Roving ‘Spa’ Brings Treatments Home

    If you picture the Hamptons Organic Beauty Bus as a spa on wheels, you would be almost right. Conceived and operated by Karen Clement, a former model born in Grenada, the idea for the enterprise is to deliver beauty services directly to the client’s home. The “bus,” actually a converted Ford Windstar sedan, is painted with a purple live bar code that, if scanned with a cellphone, takes potential customers directly to Ms. Clement’s Web site. The vehicle is used for delivery only, and is filled with the white cotton robes, candles, bamboo fronds, shells, and other paraphernalia Ms. Clement uses to create a spa-like ambience wherever she goes.

    “We are the Hamptons’ first and only fully organic and mobile spa,” she said.

    It makes sense, after all, that it’s more relaxing to have a massage, let’s say, by the fire in your own bedroom than in an impersonal salon, or to get a mani-pedi by your pool. If you want to be pampered, why not do it at home? At least that’s the thinking behind Ms. Clement’s business, which she launched at the beginning of summer.

     Besides convenience, Ms. Clement claims that, what she calls her “green glam squad,” offers affordable prices, despite a $50 “travel and set up fee” — by allowing clients to avoid traffic, potential babysitting fees, and “high salon prices.” Certainly her summer clients didn’t appear to mind her prices, which range from a manicure at $35 to a 90-minute massage at $185.

    Her focus is on providing chemical-free treatments, including organic waxing and makeup application. She offers the usual beauty treatment along with other more esoteric procedures including “instant nail,” which she said is a “revolutionary nail polish strip application,” and “instant hair,” clip-on hair extensions.

    Ms. Clement does not perform any of the treatments herself, but rather “coordinates” a stable of licensed professionals such as Janet DiBartolo, a massage therapist, with more than 16 years of experience. Ms. DiBartolo also specializes in reflexology, into which she incorporates a deep foot massage.

    Her services are not just for summer clientele. “Now is the season for spray tans,” said Ms. Clement. She uses a botanically sourced Australian product made with cacao, “not available in the U.S.,” and works a lot of “tanning parties” or what she calls “girls’ nights in.”

    The business got off to a slowish start in June, but picked up dramatically in July and August, when she collaborated with a yacht company to provide “spa charters” for onboard facials and massages, to which she would add a healthy dose of organic wine.

    Now that it is wedding season, business continues apace. She is offering fall-winter discounts. For “black Friday” she is booked to accompany a bus of 50 women heading off to a mall in Connecticut for a day of shopping and luxury.

    Ms. Clement, who worked in retail in East Hampton at Biba and Malia Mills, and managed Salon Xavier in Sag Harbor before venturing out on her own, may not yet offer services in her own bus, but, she said, that is definitely in her future plans.