For Shoppers Who Want Reiki With Their Retail Therapy, Vie Healing Brings Holistic Treatments To Neiman Marcus

Nearly two years after bringing its treatments to five Neiman Marcus locations, Vie Healing now has permanent home for its spa within the luxury retailer.

The spa partnership arose following a series of in-store activations featuring Vie Healing services that were a part of Neiman Marcus’s Idea Factory, an array of products and experiences the retailer experimented with to drive traffic to its locations. Vie Healing has a standalone spa in West Hollywood, Calif. Its first spa opened in 2014 in Beverly Hills and established it as a pioneer of Eastern healing modalities.

“I brought up the idea of having these services offered at Neiman Marcus and [its team] basically thought it was a good idea after speaking internally with each other,” says Vie Healing founder Mona Dan, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner and acupuncturist. “We went from there and took the steps and initiative to figure out what would be the best services to be offered, how would we approach it, and how would we present it to the Neiman client.”

Occupying about 500 square feet, the debut Vie Healing spa inside Neiman Marcus premiered in April at the department store company’s Beverly Hills location. Vie Healing spas inside stores in Canoga Park, Calif., at the shopping center Westfield Topanga and New York City at the Hudson Yards complex are slated to open this year.

The spas focus on holistic treatments Dan describes as not your average department store fare. Beverly Hills customers can pick a service from a spa menu that includes 24-karat gold ear seeding, gua sha, reiki and cupping. Service prices run from $40 for 24-karat gold ear seeding to $250 for acupuncture from Dan. She says, “A massage can be done anywhere, but an upscale experience of Chinese medicine and acupuncture doesn’t really exist, and we wanted to make sure to bring that to the forefront of what we offer.”

“A massage can be done anywhere, but an upscale experience of Chinese medicine and acupuncture doesn’t really exist, and we wanted to make sure to bring that to the forefront.”

Before it put a spa inside Neiman Marcus, Vie Healing started selling its products at the retailer in 2018 as wellness began to enter its beauty assortment. The brand, which launched in 2017, has an extensive range of towels, supplements, bath salts, teas and tools priced from $18 to $68 available at Neiman Marcus.

Dan has noticed a shift in the way people talk about their health today compared to when she started her holistic lifestyle career a dozen year ago. “It’s a totally different conversation now. it’s much more accepted,” she says. “I love how [Neiman Marcus] is so open to this whole new concept of trending beauty, and how much they’re willing to listen to what people want.”

Dan’s goal is to continually push holistic beauty and wellness into the mainstream. Vie Healing’s growth at Neiman Marcus is a sign that its approach is no longer niche. Dan says, “Before, it was more of a mom-and-pop shop, while now we’re actually industry leaders, and more and more people are following suit, one because we have clientele interested in it, and also we’re motivating practitioners to take on that business role and to really give more meaning to what we’re doing.”

The mainstream attention, particularly in high-end environments like Neiman Marcus, has elevated Vie Healing as well as traditional Chinese medicine treatments, according to Dan. She says, “You’re no longer finding acupuncture on Groupon for like $20. It’s legitimized it.”