Hand & Stone spa to open in Levittown

Hands-on businesses are growing on Long Island these days, especially the massage business.

Two companies -- Hand & Stone and Massage Envy -- are opening franchise operations, one after another, their executives say.

The newest to come to town is a Hand & Stone spa that will open at the end of this month at the Nassau Mall in Levittown. Paul Mahler, 40, an attorney and Melville volunteer firefighter, paid $39,000 for the franchise, which will operate in a 2,250- square-foot space and employ 17 people, including eight massage therapists. Mahler gave up a law job at the Westbury firm Malen & Associates, where he had worked 11 years.

Did he have butterflies?

"Of course," Mahler said. "I was quitting a job making a decent salary." But the lure of running his own business, and one he liked after getting massages for the last 10 years, won out.

Mahler's outlet will be the fourth Hand & Stone on Long Island and the 70th nationwide. Todd Leff, Hand & Stone's chief executive, said the company will have 10 outlets on the Island within the next two years.

The 800-pound gorilla in the industry is Massage Envy, which has 10 outlets here and plans to add another four in the next year. It has 800 outlets overall.

Jerome Kern, Massage Envy's regional developer for Long Island, called Hand & Stone "a knockoff" of his company's spas. Leff denied that, saying Hand & Stone "has a different model."

These places are popular. The American Massage Therapy Association, an industry trade group, said in its most recent report that 18 percent of Americans, or 38 million people, had at least one massage last year.