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No pain, no gain for new Mount Pleasant store
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Todd and Pam Lowery, a husband-and-wife health-and-wellness team, have found a potential gold mine in backs and necks—aching ones, that is.
According to the Agency for Health Care Policy Research, 80% of Americans will suffer from a significant episode of back pain at some time in their lives. Among the nation’s working-age people, 50% admit to back symptoms each year. And back pain is the most common cause for disability in people under age 45.
With such painful numbers in mind, the Lowerys opened a Relax The Back retail store April 19 in Mount Pleasant.
Relax The Back is a Los Angeles-based franchise selling recliners, mattresses, office chairs, pillows and other posture and back-support products. Since the first Relax The Back opened in 1984, more than 100 stores have opened across the United States and Canada.
The Mount Pleasant store is South Carolina’s second Relax The Back. The first is in Greenville.
In addition to ergonomic back and neck products, Relax The Back sells books about back care and posture. The Lowerys make a point to explain what their products do for the body, how they work and the precautions customers can take to reduce neck and back pain.
“We’re educators,” said Todd Lowery, who for six years directed Relax The Back’s corporate stores in Los Angeles. He and Pam, a former television producer at WCSC-TV Channel 5 in Charleston, returned to the Lowcountry several years ago and in January 2005 bought their Relax The Back franchise. The building housing their store at 1795 Highway 17 North, in a new plaza next to the Mount Pleasant Towne Centre, had yet to be built.
Among the store’s high-end products are Tempur-Pedic mattresses, ranging from about $700 to $3,600, some with massaging capabilities, and Zero Gravity recliners, costing roughly $800 to $2,700. The recliners and mattresses can be adjusted to each person’s proper posture by remote control.
Office chairs designed to conform to the user’s body range from about $400 to $2,900. Massage chairs go for $700 to $4,500.
Other products include hand-held massagers, ergonomic pillows that can be folded and placed easily in a travel bag, medicine balls used for back exercises, portable car seats that can be shaped to fit the user, plus ergonomically designed purses, backpacks and other items.
Relax The Back merchandise covers office, home, sleep, travel and health and fitness needs.
The demographics made Mount Pleasant in particular and the Charleston area in general an ideal fit for a Relax The Back store, Pam Lowery said.
“It’s an affluent area with a mix of 30-somethings, 40-somethings, 50-somethings and retirees,” she noted. “It’s a growing community, an active community, with lots of professionals.”
She added that Mount Pleasant is centrally located for a potential customer base ranging from Myrtle Beach to Beaufort.
The Lowerys have networked with area hospitals, spinal doctors and chiropractors to get Relax The Back referrals.
Relax The Back Corp.’s medical advisory board reviews the products. The Zero Gravity recliners are based on designs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration conceived for its astronauts, Todd Lowery said.
“Our products teach good posture in a passive way,” he said.
Dennis Quick covers health and wellness for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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