Reef Beauty is owned by
Body Sync Group Pty Ltd, a small company based in Queensland with one owner, Andrew Thompson.
Until recently, Reef Beauty traded as Body Sync.
Our old name served us well for many years however as we moved
further away from our roots in Sports Medicine, it no longer seemed
relevant nor conveyed the services we provide.
Presently, all Reef stores are company owned in order to maintain the best possible quality.
Franchising is always an option but not high on the list of
priorities at present.
In 1984, Andrew's fascination with the human body began with the
study of what was then a revolutionary new fitness program,
Isotonic Medicine, which lies at the foundation of modern gym
training today.
Around the same time, his parallel obsession with natural
remedies led him
to dream of creating a lifestyle retreat in the rainforests of
Central Queensland.
He began researching the wonders of
natural health and beauty alternatives in the fledgeling field
of Aromatherapy, especially essential oils, and tentatively named the project
Angel Beach. The end dream remains on the back burner, but the
brand is still in use today for our range of natural skin care
products.
During the next 18 years, Andrew attained over one hundred
diplomas and qualifications, ranging from Psychology and Chinese
Herbs to Nutrition and Sports Medicine. He has also taught
and lectured in these fields.
In
2001, having gained accredited provider status from every Health
Fund in Australia, he founded Body Sync, a Remedial Therapies
practice in his house at Tarragindi.
It was during these early days that links between poor
lifestyle, depression, and premature aging became terribly
apparent.
Alarmingly, he also saw the crippling pain caused by incompetent
therapists in his profession.
At this point, with the
Queensland Massage Therapist of the Year Award under his belt,
he saw that he had a responsibility to improve existing
treatments and to educate his peers.
He developed regimes to deal with multiple presentations
simultaneously which have now entered general practice.
Most famous were his treatments for period pain,
migraine, and scoliosis, and combination treatments of Tui Na
Massage, Aromatherapy, and Seichim Reiki for couples unable to conceive,
which led to six healthy births in 2002.
He also began publishing his findings in a periodical "The
Rubdown" which remains available for viewing here on the
Reef site.
Running parallel to this however was the quiet concept of
Angel Beach which had developed into an Aromatherapy skin care
range to compliment our remedial treatments.
It was Angel Beach, combined with a chance
random day that could have easily never happened, that changed the
direction of Body Sync from health to beauty.
Having
secured massage contracts for sports carnivals at several elite
schools, Andrew realised one particularly hot day that he needed
to get rid of his back hair.
He assumed the task would be
simple, but it wasn't.
He rang thirty Brisbane beauty salons, and those who didn't call
him a pervert immediately hung up in his ear. Men didn't
get waxed apparently, and those that did were sickos.
Only
one place at Greenslopes finally conceded. They tore the skin off his
back, took $100 for the privilege, and told him never to come
back. The infection took two months to heal.
Remarkably, that was in 2001.
Angry at his treatment, and unable to attend a beauty course
because he was male, he invented the techniques for male waxing
that we use today. No beauty wholesaler would sell product
to him either, so Angel Beach manufactured their own.
To this day, Angel Beach provides 95% of our products and
ironically now sells to the wholesalers that once refused to
deal with us.
Within six weeks of offering men's beauty
treatments, and fed by very "in your face" advertising, Body Sync was swamped with demand
for hair removal treatments - not only from men but from women
who were sick of salon attitude too!
It was fantastic but unfortunately a shortage of therapists
meant we
had to drop our health services
and focus on beauty.
With each new client who came to us, horror stories about other places poured in like a flood and it
became obvious very quickly the beauty industry was rife with incompetence, and
lost in the fantasies of its own fluff and puff.
Body Sync put up its
barricades instantly and distanced itself from the beauty
industry.
By 2005, we had 3 rooms running 12 hours a day with a waiting list
2 weeks long. We were growing at an alarming rate.
It became obvious that we had a runaway train and that we needed to restructure before it all derailed.
To that end, in July 2006 we incorporated as Body Sync Group Pty
Ltd with a plan to move from Tarragindi and shed the last of our 'home-based business' image by putting stores in strategic locations around town.
