Acne, sun spots, scars and pockmarks, wrinkles. People find many reasons to feel bad about their skin. But often that bad feeling goes much deeper: I’m ugly; I’m unpopular; I’m old and unappealing.
Marisa Head, founder and owner of Marisa’s Skin Care LLC in North Attleborough, has chosen a professional mission of healing and caring for skin and, in the process, helping her customers feel healthy, confident and soothed.
“We are all about inspiring and lifting each other up,” Head said of her business, which also employs her two daughters, Stephanie and Rachel Howard.
The very first step in Head’s journey to create the business began in a climate that was far from soothing. A stay-at-home mom of two daughters in their ’tween years, Head was divorced in 2006 and was suddenly a single parent with an immediate need to become an earner, too.
Head had always been interested in biology and human anatomy, and she even had tinkered with the idea of becoming a physical therapist. She secretly imagined herself as the person who runs onto the field to help injured athletes.
Education as a physical therapist is a long and expensive process, so instead, Head signed up for a 300-hour, six-month esthetician course with the Elizabeth Grady School of Esthetics and Massage Therapy Inc. based in Medford, Mass.
She loved the work. “Skin is the largest organ,” Head said. “Everything that goes into the body affects the skin.” Apart from the organic problems and puzzles, “I wanted to help women feel comfortable in their skin,” she said.
After she was licensed, Head worked for the Elizabeth Grady School as a teacher. Student estheticians, she says, are learning about the skin as an organism. “That involves what is happening in the skin, and how various practices and chemicals produce certain effects.”
Head had been working for Elizabeth Grady School for four years – while also moonlighting as a fitness teacher and wellness coordinator at a nearby YMCA – when she came up with the “harebrained” idea of going into business for herself.
She started in 2013 by renting a small space and marketing her fledgling business in every way she could think of – including by a lot of word of mouth. “I was not making a lot of money at all, but I stuck with it because that’s what I always do,” Head said.
The business moved to another location and got a push when Head’s oldest daughter, Stephanie Howard, joined her mother and started a contemporary marketing campaign.
“We studied how to grow the business together,” Head said. “We would show up to work every day, even with no clients.”
Then, Head’s second daughter, Rachel Howard, joined the group and became, like her older sister, a licensed esthetician. “That’s when we exploded as a team,” Head said, adding that each of her daughters brings a different dynamic into the business.
A few years ago, during the COVID-19 slump, Head and her daughters took a chance and bought a building on Washington Street in North Attleborough. They now employ six people and have about 2,000 clients, Head says. Services run the gamut from a 30-minute facial for $67 to a deep-cleaning and exfoliating using a HydraFacial device for $300.
They continued to reinforce the business’s theme: that Marisa’s Skin Care is run and staffed by caring women who wanted to help clients cultivate healthy skin and a happy attitude toward their appearance.
“When you are looking for advice on what to wear or what to do, you go to your girlfriends,” Head said. The company began pushing out the message: “We are your trusted girlfriends.”
Head says many women are struggling with problems and pressures of one kind or another. “People are vulnerable,” Head said. “We are a safe place and a professional place. If someone comes in and says, ‘I had a bad weekend,’ we try to root them on and shift their mindset and help them feel comfortable.”
She mentions a teenage girl with acne who first entered the salon with her head down, her hair throwing a curtain across almost her entire face. As her treatments continued over the weeks, she began to lift her head and emerge from behind the curtain.
The spa also treats some men, as well as teen boys.
“Clients come in saying, ‘I have this thing on my skin; I don’t like it,’ ” Head said. “We reassure them that what they are going through is not out of the ordinary.”
Head wants to grow the business for herself and her children, and to bring on new talent to carry on her mission.
Her daughter, Rachel, is looking into nursing education, with the idea that the salon will, in the future, evolve into a medical spa, offering laser treatments and injectables.
“We are just going to keep growing,” Head said.”