March 20, 2017

Meet Travis Peters of Melt in Melt of Los Angeles County

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Travis Peters.

Travis, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
It all started about 17 years ago. I was an aspiring entrepreneur since the age of 14. Since 14, I began looking at the world differently and trying to find an improvement for anything and everything I came across. I would see a street light out of service and challenge myself to come up with a way to never let that happen again. I thought, with all of the technology in this world, how could a street light just stop working and why hasn’t someone created a solution for this! I did this every day with nearly everything that I came in contact with. To this day, I keep a journal of original ideas, improvements to original ideas, and supplemental services to original ideas… I keep it with me and add to it, everywhere I go.

I was a hard worker. I worked since about the age of 12. My first job was a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant in my home town, Leominster, MA. I went on to work in several different industries doing several different jobs (grocery bag boy, cashier, landscaper, pest control tech, customer support, personal banker, salesman, team lead, manager, marketing director) until I finally felt that I had enough knowledge to do something of my own. In my early 20’s, I had moved to Los Angeles and shortly after connected with my first business partner to form my first business venture. It was a technology company that provided legal services to people. I learned a lot from this business – lots of mistakes. We made mistakes in marketing, strategy, management, and pretty much everywhere in between. I had a few other failures after that, which taught me most of what I know today. In fact, I learned more in starting and failing businesses than I did in the 18 months I spent studying in college. To this day, I wish I spent the money that I spent on my education, on starting another business at an earlier age.

About 5 years ago, I launched my first successful business – Ranksharks.com. After 5 years, Ranksharks would go on to become a multi-million dollar marketing company servicing thousands of small to medium sized businesses across the United States. Upon launching Ranksharks, I was exposed to a tremendous amount of stress that I wasn’t used to. The daily challenge of being an active entrepreneur caused many stress related health issues (migraines, muscle pain, etc.) that were new to my body. After seeing doctor after doctor and trying many different medications unsuccessfully, I started going to the spa and getting professional massages 2-3 times a week. I would always leave the spa feeling healthy and rejuvenated. Eventually trips to the spa became too time consuming for my demanding schedule, so I consulted with my long term girlfriend (and Melt business partner) Linda Chau, and we thought, what if the spa could come to you?

After searching tirelessly for a professional massage experience that comes into your home, we hit many dead ends. On the one hand, there were plenty of shady, unlicensed, and potentially dangerous independent massage therapists on websites such as Craigslist, etc. On the other hand, there were a few reputable, licensed companies trying to provide a professional massage experience, so we tried them out. We found that of the professional companies, they all fell short of our expectations. Some would send brand new, seemingly unexperienced massage therapists, others didn’t seem clean, and others had terrible customer service. What really stood out to Linda and I was that all of these companies were difficult to find. With our extensive knowledge in digital marketing, we saw an enormous gap in this multibillion dollar industry that needed to be filled. So on or around the spring of 2015 we began developing a platform that would bring a professional, licensed, insured, background checked, and most importantly – quality checked – massage therapist into your home. Furthermore, when that massage therapist arrives at your home, we’ve created a luxurious experience that is equivalent to that of a 5-star spa.

Although Los Angeles is our home base, Melt has gone on to launch in 7 major US cities and plans on launching in 12 more, by the end of 2017. Our goal is to be able to provide the Melt experience, wherever you are in the United States, by 2020. We are in the process of developing a multimillion dollar app that will connect our customers with Melt in a simple, hassle freeway. The app is set to be released by the end of 2017. In the meantime, our customers can book a massage in any of our 7 major cities, through our website meltondemand.com from 8am-midnight, daily.

Has it been a smooth road?
The road to success has been very challenging, but also very rewarding. Failure was my toughest challenge. It took my quite some time to realize that failure was not a bad thing, but a valuable learning lesson. Each time I failed at something I would get very discouraged and want to give up…. but I never did. Now I look at failure in a completely different light. Failure is a great thing, and we wouldn’t learn without it.

I couldn’t have done what I’ve done without my support system, and now my business partner with Melt – Linda Chau.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Melt – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Melt is an in home, on demand massage service that brings a licensed, background checked, insured, and vetted massage therapist into your home. We stand apart from our competition in 3 ways: quality, affordability, and the customer experience.

Linda and I spent a lot of time visiting and evaluating some of the leaders in the Spa industry when developing and planning for Melt. We learned a lot from visiting places like the Ritz Carlton, The Four Seasons, etc. In the development stages of our business, we had a lot of fun going to different Spa’s and really paying attention to the customer experience. This included what we loved and in some cases, what was missing from the experience. We’re very proud of the brand experience that we’ve developed.

We are cheaper than our legitimate competitors by about 10%. If you take away the unlicensed and less than safe services available in Los Angeles, we come in at about 10% less than the remaining competition. We like to compare our quality of service to that of a Four Seasons Spa, but we are less than half the price.

Unlike any of our competitors, we offer Spa add ons like aromatherapy and hot stone massage.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Los Angeles has changed tremendously in the past 5 years (especially downtown).

Our office has had a downtown L.A. home base since inception so we’ve really been able to grow and adapt with our city, which we love. There’s such an eclectic group of people downtown – In my opinion, downtown is a melting pot within a melting pot.

Of course, the city hasn’t made its best effort to keep up with traffic and parking downtown. Unfortunately for every 5 high rise condo buildings that are built, we see one parking garage pop up… if we’re lucky. Hopefully the city of Los Angeles puts more money into public transportation in the near future (as they are planning).

Parking has been one of the biggest challenges to our business. To combat this challenge, we have partnered with many of the apartment and condo buildings around Los Angeles County to provide our massage therapists with easy in/out access, which in turn creates a better customer experience.

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