Melvin Durai
The service sector of the global economy keeps growing in unexpected ways. Every big city has thousands of businesses that offer a wide variety of services. In Shenzhen, China, for example, you can walk into one store to get your hair styled, another store to get your nails polished, and a third store to get your body scratched. Then you can go on a date with the cute person you met on Tinder, feeling confident that you have perfect hair and nails, and no itch to be scratched at an inopportune moment. You may be wondering if an itch-scratching store actually exists in Shenzhen or if I’m just making things up, as I’m fond of doing. In fact, two itch-scratch ing stores exist in Shenzhen, the southeastern city near Hong Kong. They employ six scratchers and are doing so well financially that it wouldn’t surprise me if scratching becomes a recognized profession around the world in a decade or two. Parent: “Guess what? My daughter is going to scratching school. She has always enjoyed scratching, ever since she was little.” Second parent: “Oh wow! Congratulations! My daughter is going to be a writer. Very similar.” First parent: “Similar?”
Second parent: “Yes, they will both be scratching out a living.” The two itch-scratching stores in Shenzhen, branded as Suma, were opened by Zhang Xiaoqiao, a 32-year-old entrepreneur. According to an article in the South China Morning Post, he opened his first store in May and the second in June, earning about 100,000 yuan (Rs 14 lakh) per month from both outlets. The setting is like a massage parlour, with customers lying face down on beds and getting scratched all over by staff wearing extra-long pointed nails.
Customers can make specific requests, pointing out itchy spots that need to be scratched. The staff try to accommodate these requests, though they may occasionally say, “Not there! You don’t pay me enough to scratch there!” Suma charges customers 300 yuan (Rs 4,221) per hour, promoting scratching as a way to reduce stress and improve sleep quality. All of Suma’s employees are female, young and pretty. And quite coincidentally, about 70% of Suma’s customers are male. “Some customers have said our service is more relaxing than a massage, leading to a strong base of returning clients,” Xiaoqiao said. He did not say if clients return to the same scratcher as they had before. Perhaps they write reviews like this: “Zihan has an MS degree (master of scratching) and has done more scratching than a lottery addict.
You have not been scratched until you have been scratched by Zihan.” How did Xiaoqiao get the idea for this business? Well, he probably went to business school, where they teach aspiring entrepreneurs how to start something from scratch. But he didn’t get into the scratch business right away. He was involved in e-commerce and we-media (citizen journalism) before stumbling upon an online video showing a woman scratching her husband’s itches. He read the comments and found a number of people saying they would pay to have someone scratch them. He also remembered his father scratching his back as a child and how comforting it felt. That’s when it struck him that he could provide a scratching service to people, so they don’t have to rely on spouses and parents, many of whom draw limits on how long and how widely they are willing to scratch. Xiaoqiao hopes to eventually open 100 outlets across China, believing that he’s only just scratching the surface.
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