ECONOMY LOOKING UP: Massage Envy Prepares to Open Second Studio

From left, Britanny Villanueva, Yvette Bowers, Jennifer Blaz and Sara Guajardo are ready to help you find just the right massage or facial to help brighten your day.

Don’t look now, but Jennifer Blaz, owner of the Massage Envy in La Verne, has signed a lease and is ready to start the build-out for a new Massage Envy in the Glendora Marketplace.

She has become a one-woman tour de force, who is singlehandedly trying to end the current economic recession. At her La Verne massage studio, she now employs 50 people, making her one of La Verne’s biggest employers.

How has she done it since opening in the fall of 2008?

“I believe it’s the big three: It’s convenience, affordability and professionalism,” she said. “We always have enough therapists here to accommodate appointments and walk-ins. We hold them to a very high standard.”

Blaz also has a keen managerial mind, much needed to schedule and satisfy the approximately 1,500 clients who walk through the La Verne’s spa’s door each month. She has also developed a trained eye for hiring the right kinds of therapists and aestheticians.

We hire only employees who are going to fit with the culture and the skills we’re looking for,” Jennifer added.

Moreover, Blaz’s business also has benefited from a growing national awareness of the many benefits that massage can provide, including relieving stress and pain and improving wellness. Her clients range from athletes seeking relief for sore muscles to those proactively working through a host of medical conditions, such as migraines, arthritis and fibromyalgia.

With more than 800 studios nationwide, Massage Envy has made massage mainstream.

While Massage Envy has a strong national brand, Blaz enhances it at the local level, partnering with local businesses for special promotions and community give-backs. For example, for Father’s Day, Massage Envy is offering a deep-tissue massage and a special gift from La Verne’s Sinfully Sweet, a normal $110 value for only $75.

Coming in September, Massage Envy of La Verne will once again be one of the participating studios that last year helped raise more than $500,000 for the Arthritis Foundation. For its business acumen and its community involvement, the La Verne Chamber of Commerce named Massage Envy its “Business of the Year” for 2011.

Blaz also has a great manager in Yvette Bowers, who joined her a couple of years ago from the baby boutique store, Peek-A-Boo, and a great “sign guy” in Tyler van Holsbeck, a twenty-something student who has made the northwest corner of Foothill and Wheeler his own, gyrating to his favorite iTunes while waving the purple Massage Envy flagship sign about 30 hours a week.

Blaz is now taking all that momentum to build and open a second Massage Envy, about a four-month process during which she’ll be meeting with leasing agents, architects, designers, city planners and prospective employees while having to make hundreds of decisions both big and small.”

“If it ever becomes too stressful,” Blaz said, “I always know where to go for a great massage.”

To learn more about Massage Envy and its special money-saving membership programs, please call (909) 596-3689. Massage Envy is located at 1369-A Foothill Blvd. in La Verne.