Business View Magazine | April 2020

105 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE APRIL 2020 and interiors are exactly the same. Twelve weeks prior to opening, our operations and marketing teams jump in and do twelve weeks of marketing with them, so we can make sure they’ve got the sales as soon as they open their doors. “The permitting phase of this industry is also interesting because not a lot of health departments know how to standardize or regulate this business yet, so, of course, we take them through that process. Then on a monthly basis, we have support calls with all of our franchisees; we support them through all of our promotions; and we have two in-house support teams here to support them on a daily basis.” BVM: How does True REST compare itself to the competition? Rowe: “The next largest franchise is called Urban Float; they’ve got a few locations open. I would say the thing that differentiates us from them is that we are much more like a friendly living room than we are trying to push the modern and sleek side of floating. We want everyone to feel that this is science-backed therapy and that is how we market and how we build our spas. We’re very professional and high-end but not trendy. “What we do differently than a lot of the mom- and-pop shops is we are strictly floating; we’re offering sensory deprivation as well as sensory enhancement options, which include virtual reality, meditation, visualization, light therapy – there are a lot of other things that can be added onto the experience, if a client wants to do something different than zero light, zero sound, and zero gravity.” Janicki: “We consider ourselves ‘the four seasons of floating.’ We’re trying to appeal to the masses and not go after a niche, target audience.” BVM: Who manufactures your float pods? Janicki: “We have a company called Royal Spa – they manufacture out of Indianapolis and their bread and butter is actually hot tubs. We TRUE REST FLOAT SPA