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A creative marketing plan and a world-class experience for first-time guests helped propel the Bethesda, Maryland, location to profitability.
In August 2021, Heyday, the brand that’s reinventing skincare by making it more affordable and accessible to the masses, opened its first franchise location in Bethesda, Maryland. Just eight months later, the location has already grown its membership base to more than 750, has achieved profitability and is on pace toward its original goal of a two-year payback. This momentum can be directly attributed to the location’s ability to provide the world-class skincare experience Heyday has become famous for.
That, and a creative marketing campaign dubbed “Project Glow-Up.”
Patrick Ryan-Southern, president of L5 Skincare — which is both a subsidiary of Heyday investment partner Level 5 Capital Partners and the brand’s largest franchisee — joined L5 in September 2021, about a month after the Bethesda location had opened. One of his first orders of business was to collaborate with the franchisor on a local marketing campaign to increase weekly appointments and get more first-time guests in the door.
“We talk about education a lot at Heyday,” Ryan-Southern said. “Individuals who come to us for the first time — we educate them about their skin and how they can make changes to their routine. So we decided to implement that core tenet of education into our local marketing.”
Heyday started in New York City in 2015 and has since opened corporate-owned locations in Los Angeles and Philadelphia. But although the brand has signed more than 120 franchise agreements for new locations across the country, in most markets, the brand is still new.
“Approachable and accessible skincare is a new concept for a lot of people,” Ryan-Southern said. “Not having to go into a spa, sit in a dark-lit room and disrobe before a facial — it’s all a new experience. So we designed Project Glow-Up to educate people about Heyday while extending an offer for a $59 first-time facial so they could experience Heyday for themselves."
The $59 facial offer was more than a 50% discount for a first-time facial.
“It really was a deal that people couldn’t say no to,” Ryan-Southern said. “Because we know that after their first experience, they won’t be able to say no to Heyday, either.”
The Project Glow-Up campaign launched in October 2021, and in about a five-month span, the Bethesda location sold more than 1,000 first-time facials while converting over 42% of those first-time guests into Heyday members. It has also seen an increase of nearly 150% in the average number of weekly appointments. The offer has since been adjusted to include a $65 first-time facial — still a discount of roughly 50%.
“Business has taken off,” Ryan-Southern said. “We are really happy with the results of this campaign, and now we're taking our learnings from what we did in Bethesda and applying it to other new shops opening this year.”
L5 Skincare has an agreement to open 60 locations, and Bethesda was the first. With 16 locations slated to open in 2022, L5 is leveraging its unique relationship with Heyday’s corporate office not just to grow its own franchise business, but to create a blueprint for future Heyday franchisees.
“We're really committed to figuring out what works at launch,” he said. “My biggest goal is obviously to build and scale each of our Heyday locations. But one of my objectives for this year is to nail our playbook so that it can inform future franchisee openings and set them up to succeed the way I believe we will.”
Heyday’s startup costs range between $768,300 to $1,012,300, depending on which market the store is located. Other factors like design, configuration and labor costs will also impact the total investment. Click here to see the full cost breakdown.
