about it, but I’m not super surprised that it’s coming to town,” Childers said of Soothe. “I mean, I like the idea, but we work with clients to develop a wellness mindset so that they make time for massage without just waiting until there’s a crisis and some immediate need.”

And to that end, most studios do offer discount subscription prices. At Indigo, subscription prices are as low as $59 for a monthly hour massage.

However, Kauffman said that he suspects a large portion of his clients don’t regularly get a massage because it’s not convenient for them.

“Massage is one of those things that when you want it, you want it then and there and it doesn’t do as well in a scheduling environment,” he said.

Just as Uber has its Lyft, Soothe has its own massage-hailing competition.

Zeel, a New York-based on-demand massage company that’s a year older than Soothe, plans to launch in St. Louis before the end of the year and hopes to build a network of 150 area therapists, according to a spokesperson.

Let's block ads! (Why?)