How Spas Manage Stress

Same idea here. Snowdon doesn't see her enemy as only the spa down the street, but also the weekend at the Greenbriar Resort in West Virginia. Or the Christmas trip to London. Or the new bracelet from Tiffany. Nusta Spa is in the luxury goods business, not the spa business.

"With the overall economic condition and people feeling the impact on their disposable income, the spa industry overall is less reactive to bad economic times than people would think," said the 37-year-old businesswoman.

Nusta Spa has been open since 2004 and has been profitable since 2005. After bouncing around Wall Street, Snowdon took a chunk of her inheritance (her great-grandfather was a top executive at Johnson & Johnson) as collateral to borrow $1.5 million to start the spa. It's on 20th Street NW, south of Dupont Circle.

There are about a half-dozen spas within a couple of blocks of Nusta. Snowdon's second-in-command, Erin Morris, said the spa's prices are competitive with its neighbors' and that it hasn't had to reduce them to pull in clients.

Before opening, Snowdon did her research.

"I had a life coach, and we talked on the phone every other week and he gave me homework assignments," said Snowdon, a Mount Pleasant resident who attended and sits on the board of National Cathedral School. "My life coach said that between now and the next time we talk, I want you to go and talk with spa managers."

Snowdon poked around to see how nimble the downtown spas were. "I did a lot of calling up and saying, 'I'm interested in a massage at six o'clock on a Thursday,' and they didn't have availability." Or she would pop in a place and ask if she could get a facial immediately or that afternoon.

Her reporting told her that there was room for some competition.

Nusta works to accommodate people who want same-day appointments and stays open until 8 p.m. It also touts its green credentials, with soy ink, walls made with recycled lumber from a Pennsylvania barn and eco-friendly facial compounds.

When she was doing her research, Snowdon said, "there was no high-end day spa. You had a hair salon and a hotel spa, but I wanted a place where you got amenities and a robe and slippers and tea without the hair machines going."

She hired a spa consultant, who taught her the importance of sterilized equipment and pampering. She talked to a real estate broker to start learning the basics of real estate, which involved terms like triple net lease and shared costs. She met with an architect to help her design the space. She even sat in on meetings to learn about heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems.

She grabbed the word Nusta from a tribal language used in Peru. The word means "wealth" or "royalty."