By Alex R. Thiersch, JD, Founder/Director of the American Med Spa Association (AmSpa)

Selling retail products like skin care or other items is often an afterthought in medical spa practices. While treatments and procedures will always be the bread and butter of your practice, retail product sales have a vital place in the overall success of your business.

Treatment Results

Stellar treatment results also increase the rates of customer retention, and offering skin care products that pair with your treatment menu can improve your patients' procedure outcomes.

"Healthier skin responds better to treatment," says Nealy Skeldon of Environ Skin Care. "The healthier the skin the better the result."

Skeldon advises creating packages on your menu of treatments with skin care products bundled in to give your patients the best treatment results, and to increase their likelihood of returning.

Retention Rates

Client retention is hugely important for many reasons. For instance, it's both easier and less costly to retain current customers than attract new ones. Additionally, repeat customers will spend from 20% to 60% more than new customers, and their spend per visit will increase the more they return as you continue to build trust.

There are many ways to increase retention in your medical spa but, according to Terri Wojak of True U, one of the easiest is through retail skin care sales. She noted that, on average, a client who does not purchase a product with their service returns only 10% of the time. Those who purchase one product return 30% of the time and the retention rate for clients who purchase two products can be as high as 60%.

Properly integrating a home-care plan with your patients can pay huge dividends as they continue to return to you.

Profit Margins

As industry expert Bryan Durocher of Durocher Enterprises states, "So many people are in touch with top-line revenue and not their bottom-line profitability."

After factoring in the cost of consumables, labor, electricity, and other details, the profit margin on many medical spa treatments can typically hover around 10%. Retail products, however, can yield a margin of up to 40%, according to Wojack.

For information on how to integrate retail skin care into your business attend an AmSpa Medical Spa & Aesthetic Boot Camp and be the next med spa success story.