Male Delivery

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Male Delivery
Manned Up: Plastic surgeon Dr. Grant Stevens at his Marina ManLand center in Marina del Rey that caters to men.

Leather club chairs, a TV tuned to ESPN and a stuffed bison head on the wall.

No, it’s not a cigar lounge or a sports bar. It’s a waiting room, and just next door there’s a man getting fat taken off of his love handles and having a laser hair-removal procedure on his back.

This is Marina ManLand, a Marina del Rey plastic surgery center dedicated exclusively to men, and decorated to match. Opened last month, it’s the brainchild of Dr. Grant Stevens, a plastic surgeon and founder of Marina Plastic Surgery in Marina del Rey.

Stevens created the “man cave” look to give his male clientele a more comfortable experience with a separate entrance and exit from the main lobby area of his practice, which typically greets women.

“These men are walking in the door and they’re sitting in an environment which has been made for women,” Stevens said. “Historically, plastic surgery practices and offices are geared toward the feminine gender because they’re the consumers and that makes sense.”

ManLand, with its copper ceilings and leather wall coverings, is the latest business hoping to use the man-cave aesthetic as a marketing tool to draw men into historically women-oriented shops. Others include hair and nail salons, such as Hammer & Nails Salons Inc. in West Hollywood.

Stevens said it was important to create a male-friendly space at his facility because he could tell his male clients weren’t comfortable in his standard treatment rooms.

“When these guys were getting treatments, I would walk back and introduce myself,” Stevens said. “It became clear to me that I had a female environment and I was dealing with males. They weren’t unhappy but they weren’t as happy as they could be.”

David Berne, senior vice president and director of strategic planning at ad agency RPA in Santa Monica, said the man-cave theme popped up among businesses during the recession.

“Men wanted to have this space where they can decompress but also in a way that reminds them of their manliness,” Berne said.

He said this kind of marketing might be effective in driving male clients to a business for now, but, like all trends, it could just as quickly fall out of fashion.

“Men are trying to figure out who they are and what they should be,” he said. The man cave “is a manifestation that is true right now, but it may need to change five or 10 years from now.”

Manly men

Stevens, who launched his practice in 1986, said establishing ManLand stemmed from a new service he started offering in 2009 called CoolSculpting, a nonsurgical procedure that freezes away fat.

Thanks to billboard advertisements throughout Los Angeles about the service and positive reviews from radio personalities such as Beto Duran of ESPN, he began seeing more male clients. For most of his career, Stevens’ patient breakdown had nearly matched the national average of 90 percent women and 10 percent men for plastic surgery procedures, but by the end of last year, men made up about 15 percent of his patients.

As he started seeing more men, he created a men-only room and it quickly proved popular.

“It became oversubscribed,” he said. “I failed in that I completely underestimated the amount of men coming in who would want the guy room.”

Now he’s expanded that room and renovated a portion of his office to create ManLand. There are three treatment rooms, named Lion’s Den, Bear’s Lair and Dog House, each one offering a specific service. The Lion’s Den is for hair replacements, while the Bear’s Lair is for hair removal.

The swanky sports lounge décor was a direct result of feedback from men, Stevens said. Many asked for TVs to watch sports and for leather club chairs instead of sofas. He also created a proprietary scent for ManLand, with a base note of a new car smell. In the men’s restroom, he installed a TV that plays a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue video.

Michael Elliot, chief executive of Hammer & Nails Salons, took the same approach when launching his men’s nail salon last year. It features oversized leather chairs, concrete floors and even punching bags, and clients are served free scotch or beer.

“I knew creating a shop like this for men was a first,” Elliot said. “I felt like men have a perception of what a nail salon looks like because they see them on every corner. I wanted my place to feel like the antithesis of what men would perceive a nail salon would look like.”

But not everyone thinks men need leather chairs to feel comfortable getting a pedicure or a botox injection. Dr. Jason Diamond, plastic surgeon and founder of Diamond Face Institute in Beverly Hills, said men seeking cosmetic procedures at his more standard-looking office have been on the rise since 2005.

He said male patients make up about 35 percent of his business, but he hasn’t felt the need to redesign his treatment rooms to accommodate a man’s tastes.

“Our office is a modern, New York-style office,” Diamond said. “It’s comfortable for men and women so we didn’t feel the need to put in sports stuff or bar paraphernalia.”

But Stevens said his ManLand strategy is working and that he’s already thinking about expanding.

“Once we created something that’s catered to a man specifically, it went crazy,” he said. “I’m very seriously considering building a series of ManLand offices that will be geared toward the needs of men.”

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