Economics of Love: Valentine's Day Personal Care Spending Trends

Zachary Stewart|May 31, 2024

While the origins of Valentine’s Day are actually a bit obscure, the holiday has become quite the cultural and commercial phenomenon. Valentine’s Day gives us yet another reason to celebrate and show our affection to those who mean the most to us (even though we should be doing that every day). While you may or may not participate in the usual festivities for this fine finance-boosting holiday, there are some interesting metrics you should see, as a business owner, when it comes to Valentine’s Day. Take a look at some of these findings that the Vagaro Team identified through market research:

In 2023, the estimated spend on personal care services or products for Valentine’s Day alone reached nearly $26 billion (that’s about $80 per person in the US). Why does it matter? Well, with all business generally slowing down in the winter¹, Valentine’s Day is a great way keep up the momentum, and even temporarily increase your take-home revenue, in some cases. There’s also a steady +8.4% increase of Valentine’s Day-related searches on Google, year over year, proving that Valentine’s Day is only growing more popular as the use of online shopping & booking becomes more prevalent. If you’re ready for your own slice of the Valentine’s Day pie but aren’t sure where to begin, Vagaro’s Online Store feature is a great place to start.

Offering gift cards through your Online Store is an excellent way to instantly boost your revenue as a business owner in any industry. Here’s how: When a client purchases a gift card from you, you receive those funds immediately—even if said client chooses to never use the gift card they purchased. In fact, over $2 billion was spent on Valentine’s Day-related gift cards in 2022. Quite a bit, right? Well, check out these gift card stats²:

About $3 billion worth of gift cards go unused every year (not just specifically the ones purchased for Valentine’s-related gifts)
Nearly 51% of US consumers have unused gift cards, vouchers, or store credits
In 2021, the unused gift card market was valued at $15.6 billion

That translates to immediate money in your pocket with the potential of never having to put forth the expense of carrying out the actual service. Gift cards also provide an effective way to organically market your business as clients introduce their loved ones, the gift recipients, to your business. Speaking of driving traffic to your business…

While the season of love is often a time for pampering your significant other, it also opens the door for numerous tandem or partner-based services, which means more new clients for you. In 2023, for example, there were over 300k Google searches for “Couples Massage Near Me” just in January & February. The Vagaro Marketplace even saw a 50% spike for the “Couples Massage” search query.

Pro Tip:

You can list your business on the Vagaro Marketplace free of charge, allowing you to be discoverable by over 24 million potential clients!

Clearly, Valentine’s Day provides an excellent opportunity for you to boost your business’s revenue in the beginning of the year, as well as drive traffic to the services or products you offer. With these statistics on a steady rise each year, there’s no reason for you to not cash in on it.

If you’re a business owner or professional in search of software that can flex, scale, and grow with your business, then you should explore the possibilities of a complimentary 30-day trial with Vagaro—the software that backs your success at every step!

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