Saving face: Day spas provide multiple services to keep clients looking and feeling good Saving face: Day spas provide multiple services to keep clients looking and feeling good (January 23, 2002)

By Jane Knoerle

Almanac Staff Writer

Your skin is dry. Your hair is frizzy. You're exhausted from holiday excess. Why not treat yourself to a day, even an hour, of pampering at a day spa?

Day spas, as opposed to expensive weeklong sojourns at the Golden Door or La Costa, have gained widespread popularity within the last few years and are popping up all over America.

Menlo Park joins the trend with two new day spas: The Greenhouse Spa, which opened January 9 at 1158 Chestnut St. (former location of First Interstate Bank), and Inspiration Day Spa and Salon, which opened last fall in the Sharon Heights shopping center.

While the two spas differ in size, there are certain constants. Both offer facials, body massage, pedicures, manicures, body wraps, waxing, make-up application, and hair care.

Both spas are pleasing to the eye. Colors are subdued. Fresh flowers, bowls of fruit, plates of goodies to nibble, pitchers of water with slices of cucumber and lemon, are all part of the presentation. Count on lit candles, New Age music, and a splashing fountain to put you in a relaxing mood.

The Greenhouse Spa

The Greenhouse Spa is the first Northern California day spa for Steiner Leisure Limited, which operates 110 spas at sea and 80 resort and day spas around the world.

The Menlo Park spa is part of a chain of day spas in 18 locations throughout the United States, seven in Southern California.

During its January 9 open house, Celeste Dunn of San Diego, president of Steiner Limited Day Spa Group, was on hand to greet clients, who were offered complimentary neck and shoulders massages and paraffin hand treatments, along with herbal tea and cookies.

An attractive blonde, who is a walking advertisement for the wonders of spa treatments, Ms. Dunn was a high-tech business executive in Silicon Valley before founding C. Spa Salon in 1997.

A former vice president of the consumer division of Compaq Computer Corp., she has held executive level positions at Slate Corp., Go Corp., Wyse Technologies and Xerox Inc.

Traveling the world on business, and a frequent patron of hotel spas, Ms. Dunn saw a chance to combine her high-tech experience with her "personal passion for day spas to create a new spa experience for men and women."

Her first spa, located in La Jolla, was financed by her with the help of friends and family.

Ms. Dunn says Mark Kvamme of Atherton was her first outside investor. "He saw the concept had potential to go global," she says.

Under her leadership, C. Spa grew to six spas before it was acquired by Steiner in July 2001. She continues as president of Steiner's Day Spa Group and serves on the board of the larger company. The spas opened since the Steiner acquisition are known as Greenhouse Spas.

"I run all the land-based spas," says Ms. Dunn, who adds that many customers have visited the company's spas on cruise ships. The spas also carry the same beauty products (Elemis and La Therapie) that clients have purchased on shipboard.

Greenhouse Spa offers packages, such as the Spa Day of Beauty, which includes a choice of "nurturing face treatments," lunch, massage, manicure and pedicure, shampoo, blow-dry hair styling, and a make-up "makeover" for $315 for seven hours.

Some of the treatments described in its brochure, such as the "coconut rub and milk ritual wrap" or the "exotic lime and ginger salt glow exfoliation," sound as if they should be sipped instead of applied.

Greenhouse Spa offers a paraffin hand treatment for first-time women customers and a hot-towel facial wrap for men. Each client also receives a complimentary head, neck and shoulder massage before any service. Women can also request a complimentary make-up touch up.

Facial treatments range from a 20-minute herbal cleansing ($20) to a "Japanese silk booster facial" (one hour, 15 minutes for $85). There are eight varieties of massage. The briefest is the back massage (45 minutes for $60), the most elaborate the "Shirodhara massage" (one hour, 15 minutes for $175).

Greenhouse Spa has 5,000 square feet of space, five dry treatment rooms, one wet room, two pedicure stations, two manicure stations, five hair stations, and two make-up stations.

Inspiration Day Spa

Located in the Sharon Heights shopping center, Inspiration Day Spa opened last fall on the site of the former Sharon Heights Beauty Salon. Owner Mahin Shafai has remodeled the shop to include four treatment rooms for massage, facials, lash or brow tints, and waxing. There is also a hair salon and manicure and pedicure station.

Mrs. Shafai, a native of Iran, came to this country in 1978, after living in England. She and her husband, a physician, operated a skin and geriatric clinic in Chicago for 16 years before moving to California in 1996. She worked in skin care at La Belle Day Spa and Salon for two and a half years before opening her own spa.

The spa offers a basic facial for $45; a deep-cleansing facial for $65. Then there is the 90-minute signature facial, "a blissful experience from head to toe," for $95. You can be wrapped in sheets steamed in lavender and oils for $75 or opt for "salt glow and honey butter" exfoliation for $65. Eight kinds of massage, range from shiatsu ($65) to "heated desert stone massage ($85).

The day spa seems to be thriving, even in a slumping economy, as a place where frazzled clients can relax their minds and indulge their bodies, if only for an hour or two.

Information: The Greenhouse Spa, 325-0700. Inspiration Day Spa, 854-5885.