[ MAUKA MAKAI ]

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM At Ampy's A Day Spa, Nicole Santiago-Vierra and her mother, founder Ampy Santiago, stand next to a wall of celebs who have put their faces in Ampy's care.

Skin deep

A local spa is run by a mom
and daughter who can read
your face like a book

NICOLE Santiago-Vierra was 6 when her mother came home to find the girl playing on the floor of her bathroom, seven Barbie dolls lined up in front of her, their heads wrapped in tissue, ready to receive their facials.

Like mother, like daughter.

By then, Ampy Santiago must have known she had a successor to the skin care business she had been building since 1970, and started bringing her daughter to work with her regularly. But Nicole suspects another motive: "I think she thought it would be better to have me there than at home rummaging through her beautiful jars."

Hiding in a corner while Ampy worked, Nicole learned the value of skin care, although her mom's uncanny ability to read a face could be annoying at times.

"She'd say, 'You're not getting enough sleep,' 'you're eating too many nuts' or 'you're getting too dark.' I didn't listen all the time," said Nicole, who couldn't resist the beach when she was a teenager. "But at 24 I saw my first brown spots and realized mom was right. Now I don't leave the house without wearing SPF 45 sunscreen. Even when I'm indoors I cover my face, hands, whatever's exposed."

Nicole picked up her mom's skills, with the ability to identify a hormonal, product or dietary pimple on sight. She can also spot the telltale signs of downing too many steaks (yellowed eyes), overindulgence in alcohol (ruddiness) and smoking (fine lines around the mouth).

Putting much of her mom's other advice to work during her high school years at Punahou, Nicole earned the nickname "Skin Girl" because friends could count on her for prom makeup, precision brow shaping -- even those of her guy pals -- and all matters epidermal.

Today, mother and daughter work in tandem at Ampy's, where Nicole now serves as president, although, like any child given a choice to take over a family business, the decision wasn't easy to make.

DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM Mother and daughter Ampy Santiago and Nicole Santiago-Vierra stand at the manicure and pedicure station of the day spa they built together.

TODAY, SPA, massage and facial treatments are commonplace, available at resorts to hair salons and neighborhood day spas, but back in 1970 such treatments were exclusive to the rich and famous. That's when Ampy, who had worked as a makeup artist for Revlon, took a job as a makeup and skin care specialist at the Kahala Hilton, now the Kahala Mandarin Oriental.

At the hotel, she pampered the faces of Hollywood's elite, who came to Hawaii for R&R and to clear their pores of heavy theatrical makeup. The walls of Ampy's are still covered with photos of clients past and present, including a "very tall, his head hit the ceiling" John Wayne, who wanted a men's facial, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson (before the surgery bug bit), Cher, Dyan Cannon, Carol Burnett, Tom Selleck, Lady Miss Kier and many others.

At the height of "The Sonny and Cher Show" popularity, Cher even offered to move Ampy to Hollywood, but having established a base here, Ampy wasn't seduced by the lure of the limelight.

Although the business seemed to be a natural fit, Ampy's parents thought at first that her interests were more frivolous than practical.

"My heart was into skin and beauty, but my parents said the pay in those businesses is cheap," she said. "To survive they said I have to be a college graduate, so I spent six years in college to be a dietitian."

Ampy arrived in Hawaii with every intention of sticking to her parent-approved career path, working as a dietitian at St. Francis Hospital, but after a year she rebelled. Working with nuns who allowed no makeup, no earrings, no high heels, was too much for the girl who had grown up in fashionable Manila. That's when she decided to pursue her own dreams.

She worked at the Kahala Hilton for 14 years before deciding to go solo, opening a two-treatment room with two assistants at the Pan Am Building, and it wasn't long before she expanded to four rooms at the Ala Moana Building.

These days, Ampy's offers 15 rooms with 30 full-time employees and is the largest free-standing day spa on Oahu, but as the wellness industry took off, bringing in more and more clientele, Ampy realized the business was expanding beyond her capabilities. She needed backup, fast.

Ampy's lack of computer skills meant that up until 1999 the entire business was still running on manual labor. That meant 6,000 client names, histories and preferences relegated to 5-by-7 index cards in boxes labeled A to Z.

"Whenever someone wanted to come in, I had to go look for the right box," Ampy said. "I saw the business growing, but I could not handle it by myself, so I talked to my husband, and he said try to ask if (Nicole) can come home. But at the time she had so many offers on the mainland."

