Overview
Reef Beauty is owned by Body Sync Group Pty Ltd, a small company based in Queensland with one owner, Andrew Thompson.

Until recently, Reef Beauty traded as Body Sync.  Our old name served us well for many years however as we moved further away from our roots in Sports Medicine, it no longer seemed relevant nor conveyed the services we provide.

Presently, all Reef stores are company owned in order to maintain the best possible quality.  Franchising is always an option but not high on the list of priorities at present.

Our Roots
In 1984, Andrew's fascination with the human body began with the study of what was then a revolutionary new fitness program, Isotonic Medicine, which lies at the foundation of modern gym training today.

Around the same time, his parallel obsession with natural remedies led him to dream of creating a lifestyle retreat in the rainforests of Central Queensland.

He began researching the wonders of natural health and beauty alternatives in the fledgeling field of Aromatherapy, especially essential oils, and tentatively named the project Angel Beach.  The end dream remains on the back burner, but the brand is still in use today for our range of natural skin care products.

During the next 18 years, Andrew attained over one hundred diplomas and qualifications, ranging from Psychology and Chinese Herbs to Nutrition and Sports Medicine.  He has also taught and lectured in these fields.

In 2001, having gained accredited provider status from every Health Fund in Australia, he founded Body Sync, a Remedial Therapies practice at his house in Brisbane.

It was during these early days that links between poor lifestyle, depression, and premature aging became terribly apparent.

Alarmingly, he also saw the crippling pain caused by incompetent therapists in his profession.

At this point, with the Queensland Massage Therapist of the Year Award under his belt, he saw that he had a responsibility to improve existing treatments and to educate his peers.

He developed regimes to deal with multiple presentations simultaneously which have now entered general practice.  Most famous were his treatments for period pain, migraine, and scoliosis, and combination treatments of Tui Na Massage, Aromatherapy, and Seichim Reiki for couples unable to conceive, which led to six healthy births in 2002.

He also began publishing his findings in a periodical "The Rubdown" which remains available for viewing here on the Reef site.

Running parallel to this however was the quiet concept of Angel Beach which had developed into an Aromatherapy skin care range to compliment our remedial treatments.  It was Angel Beach, combined with a chance random day that could have easily never happened, that changed the direction of Body Sync from health to beauty.

Having secured massage contracts for sports carnivals at several elite schools, Andrew realised one particularly hot day that he needed to get rid of his back hair.

He assumed the task would be simple, but it wasn't.

He rang thirty Brisbane beauty salons, and those who didn't call him a pervert immediately hung up in his ear.  Men didn't get waxed apparently, and those that did were sickos.

Only one place at Greenslopes finally conceded.  They tore the skin off his back, took $100 for the privilege, and told him never to come back.  The infection took two months to heal.

Remarkably, that was in 2001.

Angry at his treatment, and unable to attend a beauty course because he was male, he invented the techniques for male waxing that we use today.  No beauty wholesaler would sell product to him either, so Angel Beach manufactured their own.

To this day, Angel Beach provides 95% of our products and ironically now sells to the wholesalers that once refused to deal with us.

Within six weeks of offering men's beauty treatments, and fed by very "in your face" advertising, Body Sync was swamped with demand for hair removal treatments - not only from men but from women who were sick of salon attitude too!

It was fantastic but unfortunately a shortage of therapists meant we had to drop our health services and focus on beauty.

With each new client who came to us, horror stories about other places poured in like a flood and it became obvious very quickly the beauty industry was rife with incompetence, and lost in the fantasies of its own fluff and puff.

Body Sync put up its barricades instantly and distanced itself from the beauty industry.

By 2005, we had 3 rooms running 12 hours a day with a waiting list 2 weeks long.  We were growing at an alarming rate.  It became obvious that we had a runaway train and that we needed to restructure before it all derailed.

To that end, in July 2006 we incorporated as Body Sync Group Pty Ltd with a plan to move from Tarragindi and shed the last of our 'home-based business' image by putting stores in strategic locations around town.

Later that year, we opened our first Body Sync shopfront at Toowong.

In 2007, we opened branches at Mt Gravatt and George Street, which allowed us to close the treatment rooms at Tarragindi and convert it to Group Head Office.

In 2008 we opened Clayfield, and in 2009, we opened our Gold Coast store at Southport and a new inner city store at New Farm to replace George Street.

During 2009 however, the GFC hit small business.  We looked on as competitors in the hair removal industry closed their doors, particularly franchisees of one of the larger chains, ever concerned that we could follow. 

To compound this, almost zero unemployment meant that there were no staff available to man the stores we already had.

In hindsight, this all happened at a good time for Reef, as it made us sit down and evaluate what we were trying to achieve.  Glaringly, it was obvious that we were over-servicing the southeast corner with too many branches for a specialty chain like Reef.

For these reasons, only weeks off opening two new branches at Aspley and Robina, we shelved the idea.  It was time to consolidate what we already had. 

Andrew's first decision was an easy one; to set in motion plans to close New Farm after less than a year's trading.

Suggested by the earlier George St experience then proven by New Farm, it was clear that our style wasn't glitzy enough for the CBD.

Also, our staff weren't happy working in the city stores.  It was apparent that the people we connected with best dwelled in suburbia.  And increasingly, the bush.

Ever conscious of his dream a quarter century before, Andrew merged Body Sync and Angel Beach.  He called the new entity Reef Beauty ahead of plans to begin his lifelong project of a health and beauty retreat in the tropical rainforests.

In February 2010, Andrew opened his first regional store in his hometown of Rockhampton.

There, distanced from the daily hustle and bustle of Brisbane, he began developing a strategy for the better servicing of southeast Queensland and for opening up regional branches across Australia.

In August 2010, he moved his office to Yeppoon to begin implementing those strategies.

The Future
Reef is ten years old now.  With leases expiring at every branch, 2011 proved a year of reorganisation.

Early plans to expand have been put on hold in the wake of low retail confidence across Australia.

This has been particularly noticeable on the northside of Brisbane and Gold Coast.

At the same time, frequent vandalism to the Gold Coast store and the high rate of violence brought concerns for staff and client safety to the fore, and it was clear that a presence on the coast was no longer viable.

In March 2011, it was decided to downsize to protect the overall business.  Clayfield was amalgamated with Toowong, and Southport was closed.

In September 2011, Mt Gravatt moved back to our old premises at Tarragindi which are much more suited to our purposes, and in November, we sold the Toowong store so we could focus on a single Brisbane branch.

Our consolidation is finished.  Our focus herein is to expand our range of services and geographical spread rather than replicating stores in the southeast corner.

Direction and Focus
Opening eleven branches in five years earned us the mantle of Australia's fastest growing chain of independent hair removal studios.  It's an honour certainly, but also a burden.  It puts us in a box that we have no wish to placed in, for success has come at a cost. 

Despite Reef's unequalled reputation in the field of Hair Removal, we sacrificed our health modalities to get here.  Health in all its forms; physical, mental, and spiritual, remain at the core of Andrew's passions.

In summary, 2009-2011 was tough for small businesses like ours.  We used the time to catch our breath, consolidate what we have, and to learn a few lessons about business.

We're cautiously optimistic that we've found the right balance between service, price, product, professionalism, and customer satisfaction, however we always keep a vigilant eye on the past.

It's not so long ago that we were just a concept, an idea jotted down by a teenage youth on a beach a quarter century ago, and we never lose sight of those beginnings.

©2001-2012 Body Sync Group Pty Ltd trading as Reef Beauty. ABN 59 120 491 116. A Keppel Net website.