HOTSEAT
Nicolas Ronco
With dedicated nap pods, easy to understand treatment menus and a price per minute, YeloSpa is hoping to help stressed out city dwellers bring a bit of sanity into their lives. Founder Nicolas Ronco speaks to Magali Robathan
Tell me about your career history I studied corporate fi nance at the Université Paris Dauphine in France. I then went to the University of New York to complete my MBA as part of an exchange programme. After gradu- ating, I worked for Time Warner for 10 years as a marketing executive, before moving to France in 1999 to take up the position of general managers of several divisions of music software provider MakeMusic. In 2004, I left to start working on the YeloSpa concept.
How was the idea for YeloSpa born? The idea was born because I was per- suaded by a customer – myself! When I worked for MakeMusic, I travelled a lot. When you’re under pressure and you’re away from home, you want to fi nd a space where you can recharge your batteries quickly. A spa seems like the most natural option, but in reality I found the whole spa process in the US and Europe very frustrating. You often have to book treatments a long time in advance, the quality can be hit and miss, it’s very expensive and – as a man – I often felt out of place in an environment that felt quite female-orientated. I travelled a lot to Asia and I noticed that a many the issues I was having were really well mitigated there – the access to spas was much easier, the prices were more reasonable and the consistency of service was good. An idea popped into my head: why
can’t we create a brand in the US that would address the resistance people have to spas? Seventy fi ve per cent of
40
Nicolas Ronco worked for Time Warner and MakeMusic before launching YeloSpa
US consumers don’t go to spas. Why not? The four main objections people have to going to spas are that it’s too expensive, people aren’t sure how effective the treatments are, spas can be intimidating and men often feel as though it’s a ‘woman thing’.
How did you come up with the concept? We started by creating a place where the offer and the booking process were very easy. We eliminated the
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traditional spa menu, which can be very confusing and overwhelming, and replaced it with three categories – massage, skincare and sleep. When customers book, they just choose from those three categories, which makes it very easy to understand. To combat the worries people have about the expense of visiting a spa, we decided to establish a price per minute. This lets people decide how much time they want to give themselves and allows them to control their budget. We charge a straight price per minute – $2.4 per minute for a massage, $2.5 for skincare and $1 for sleep. People can then decide they want 30 minutes of massage and 20 minutes of nap, for example. It’s super easy, and takes less than a minute to book online. Spas can be quite infl exible – people might book a Balinese ritual a week before the treatment, but when it gets to the day they realise they actually need a deep tissue massage because they’ve been running and have muscle ache, but it’s too late to change. At YeloSpa, all of our massage thera- pists are trained in all disciplines. Customers book 30 minutes of massage and 20 minutes of nap, for example. When they come in they’ll sit down with a therapist who will ask how they are and what issues they want to address, and will advise on the best type of massage on the day.
Where did you get the idea to off er naps? I grew up in Tunisia in the 1970s, when we didn’t have air conditioning, so people had to take naps because it was impossible to focus during the
ISSUE 3 2014 © cybertrek 2014
ThE DiSrUpToRs
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