The New Jersey town Montclair is only 20 miles from Manhattan, but nurse practitioner, certified aesthetic nurse specialist and SkinSplendid founder Christine Adams has observed a major schism between the clients she sees in her midtown Manhattan office versus those frequenting her Montclair practice.
“The patients in New York are much more adventurous and much more into trends. They’ll come in and want the fox eye,” she says. “Montclair is much more conservative. Older women are starting older, which is always very difficult because it’s hard to have someone in their late 40s, early 50s start Botox now. They’re picky, they haven’t done anything to their face in 50 years. Then, I have a twentysomething in New York that’s like, ‘Let’s do everything.’”
Adams is invested in both groups. She just opened a 1,500-square-foot, three-treatment room med-spa in Montclair’s downtown, a huge upgrade from a previous 600-square-foot space in the affluent suburb. Adams also provides services in aesthetic professional co-working space Suites By Nylo in Herald Square. Adams and her team are available in Manhattan on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and Montclair the rest of the week.
Three-year-old SkinSplendid offers an extensive menu of aesthetic services, including injectables and fillers, collagen stimulators Sculptra and Radiesse, CO2 laser, HydraFacial, microneedling and hair loss treatments. Combination treatments are a big driver. For example, a $500 service SkinSplendid calls Bright Eyes HydraFacial features Botox around the eyes prior to a HydraFacial.
“We combine a lot of injectables and facial treatments. I always wanted to incorporate both because people are either an injector or an aesthetician. I like both. I went to school for nursing. I worked in the ICU and did wound care and skin treatments on patients that had different diseases,” says Adams. “I wanted to incorporate that into my aesthetic practice. It’s one of my pet peeves when I see people getting lip injections or Botox and they have terrible skin. Let’s fix the skin first.”
While the clientele at each location is distinct, Adams’ philosophy is steadfast. She’s adamant about patient safety and holistic heath. “We’re not a quick-fix med-spa,” she says. “We focus on customer service and luxury concierge medical treatments. This is what makes our practice unique and why we stand out from other med-spas. We focus on a long-term skincare health plan with our patients. We take the time to look at every patient and decide what works best for them at one, three, five, 10 years. We want them to be confident that they can count on us for the long term.”
The long-term approach is consistent with SkinSplendid’s suburban clientele’s approach to aesthetics. Adams says the Montclair customers are looking for a med-spa they can call home. Although they take a comparatively conservative approach to enhancements, they also spend more money at SkinSplendid than their Manhattan counterparts and are less price conscious. The med-spa has built its Montclair clientele through word of mouth from 45 to 400-plus people in a year.
“People in Montclair rarely ask me, ‘How much is this going to cost?’ In New York, they’re always trying to wheel and deal, ‘How much is a syringe? I could get it for $600.’ I’m like, ‘Then go there,'” relays Adams. “In Montclair, they’re looking for more of a long-term person that they can go to. They don’t want to jump around and go to get the cheapest lip filler. They want someone they know will take care of their face…They want to look good, but they don’t want people to know that they’re getting anything done.”
Last summer, SkinSplendid rolled out a membership program to reward its loyal clients. Dubbed Look Locker, members put $200 into their account every month to be used toward services and products. SkinSplendid sells its own line of clinical skincare products, and products from ZO Skin Health and SkinCeuticals.
With Look Locker, members receive a 15% discount on services and a 20% discount on products, an annual complimentary birthday Hydrafacial treatment at the Montclair location, a $200 credit in their account after every 12 months of membership along with other specials and event invitations. More than 20% of SkinSplendid’s clients are in the Look Locker program. Adams says, “I have a consistent revenue stream, and they have the advantage of a discount.”
Beyond the new Montclair digs, Adams is focused on expanding her in-house product line beyond the current three-product offering, which she hopes to debut this spring. Treatment-wise, Adams believes biostimulators will be huge in 2023. Biostimulators include injectable products like Sculptra and Radiesse, as well as topically-applied products like exosomes that help boost natural collagen. She also sees a return to the “basics” in aesthetics this year.
She says, “We’ve seen a lot of crazy things in aesthetics with the fox eye and threads. Now that we’ve done them a lot, we’re seeing complications. I think providers are getting away from some of these riskier treatments because they’re finding out they’re either not lasting as long as they thought or they’re having complications from them.
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