Later that year, we opened our first
Body Sync shopfront at Toowong.
In 2007, we opened branches at Mt Gravatt and George Street, which allowed us to close the treatment rooms at Tarragindi and convert it to
Group Head Office.
In 2008 we opened Clayfield, and in 2009, we opened our Gold Coast store at
Southport and a new inner city store at New Farm to replace George
Street.
During 2009 however, the GFC hit small business. We looked on as competitors in the hair removal
industy closed their doors, particularly franchisees of one of the larger chains, ever
concerned that we could follow.
To compound this, almost zero unemployment meant that there were no staff available to
man the stores we already had.
In hindsight, this all happened at a good time for Reef, as it made us sit down and evaluate what we were trying to achieve.
Glaringly, it was obvious that we were over-servicing the southeast corner with too many branches for a specialty chain
like Reef.
For these reasons, only weeks off opening two new branches at Aspley and Robina, we shelved the idea.
It was time to consolidate what we already had.
Andrew's first decision was an
easy one; to set in motion plans to close New Farm after less than a year's trading.
Suggested by the earlier George St experience then proven by New Farm, it was clear that
our style wasn't glitzy enough for the CBD.
Also, our staff weren't happy working in the city stores. It was apparent that the people
we connected with best dwelled in suburbia. And increasingly, the bush.
Ever conscious of his dream a quarter century before, Andrew merged Body Sync and Angel
Beach. He called the new entity Reef Beauty ahead of plans to
begin his lifelong project of a health and beauty retreat in the
tropical rainforests.
In February 2010, Andrew opened his first regional store in his hometown of
Rockhampton.
There,
distanced from the daily hustle and
bustle of Brisbane, he began developing a strategy for the
better servicing of southeast Queensland and for opening up
regional branches across Australia.
In August 2010, he moved his main office
to Central Queensland to begin implementing those strategies.
Reef is ten years old now. With leases expiring at every
branch, 2011 has already proven a year of reorganisation.
Early plans to expand have been put
on hold in the wake of low retail confidence across Australia.
This has been particularly
noticeable on the northside of Brisbane and Gold Coast.
At the same time, frequent vandalism to the Gold Coast store
and the high rate of violence brought concerns for staff and client safety to the fore, and it was clear that a presence
on the coast was no longer viable.
In March 2011, it was decided to downsize to protect the overall business. Clayfield was amalgamated with Toowong, and
Southport was closed.
In September 2011, the relocation of Mt Gravatt back to Tarragindi marked the final stage of our consolidation. Our focus
herein is to expand our range of services and geographical spread rather than replicating stores in the southeast corner.
Direction and Focus
Opening
eleven branches in five years has earned us the mantle of Australia's fastest growing chain of independent hair removal studios.
It's an honour certainly, but also a burden. It puts
us in a box that we have no wish to placed in, for success
has come at a cost.
Despite Reef's unequalled
reputation in the field of Hair Removal, we sacrificed our health
modalities to get here. Health in all its forms;
physical, mental, and spiritual, remain at the core of
Andrew's passions.
To counter
these issues, amongst Andrew's current projects are two side
businesses.
The first, Andrew's
Place, is a blend of health, beauty, and lifestyle based in Yeppoon, for
people seeking a more relaxed environment to a salon.
The
second, presently under development, will be a
registered training organisation aimed at lifting the
quality of treatments being performed by health and beauty
professionals.
Parallel to this, now that the economy is steadily improving, we'll looking to open new branches
throughout regional Queensland. And that's about it for now :)
In summary, 2009-2011 was tough for small
businesses like ours. We used the time to catch our
breath, consolidate what we have, and to learn a few lessons
about business.We're cautiously optimistic that we've found the right balance between service, price, product, professionalism, and customer satisfaction,
however we always keep a vigilant eye on the past.
It's not so long ago that we were just a concept, an idea jotted down
by a teenage youth on a beach a quarter century ago, and we never lose sight of those beginnings.
