Spa owners wants to anticipate customers' needs

By Rebecca Groff, correspondent

Name: Cindi Schamberger

Title: Owner

Company: The Sanctuary Spa

Address: 290 Blairs Ferry Road NE, Suite 300, Cedar Rapids

 Phone: (319)373-2447

Website: www.crsanctuaryspa.com

Elevator pitch: “A place to go to leave the world behind.”

When Cindi Schamberger started as an aesthetician at St. Luke's Women's Health Spa, she recalled, it was “sink or swim.”

“I did all of the product testing, as well as the decorating, which is a hobby of mine,” she said. “... I was one aesthetician with several massage therapists, and the only way I could build the business was to send people out the door with the magic of what we just did for them, so they could go home and tell people what they loved about the experience.”

Schamberger spent five years at that job and considered the experience she gained invaluable when she decided to open her own business.

“There are definitely gorgeous spas out there with beautiful marble floors and clientele sitting around with towel-wrapped heads getting their nails painted,” she said. “ But I think people come out of those places feeling a void.

“I wanted to create a place that offered five-star service, where somebody feels and notices what you need even before you ask for it.”

She started that business, the Sanctuary Spa, in June 2009.

She had worked as a dental assistant for 20 years before, and, she said, “I loved dental assisting, but my job was moved to the back office as the practice grew, and I'd lost my ability to be with the people and helping them.”

Schamberger enrolled at Capri College to get her degree in aesthetics, and her approach and good grades in multiple categories earned her notice before she graduated.

“St. Luke's Women's Health Spa approached me about becoming their aesthetician and helping them develop and integrate skin care into their hospital services,” she said.

At the Spa Sanctuary she employs 20 people, many of them dual- and tri-licensed in multiple practices. On the average, the spa sees 40 customers a day.

The Sanctuary Spa retails high-end skin and beauty care products in addition to a line of services that includes facials and peels, hot stone massage, body waxing, makeup instruction and manicures as well as waterless pedicures - the latest improvement in foot care health that earned it a feature spot in Day Spa Magazine this past April.

“This is a worldwide thing that is going on now,” Schamberger said of the waterless pedicures.

“It makes sense to eliminate the equipment which takes up room and has a lot of sanitation issues and costs associated with it.

“It also serves the needs of the diabetic or cancer patient who has decreased immunity and needs foot care with a lower risk of infection.”

The lack of bubbling water and multiple customers sitting in a bank of chairs in the same room, talking over each others' heads, also lend to a more relaxing pedicure experience overall, she contended.

Schamberger, who has trained at the International Dermal Institute, also does teaching, consulting and spa reviewing.