A San Diego-based husband and wife team implement a retail concept that combines the best of a day spa and a health club
What the country needs more than anything is a good $15 relaxation experience. That is how Paul Trentalange, DC, and his wife, Cheryl Borrego, DC, see it. Accordingly, the San Diego-based practitioners have opened within their office a modestly-priced, self-care, no-appointment-necessary relaxation center aimed at attracting people heretofore least inclined to visit a chiropractor. Trentalange and Borrego, co-owners of Borrego Chiropractic Group, hope this ancillary will grow into a nationwide chain, with outlets in business parks, airports, and other stress-saturated locations.
Ex-Iron Butterfly performer Howard Reitzes enjoys a relaxing respite on the Sun Massager. The sessions purchased allows him to visit The Relaxation Center whenever he chooses and however long he wishes to stay.
“We’re attempting to mine a vast, untapped market,” says Trentalange. “Think about it: on any given day, close to 1 million Americans are absent from their jobs due in large part to stress. Sixty percent to 90% of all health problems are related to job stress. And every week more than 112 million people take some form of medication for stress-related symptoms. In short, we’re having an epidemic of stress, which we intend to do something about.”
Take a Breather
With their facility-in-a-facility, known as The Relaxation Center™, Trentalange and Borrego seek to provide people access to some of the same amenities found in day spas, minus the expense and schedule hassles. The big draw at the center is a bank of relaxation machines combining state-of-the-art relaxation and massage technology with restful videos, gentle sounds of nature, and revitalizing aromas. “The array of available equipment gives our clientele the ability to lower their heart rate, decrease electrical muscle activity, and improve diaphragmatic breathing, while decreasing brain wave production,” Trentalange explains. “In addition, the self-care therapy techniques then increase flexibility, mobility, and posture, while physically decreasing muscle tension and relaxing the body.
“A favorite among our clients is the robotic massage chair. It uses a patented technology that emulates the same hand motion used by massage professionals. Its internal massaging discs move three-dimensionally through four modalities. There is a compression mode, which consists of alternating strokes that press on paraspinal muscles. There’s a rolling mode—a gentle effect that warms and loosens muscles to prepare the back for a deeper therapeutic massage. Then there’s kneading, which is a deep, circular motion that eases soreness, works out knots, and brings vital nutrients to the spinal area. Finally, it can be set to percussion, a rapid tapping on the back muscles to deepen the level of relaxation,” Trentalange continues.
The Borrego Chiropractic Group: (clockwise from top right) Paul Trentalange, DC, Cheryl Borrego, DC, Abigail Sotelo, CA, office manager, and Jennifer Lane, billing manager. Only one employee needs to be present at The Relaxation Center, thereby decreasing overhead expenses.
“Another popular machine generates a motion pattern in the body to provide the essential benefits of fitness programs without putting stress on the vertebrae joints, heart, lungs, and other areas. It accomplishes this without depleting body energy levels or causing injury. The machine also features a half-enclosure, which elevates body temperature to a point sufficient to stimulate increased circulation, shrink inflamed tissues, and induce detoxification.
“We also have a machine that combines applications of acupuncture, acupressure, jade, and heat to provide a muscle- and tendon-relaxing spinal massage. There are no actual needles in the machine, just various surfaces that mimic acupressure. It also emits far-infrared rays and helium light to help shrink inflamed tissue and improve immune system functioning.
“Clients set themselves up on the machines and can use as many of them as they desire during the course of each session. There also are different session and payment options to help clients get the most value for their money.“
The Relaxation Center makes money not only from the sale of sessions, but also from wellness-oriented products, aromatherapy goods, and other items of a soothing nature.
Trentalange says that labor costs, usually a big expense in conventional day spas, are easily borne. “Because everything here is self-care, you only need one employee present,” says Trentalange. “That person’s job is to accept payment and be available to answer client questions about the machines and about relaxation and stress reduction in general.”
Chiropractic, Italian-Style  Paul Trentalange, DC, and Cheryl Borrego, DC, learned a thing or two about the importance of relaxation during the 4 years they lived and worked in southern Europe. It was in 1988, immediately after they had completed Los Angeles Chiropractic College and gotten married, that Trentalange secured a position as a chiropractor with Italy’s nationalized health system and won assignment to a multidisciplinary hospital in Palermo on the island of Sicily.
