A Spa is Born

Aequis Spa began offering adventurous yet healing spa services in the Pearl District's Gadsby Building in 2000. The concept of Aequis was born in a hot tub in Portland with two good friends, Lisa Anguilla and Sidney Perry. By April 2000 my friends helped me find our location -- this retreat would begin in a run down warehouse building on the 2nd floor – the entry up the black stair case was crooked and had a bit of a “what’s the password” feel to it. Every business advisor I sought advice from said the location was not optimum, it wasn’t street level, we needed to have a retail store, and if that wasn't enough to deter me - no one knew what Ayurveda was. However, I believed that if you made a cocoon of warmth and love and if the intention was right, then anything is possible. We decided to have a small, intimate business that had 100% integrity.

Slow but Steady

Opening with a grand party in December 2000 we celebrated with Gypsy Caravan, live music, Ripe Catering and about 200 people. That night we sold 1 gift certificate for $125.00. Slowly, we started to receive some press from the Willamette Week, Ourtown, and the Business Journal. On top of that we started receiving awards (see our Awards & Accomplishments sections of this website) and our client list started to slowly expand. After adding our amazing public relations guru, Bette Sinclair with BSinclair Public Relations we experienced quick and steady growth. Within six months our clientele was doubling every month! With this type of growth comes an enormous amount of challenges…we needed more robes and slippers! This pressed the decision, “Do we stay small or do we grow to allow all the clients who are calling to experience what we are trying to offer?”. We thought long and hard. Our location was good – people liked us – everyone was happy – but…we were booking appointments 3 and 4 months in advance. Our clients started getting frustrated and disappointed. This wasn’t the outcome we were going for at all! We decided to grow.

We grew in our Pearl District location and added another treatment room. Finally we grew – to a point that demanded us to leave our building. In our original building, there was nowhere to expand to as we were surrounded by fire escape hallways. After over 3 years of looking and lots of our clients waiting 40 minutes for a shower we found the answer!

The Historic Telegram Building

It was also a beautiful historic building, it had charm, public transportation, the rooftop location was beautiful, it was only 10 blocks from our original location…everything seemed perfect. It had been 5 or 6 years since I built my own spa and I went back and tried to find all the people and businesses that helped me originally. Loyalty and community support is important to our vision - and even though I might have been able to find better prices on the internet, or at big warehouses, I wanted to support the community of people that had helped me along this successful path. Enter Richard Stein of Richard Stein Design to design our space. I called Erin Manwaring, our Interior Designer, who had done phenomenal work on one of our homes to join us and she agreed! Erin had the not-so-easy task of taking visions in my head and making them a reality. Todd & Megan from JD Madison and Christine from the new Madison Milinger fine carpet boutique in the Pearl District also stepped in. Todd & Megan placed our first Tibetan carpet in Aequis Spa and we are happy to share that every carpet you see in Aequis today is supplied by these three wonderful people. David at PHReed supplied some of our lighting originally and was amazing at sourcing our pieces of furniture to build our new entry around. Lux Lighting again supplied all of our original lighting and I knew they would have the perfect pieces to create the ambiance I was dreaming of in the Penthouse of the Telegram. I also returned to Cargo to find a few of the indigenous pieces I was missing. Patty was, as always, supportive and had the perfect selection.

I couldn’t believe I had my team back together.

With all heads together and all hearts with the same outcome – we created the new Aequis Spa. It was a tremendous journey and I cannot say enough about these people.

How do we let people know?

Aequis Spa closed it’s original doors forever on September 11, 2005. The incredible staff (friends) pulled together 4 astounding days of effort and we reopened on Friday, September 16, 2005. It was fun, hard, incredible, and a huge bounding experience. We saw our furniture craned over the balconies of the Telegram Building, we ran around decorating and redecorating, ran out of curtain rods, didn’t have enough hooks for robes, dusted, cleaned, sanded and stained. It was something else seeing our estheticians unpacking huge boxes of facial supplies and our massage therapists touching up paint and up on ladders. We did it! We opened Aequis Spa on the ‘Top of the Telegram’ on time and it was amazing!

Celebrate Good Times- Come on!

So when you move – there is a house warming party right? Right! In steps our amazing publicist Bette Sinclair of BSinclair Public Relations again. We are still a grassroots company without a huge marketing budget, how will we reach our 15,000 clients and let the city know? With a party! Bette and her assistant Jenny supplied the buzz, the guest lists and a lot of support. David Friedman from FriedMedia created our beautiful invitations (as he does with all of our graphics work). Larry Grimes & Chris Blue from Art of Catering created a spectacular menu, we had a beautiful woman come in and do “Light Writing” on our walls, great music, live art installations and about 700 people over the course of two nights.

If You Build It They Will Come.

So here we are, we have grown, moved, expanded, and grand opened. It's been almost over a year in our new space and we still consider ourselves a very small business (in a big house). We still try to create a mysterious, wonderful experience for every guest (we call them guests now). We are excited to share our staff (friends) with every one that visits.

We’ve received numerous awards and a lot of location attention – but what remains most important is that Aequis is Portland’s spa. You supported us, you have driven our growth, and you are the inspiration and the reason we exist. We cherish our successes, learn from our failures and above all else value our community.

Thank you for the time you’ve allowed us so far….we look forward to being here for many years to come.

Megan Klein,
Founder