The country is in the middle of a med spa boom
Medical spas are a one-stop-shop for a variety of aesthetic medical services, including Botox and laser hair removal. And the industry is growing; according to the American Med Spa Association, the number of storefronts jumped from around 1,600 in 2010 to over 10,000 in 2023.
“Med spas are like a middle ground between a hair salon or a nail salon and a dermatologist’s office,” said Amanda Mull, senior reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek, who wrote about the boom. “A lot of people are aware of them, thanks to reality TV and social media.”
“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Mull about what’s driving the growth of the med spa industry. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kai Ryssdal: I will confess to not having been familiar with the phrase “med spa” before I came across this piece you wrote. What are they?
Amanda Mull: Med spas are like a middle ground between a hair salon or a nail salon and a dermatologist’s office. They are usually storefronts in strip malls that provide a slew of aesthetic medical services, I would say.
Ryssdal: Give me a for instance on the services,
Mull: Botox is a huge one. You also get things like dermal fillers, lip plumper. You can do laser hair removal. And then there’s some things that don’t require medical intervention. A lot of them also offer, like, eyelash extensions, microblading for your eyebrows, all kinds of different things.
Ryssdal: I’ve never understood that microblading thing, but that’s a guy speaking, I suppose. Who works inside? I mean, they’re not doctors. Are they doctors? I don’t know.
Mull: It depends on the state. Regulation for these types of businesses is done at the state level and varies pretty widely, depending on where you are. But most states, what you’re actually going to find is they can be run by nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, registered nurses, and even in states where these services need to be supervised by a doctor, mostly when you go in for a service, the person who’s going to be treating you is going to be a nurse.
Ryssdal: Why are they then, as you point out in your piece, proliferating so greatly?
Mull: Well, there’s a sort of a combination of reasons. One thing is that a lot of the types of services that they offer have gotten a lot better over the past 15 years. Pharma companies have gone sort of all in on developing these treatments. So there’s a really wide variety of them available now, and a lot of people are aware of them thanks to reality TV and social media that wouldn’t have necessarily been otherwise privy to all of these options. On the provider end, med spas are almost entirely cash businesses. You don’t have to deal with insurance. So if you are someone who can inject medication, which is pretty much any doctor or nurse, then you can move over to this business, make, like, really good money, and get rid of a lot of the stresses that might exist in more traditional medical practice.
Ryssdal: Sounds like barriers to entry are pretty low.
Mull: Yes. One of the reasons that these have popped up in so many places is that it doesn’t take a lot of startup capital to start one. If you have the correct medical licensure, then you can, you know, open up a storefront or rent a salon suite, and you can order supplies, including Botox, filler, things like that on the internet.
Ryssdal: Really?
Mull: As long as you’re licensed, yes, and once you sort of, you know, build up a following, you have people who are coming back pretty regularly for treatments that they pay for in cash.
Ryssdal: The catch, of course, is that these are businesses based largely on aesthetics. And aesthetics, as we know, change, yes?
Mull: Yes. The med spa look, shall we say, is —
Ryssdal: Now you have to describe the med spa look.
Mull: People can sort of pick out the types and number of treatments that you’ve potentially had based on what your face looks like, the overplumped lips, the ultrasmooth, wrinkle-free skin. It is sort of a tight, waxy kind of look, or it’s lumpy, depending.
Ryssdal: Without getting too personal here, did you partake of services? And without specifics again, were you generally satisfied as you were reporting this piece?
Mull: You know, it’s been kind of a long time since I’ve partaken in any med spa services, not that I judge, but I did many, many years ago get some laser hair removal and was a little bit unsatisfied with that. I was in college, so this was like the mid-2000s. There are many, many generations of laser that have been introduced since then, and a lot of people seem to enjoy their results.
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