This longtime Denton business could soon have locations in other cities around the country.
Soma Massage Therapy, which has been operating in Denton for about 15 years, is now expanding by offering franchise opportunities.
“I fell into massage because I was looking for purpose, I guess, in my life and in my career,” owner Amber Briggle said. “Now, I’m franchising, and it’s just continuing to scale.”
While living in Boulder, Colorado, and working in a preschool, Briggle realized she wasn’t passionate about her job and began searching for something new.
She had always been interested in health and wellness, so she jumped at the opportunity when she found out that there was a top massage school in Boulder that offered a one-year program.
“All of this was just kind of a happy accident,” she said.
Briggle moved to Denton in 2009 after her husband got a job at UNT. In 2010, she had a booth at the Denton Community Market where she offered chair massages.
The massages were free. All she asked for were email addresses and phone numbers, which helped her build her client list.
“I still have clients from that first community market,” Briggle said. “One of the very first people I massaged at that first event — he has since passed, but his widow is still a client here today. And many of her co-workers have been or are clients here.”
Briggle initially saw clients in her home before moving to a location on Malone Street in 2013, where Soma grew to four treatment rooms and about 13 massage therapists.
Soma moved to its current location, at 531 N. Elm St., in May 2021. This location doubled the size of the business, which now has seven treatment rooms and about 25 massage therapists.
“If we’ve experienced this degree of success during and after a global pandemic, I think there’s probably something really special going on here,” Briggle said.
There are several things that set Soma apart from other massage therapy centers.
Briggle said that usually when a client books an hourlong massage, they are not actually massaged for a full hour because the massage therapist has to check in with the client, wash their hands and do other prep and transition work.
At Soma, clients get a full 60-minute session because are booked out for 75 to 90 minutes. She also said Soma does not charge more for a deep tissue massage than a Swedish massage.
Because it offers medical massages, Soma can accept payments from health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts. Soma also has a “no-tipping” policy.
“[Tipping] places us, as massage therapists, more in the service industry, when I really believe that we belong more in the medical field,” Briggle said. “As we explain to our clients: If you’ve never tipped your physical therapist and you’ve never tipped your doctor, why are you tipping your massage therapist?”
Briggle has brought the same amount of care and detailed attention to franchising Soma. About a year and a half ago, she hired a consulting and coaching firm to teach her about franchising.
“You don’t have to be a massage therapist to own a massage studio,” she said. “If someone has an interest in wellness, they’re a hard worker, they are a good communicator, [and] they’ve got good boundaries ... I want to teach them how to do what we’re doing here.”
Now, she is equipped to help potential franchisees.
“We see, at this location here on Elm Street, probably about a thousand clients a month,” Briggle said. “Imagine, if we had a thousand Somas in communities across the country, how many more people we could be providing this healing touch to.”