Italy represented a tremendous opportunity for a young doctor like Trentalange, who admittedly was reluctant to launch his own private practice fresh out of school. Here, all he had to do was show up for work each morning; everything else—office administration, billing, collections, marketing, scheduling, you name it—was handled for him by the health system. “I didn’t have to hand out a single business card,” he says. “It was unreal. It was like being given a turnkey practice that someone else was fully responsible for running.” Trentalange was one of a mere 90 chiropractors in the entire system, which had a potential pool of 55 million patients in a land where the state paid 90% of the cost of a visit to a chiropractor. As a result, Trentalange logged patient encounters by the hundreds every single weekday. “In the time I was in Italy, I probably saw as many patients as the typical American chiropractor sees in an entire career,” he marvels. Such a phenomenally high-volume caseload was possible only because of the way patients were processed. After arriving at the clinic (the waiting room alone was the size of a small hospital), patients would be x-rayed and then triaged by a general practitioner medical doctor plus a cardiologist and possibly other allopathic specialists. Those complaining of back pain and other musculoskeletal problems for which chiropractic was deemed appropriate would be routed to Trentalange. By that point, the workup on those patients was complete enough that Trentalange needed to spend no more than a few minutes with each one. His role was mainly to assess the patients before passing them along to an appropriate provider, such as a physical therapist, elsewhere in the building. Borrego accompanied Trentalange to Italy. For the first 6 months, she toured and shopped. But that grew old fast. Eager to make use of her chiropractic skills, she asked the government for a position similar to her husband’s in the health system. However, the Italians turned her down—women doctors were not permitted. The reason: government officials feared the physical strain of handling hundreds of patients per day would be more than a woman could endure. Undeterred, Borrego continued to petition for a hospital assignment. It took close to a year of trying, but eventually she convinced the government to relent. And so, Borrego made history by becoming the first woman to be permitted to practice chiropractic in all of Italy. “Everybody loved her and appreciated what she did. It was a wonderful experience for her,” Trentalange says. One of the lessons Trentalange absorbed while in Italy was how to manage stress. “There, you come to work at 9 in the morning, take about a 3-hour lunch break, resume work in the middle of the afternoon and go home at 6 o’clock,” he says. “In August, just about the entire country shuts down for a month.” Habits are tough to break, so, naturally, when Trentalange and Borrego returned to the United States and launched their San Diego, Calif, practice, they pretty much retained their Italian office hours. They chose San Diego for its Mediterranean climate and landscapes, which reminded them of Italy. Having four siblings already living in Southern California, Trentalange, a native of Connecticut, was well-acquainted with San Diego by the time he and Denver-bred Borrego settled there. CP |
Autumnal Epiphany
It was in the autumn of 2001 that Trentalange hit on the idea of The Relaxation Center after considering, and rejecting, a string of other possible add-ons to enhance practice revenues. Step one in making the center a reality was to find a home for it. As it so happened, the business next door to Borrego Chiropractic had decided to move out, even though about a year remained on its lease. Trentalange asked the owners if they would be willing to sublease the space they were vacating. They said yes and Trentalange found himself in possession of a single 1,500-square-foot room, the perfect layout for accomplishing what he envisioned. “Part of the beauty of The Relaxation Center concept was that there would be no build-out required,” he says. “Without this, my start-up costs would be held way down.”
Trentalange was unable to secure a renewal of that sublease after the 12 months ended, which forced him to move the by-then prospering center into Borrego Chiropractic. “To fit it in, I had to significantly rearrange the office,” he says. “The Relaxation Center fills 800 square feet—about half the total space we have.”
Clients have not complained about the change. However, Trentalange and Borrego no longer have room to use The Relaxation Center during off-hours for the staging of parties and special events put on by local businesses and organizations in need of a convenient venue. “I liked having the groups come in with their events because it increased our exposure,” Trentalange says. “We sold a lot of sessions that way.”
