Anastasia C. Ayala’s résumé reads like a list of the world’s top beauty companies: she’s held positions at Revlon, Max Factor, Procter & Gamble Co., the Estée Lauder Cos. and Coty, where she helped revamp Rimmel London as senior vice president of global brands.
Ayala’s latest effort is less global and more local. She’s left the corporate grind and returned to her native Los Angeles to open Pure Aesthetics/Pure Wellness, a 3,400-square-foot spa and wellness facility with 10 treatment rooms tucked away in an office building on the busy thoroughfare that connects the Westside to Sherman Oaks.
The office politics may have changed, but the strategic vision that propelled Ayala to the high ranks of the beauty industry has not. She studied the cramped spa market for two years before launching Pure Aesthetics/Pure Wellness, which officially opens next week, and asserts she’s carved out a unique niche: a one-stop beauty and health shop where outer and inner body concerns are addressed.
Certainly, Ayala is not the first person to associate good skin with internal vigor. A seven-item therapeutic skin care line will be introduced next spring. But Ayala differentiates Pure Aesthetics/Pure Wellness by tailoring services to people’s individual needs, rather than directing them to a single company’s solution. She retails nearly 20 different brands
A premium offering on the skin care menu is Pure Rejuvenation, which costs $375, lasts 90 minutes and features a pulsating facial massage that’s been in Japanese skin care company Kobido’s repertoire for centuries.
On the wellness end of the business, Dr. Alexander Rivkin, pioneer of the nonsurgical nose job, is Pure Aesthetics/Pure Wellness’ medical director and supervises on-site medical procedures. Nutritionists Sanchez and Philip Goglia maintain office hours to guide clients’ diets and physical fitness routines. A set of three visits that covers diagnostic tests, a complete medical work-up, and nutritional and fitness recommendations costs around $1,000.
Getting spa goers to care for their insides at the same place they rectify their outsides will take some work, acknowledged Ayala. For a month, she’s provided friends and family with private services at Pure Aesthetics/Pure Wellness to get a feel for the desired aesthetics-wellness balance. Ayala projected that Pure Aesthetics/Pure Wellness would be rationally profitable in three months, but doesn’t expect to see a substantial return on her investment for two to three years. Industry sources estimate the facility will generate first-year revenues of $2 million.
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