Massage school is coming to Center City

If anyone is in need of a massage since the recession took a sledgehammer to discretionary spending, it's Richard Keaveney.

The 60-year-old founder of Toppers Spa/Salon has been helping his enterprise dedicated to luxuriating and pampering rally back from a 30 percent revenue decline. Talk about stress.

"We felt surprised, slapped, unprepared," Keaveney said of the recession. "Did not expect the sharp decline."

Yet from that misery for the operator of five spas throughout Southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey, and Delaware has come another business opportunity. Toppers is opening a massage school in Philadelphia, believed to be the only school thus dedicated in the city.

It comes as others have closed, and after Pennsylvania and New Jersey joined most other states, including Delaware, in requiring that massage therapists be licensed.

"The advantage for us launching right now: We have the space; we have the management infrastructure," Keaveney said.

Toppers Massage Therapy Institute will be housed on the third floor of the chain's four-story flagship facility on 19th Street, just off Sansom. Aiming for a July 7 start, the space where couples massages currently are offered is being transformed into a classroom and training/practice areas.

One daytime class and one nights/Saturdays session will be offered over six to seven months, to as many as 16 students. Tuition will be $7,500, less than the $10,000 that is typical of other programs, Keaveney said.

"We're able to do that because we can share the overhead with our Toppers Spa business," he said.

The school also will offer continuing-education credits for massage therapists already licensed.

The venture is a response, in part, to industry projections of a 25 percent increase in demand for massage therapists by 2020.

Les Sweeney, president of Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals (ABMP), a Colorado-based association with 80,000 members, said the industry has been undergoing "a corrective phase" the last four to five years. That followed growth in the 2000s that "was really out of control in terms of the number of programs and number of therapists trained. It's settling into a more sustainable environment."

Last year, there were 36,000 graduates from U.S. massage programs, half the total for 2006, a peak year, Sweeney said. Massage-education programs currently total 1,280, down from 1,600, he said, with 322,000 trained U.S. massage therapists.

Driving the need for more, said Ken Wyka, Toppers' president and CEO, is the public's growing acceptance of massage as more wellness practice than extravagance.

Hand-in-hand with that has been the emergence of membership programs such as Massage Envy and Hand & Stone, offering one-hour massages for about half the price of those at full-service spas such as Toppers. Until recently, that is. Responding to the competition, Toppers has launched its own membership program, offering a Swedish massage for as little as $65.

There's also a practical side to starting a school. With business only a third of the way back from prerecession levels, Toppers no longer needs all 18,000 square feet of its Center City location for spa and salon services, Keaveney said. With $10 million in annual revenue, Toppers currently employs 220, down from more than 300 before the economy tanked.

"So repurposing 2,000 to 3,000 square feet of space is a great motivation," he said. So is the prospect of getting first crack at some newly trained therapists.

"You can bet we're going to be first in line to discuss any available job openings," Keaveney said.

The recently announced shutdown of the National Massage Therapy Institute in Northeast Philadelphia leaves the Cortiva Institute in King of Prussia as Toppers' biggest massage-school competitor. Once independently owned, Cortiva is now part of Steiner Education Group, a national provider of health education. Marissa German, its campus director, declined to comment on Toppers' plans and the industry in general.

Keaveney, a Northeast Philadelphia native and former medical social worker, started Toppers in 1981, stepping away from its day-to-day operations 12 years ago and soon after joining MANNA (Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance) as CEO until 2012.

Currently living in Maryland, he visits Philadelphia once a week to strategize with Wyka. Both are less worried than they were a few years ago.

"We're seeing the light, and we're cautiously optimistic," Keaveney said, noting that some solace comes from knowing that hair and stress will always grow.

"They're good things for our business."

215-854-2466@dmastrull