Positioning is critical with a venture like The Relaxation Center. Notably, if consumers see it as a day spa, they are less inclined to visit often since day spa utilization connotes several hours from one’s schedule, Trentalange reveals. The ideal is for the public to see The Relaxation Center as akin to a fitness club. In that light, the inclination is to use it frequently, he says.
Trentalange discusses a patient’s treatment and billing expenses with office manager Sotelo.
“The fitness-club experience is one where users casually drop in, do their thing and are on their way back out the door again within 30 minutes or so,” says Trentalange. “Some people go to the fitness club two and three times a week. We’re getting some of that same kind of utilization here. It’s an example of maximum benefits during a minimal time-duration.”
Since The Relaxation Center does not offer actual clinical services, Trentalange and Borrego do not refer their chiropractic patients to it as an insurance-reimbursed adjunct therapy. Instead, they recommend it as simply a great place to unwind and feel refreshed. Quite a few of their patients have taken them up on that suggestion. Others have done so of their own volition, strictly out of curiosity, what with The Relaxation Center right there in the Borrego Chiropractic office and impossible to ignore.
The flip side is that The Relaxation Center serves as a powerful portal through which nonpatients receive an introduction to Borrego Chiropractic. For the most part, these are turning out to be individuals who otherwise would never consider visiting a chiropractic office, Trentalange explains. Indeed, the prime demographic targets of The Relaxation Center are the busy Baby Boomers who desire an indulgent spa experience but who lack the finances and time to do so on a regular basis.
“The individual who works on your car, the office worker who sits behind a computer all day, they are 80% of the population chiropractors are not treating,” Trentalange points out. “You know why we’re not treating them? Because we haven’t listened to them. We haven’t catered to their preferences.”
A large portion of this untapped market includes men. According to Trentalange, the preferences of those men include a desire to avoid using health services where they will be asked to take off their clothes and pay a small fortune in fees for that privilege. Currently, men account for 40% of The Relaxation Center’s client mix. Not bad, Trentalange insists. More men will come, he says, as time passes and the market becomes better acquainted with the the value and convenience of the facility’s offerings. To abet manly appeal, Trentalange studiously avoided endowing The Relaxation Center with too much of what he calls “The Zen-timidation.”
“I didn’t want to discourage males from coming here, so I low-keyed the more feminine, New Age elements that one commonly finds in day spas,” he says.
Relax, Just Do It
However, when it came to marketing The Relaxation Center, Trentalange pulled out all the stops. He even went so far as to hire a professional marketing company to produce handsome brochures, media kits, and a CD-ROM mini-disc to tell the story of the facility in the most enticing manner possible. It’s all been quite effective.
“We held an open house and sent out postcard invitations to the press and other opinion leaders,” he recalls. “A few hundred guests showed up; we sold $4,000 worth of sessions that night alone. The local newspaper covered the event, which led to one of the television stations doing a live report on its morning show.”
This was followed by a news segment on a second channel plus radio time. It amounted to a publicity bonanza and resulted in a slew of inquiries from employers, community organizations, and individual consumers. No complaint from Trentalange there: he welcomes opportunities to speak to corporate executives about The Relaxation Center and pass along the message that they ought to consider adding something similar to their own offices, plants, and other busy worksites. “I try to get them to understand that having a Relaxation Center onsite can improve productivity, reduce absenteeism, and increase morale,” he says.
With that in mind, Trentalange recently joined forces with several wellness industry movers-and-shakers to form a company called Just Relax LLC, which will be licensing these centers in locations across the country. The fledgling enterprise already has its first franchisee—a chiropractor in another part of San Diego.
“I want Just Relax to do for relaxation and stress-reduction/stress-management what fitness centers did for exercise 20 years ago,” Trentalange says. “The trend in the health care industry is toward preventative medicine, and the increasing call for stress reduction to promote wellness has created a marketing void that these relaxation centers will fill. This unique approach to relaxation and stress-management will provide a much sought-after commodity in a hectic, fast-paced world. I’m confident it will prove successful.”
Rich Smith is a contributing writer for Chiropractic Products.
Trentalange and Borrego can be reached at: 619-584-0322, or via email: relaxation_center@hotmail.com.
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