Associated Skin Care Professionals Launched to Serve Estheticians in Booming Market

Associated Skin Care Professionals (ASCP) was launched to address the insurance and business needs of skin care therapists, whose numbers have grown to 145,000 in recent years.

ASCP is the nation's first and largest organization devoted solely to insuring and professionally supporting practitioners, instructors, and students in the skin care profession. It is a spinoff of, and sister company to, Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals (ABMP), an organization with a 20-year track record serving massage therapy professionals.

"As ABMP, we added skin care therapists to our ranks ten years ago when we learned many massage therapists were gaining additional licensure in esthetics," ASCP President Katie Armitage says. "Our skin care membership has since grown to 5,000 across 50 states, and we kept hearing from members and future members they wanted a professional organization of their own."

ASCP provides members affordable liability insurance, business-building tools, and the bimonthly Skin Deep magazine, which doubles in size with the February/March ASCP rollout issue.

"We met estheticians face to face at trade shows, through surveys, focus groups, visits with educators, and discussions with the profession's movers and shakers," Armitage says. "We are acting upon what we learned." Skin care professionals now have a complete, convenient resource for affordable liability insurance, news on what's happening in the field, a voice in the profession, networking opportunities, and business-building advice and tools.

"ASCP has been built to insure, engage, educate, and encourage active, practicing skin care professionals who are passionate about their work," Armitage says. "For that reason, we are offering members a special 2007 referral rewards program to help spread the good news."

ASCP members can win a free year's membership by sharing the ASCP story with friends and colleagues. When five new members join ASCP during 2007 and give the recruiting member's name or member ID on their application, the recruiting member wins a free year of liability coverage and the many other benefits of belonging to ASCP.
Among those benefits is the expanded Skin Deep, which has grown from 16 to 32 pages with the February/March issue to bring members news on the latest products, trends, legislation, techniques and tools, marketing and practice advice, success stories, and a trade show calendar. Members will continue to receive Body Sense magazine to help clients with advice on leading healthier, more confident lives.

For more information about ASCP, visit www.ascpskincare.com or call 1-800-789-0411. Headquartered in Evergreen, Colo., founding organization ABMP has a 20-year track record as a membership association and is the largest massage membership organization in the nation, with more than 57,000 members.