Skin care focusing on prevention As spas proliferate, Americans finally seem to be catching on to the wisdom of self-care, rather than quick-fix solutions. After all, the Stepford results of plastic surgery have become more scary than appealing. And where in the past, makeup was designed to bury flaws, today's cosmetics are lighter and emphasize a healthy glow rather than matte mask. In this, Ampy was a woman ahead of her time, due to early exposure to European philosophies of beauty while growing up in Manila. "American women are mostly into makeup, while Europeans are into skin care. We try to educate people to know the value of skin," Ampy said. "You cannot stop aging but you can slow it down, and if you start at a young age, skin will look its best as you grow older." Since the early days of her business, Ampy's made annual trips to Europe to further her skin care education, particularly Germany, France, London and Spain, although she cites Paris as the center of the industry. "Everything starts there," she said. "They've been taking care of their skin for so long," said Nicole. "Marie Antoinette would bathe in wine and milk, and now we know that they contained malic acid and lactic acid that whiten and exfoliate." The two will try the latest treatments, recently adding to their arsenal an organic skin-care line out of Hungary called Emanence, and a cold laser treatment that uses laser light to stimulate collagen, elastin and cell reproduction without heat or abrasion, immediately firming and toning the skin. The effect might be described as a small face lift that produces no side effects or downtime. "We're the guinea pigs," Ampy said. "Everything we test on us, or my husband or our employees. If we try it and don't like it, it doesn't make it to our store. We have to have faith in what we present to our customers because they're friends; it's not just a business relationship. "They trust us and call us with their emergencies, like someone called before a party and said she's bringing three of her friends over and she came with three pimples and said, 'You've got to fix it!'" Because the day spa feels like home to Ampy, she said she never feels stress when she's at work, to the point where she was perfectly willing to keep it open Christmas and New Year's Day. But with the holiday parties behind them, she figured there wouldn't be enough emergencies to risk an employee mutiny. Ampy's A Day Spa can be reached at 946-3838.

IN 1999, Nicole was working for Edelman, a large public relations firm in Washington, D.C., after graduating from Georgetown School of Business with a degree in international marketing and public relations. Having just started her career, she hadn't begun to miss home when the call from her mom came.

Suddenly, she had to choose between her personal ambition and family obligations. Coming home meant taking a big risk because at the time, the spa and wellness industry, while growing, was still a niche business and she could not bank on Ampy's continued growth.

She had grown up basking in the aura of beauty and glamour that surrounded Ampy's clientele, but studying the business from an adult's perspective revealed its blemishes. "I thought, 'What have I gotten myself into?'" Nicole said, upon examining her mom's manual operations, but without panicking, set about bringing the company into the 21st century, computerizing everything from client files to bookings to payroll. That meant a lot of long nights just inputting data.

From there she went on to develop a marketing campaign, new brochures, created a long-term budget and formalized staff training methods and manuals. Earlier, "training" often took the form of Post-it notes and memos left for all staffers to see.

"I just said, 'Mom, this is not happening.' I had to put my foot down."

To this day, Ampy will not touch the computers. She lasted one day in computer class at CompUSA and never went back. She always loved talking and helping clients best anyway. But with Nicole's changes in place, suddenly the business was poised to take on a stream of new clientele that came in after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

"After that people realized how precious life is and how important it is to appreciate oneself and the people around you," Nicole said. "Spas used to be the playground for the rich and famous, but now anybody can come into a spa. Now, it's not so much about skin care, but total well-being, from head to toe."

Nicole's changes led to the addition of 11,000 new clients, and Ampy's became of First Hawaiian Bank's Ho'oulu Award winners as one of Hawaii's "Fastest 50" growing companies in 2001. Nicole was also named Young Filipino Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002, and last year was named one of Hawaii's 10 Outstanding Filipina Young Women of the Year.

She admits that during the first few years after returning home, she worried about her future.

"Now I have no doubts," she said. "Everything I've learned about marketing, psychology and business I've been able to use, and to be with family is a blessing."

As for Ampy's parental experience, she said her mom and dad did have a change of heart. Although her father died in 1984, he lived long enough to witness her success, and she said both her parents were happy she had fulfilled her dream. "Of course, back then they wouldn't tell me they made a mistake."

Staring wistfully toward the front of the spa, after hours when she and Nicole have the place to themselves, Ampy said: "I'm really blessed. My hard work has really paid off." Then, hinting to Nicole, she says: "Eventually I want to take care of my grandchildren ... at least one. That will give me an excuse to slow down."

More likely, she'll be at the spa every day, applying manicures to little hands and teaching her grandchild about the value of sunscreen.