LONDON — Prai Beauty is taking its specialist skin care to a new level, opening what may be the industry’s first neck bar at Marks & Spencer, offering services such as yoga, massage and skin consultations using a handheld device.
The Neck Bar has opened at M&S Leeds White Rose, with more to come across the country. The opening of the stand-alone bars is a milestone for Prai, which until now had only offered hands-on services, such as “neckcials,” through pop-ups at M&S, and on Princess, Carnival and Seabourn cruise ships.
The services at M&S are free and complement Prai’s already robust business at the store. The Prai Beauty Ageless Throat & Decolletage Crème, which retails for 26.99 pounds, has long been a top seller at the retailer’s beauty hall, and across the entire M&S business.
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Cathy Kangas, a former beauty executive who founded Prai in 1999, has for decades focused on improving the skin under the chin, which she believes is often unloved, and undervalued.
In an interview, Kangas said the neck ages 20 times faster than the face because it contains no oil glands which act as a cushion.
While Kangas originally founded Prai to help the 50-plus crowd, she said she’s now seeing “a surge of younger women customers. They’re suffering from ‘tech neck.’ And that’s not a surprise. I think we’re looking at our digital devices an average of 226 times a day.”
The M&S Neck Bar offers customers a personalized consultation from a “Neck-Xpert” team, which has been trained by Prai’s brand education consultant and neck yoga specialists, Luminous Yoga. The “neckcials” use products from Prai’s Ageless Throat & Decolletage collection.
Those experts also use a Prai-branded ionic micro current device that retails for 50 pounds. That device targets slackening skin on the neck and jowls by delivering electrical impulses meant to boost circulation, increase the skin’s oxygen uptake, and boost glow.
“Necks are so specific,” Kangas said. “They have their own texture and require their own technology.” She said the 30-day trials conducted late last year showed that Prai’s products fight sagging, loss of elasticity and wrinkles.
Prai has been refining its neck bar concept for years via pop-ups at M&S. The Neck Bar at Marble Arch offers personalized skin analysis using a handheld skin analyzer that measures hydration and depth of wrinkles on the neck and decolletage.
The brand also has pop-ups on cruise ships which have been driving sales to retailers ranging from Boots in the U.K. to JCPenney and HSN in the U.S. Prai is consistently among the top-selling skin care brands on HSN.
Next January, Prai plans to open a permanent neck bar on Sun Princess, the biggest cruise ship in Europe which has a guest capacity of 4,300. It will also launch on QVC. Later this year, the brand will launch at 200 Waitrose supermarkets in the U.K. while the upbeat, charismatic Kangas will be selling the brand via the M&S live shopping channel.