Service at your door

They'll examine your animals, teach you to cook, spiff up your car. ... And the list of come-to-you help just gets longer.

by By Tanya Barrientos, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER, Inquirer

Published Feb. 4, 2007, 12:00 a.m. ET

It's a foggy Sunday morning and Debbie McCarty has brewed a fresh pot of coffee and set out an apple cake from the Melrose Diner because her 10-year-old cat, Nora, is about to get a veterinary checkup.

It's 9:25 a.m., five minutes before the appointment, and there is no pet carrier in sight, no jingle-jangle of car keys, no panic-stricken meowing - just McCarty leaning out the front door of her South Philly rowhouse welcoming veterinarian Wendy Zimmerman.

On the steps Zimmerman stands, carrying an ice chest filled with needles and vaccines, a scale, and a shoe box containing other medications. This is Zimmerman's door-to-door clinic, the take-it-to-the-customer business she started 19 months ago.

Personal attention like this used to be just for the super-rich.

But that was before Internet consumers got used to books, CDs, clothes, wine, furniture, and all sorts of other products being delivered directly to their doorsteps. Now, living the good life in your own living room is becoming more popular, and more populist.

So it may come as no surprise that entrepreneurs like Zimmerman have decided to take the notion of convenience one step further by bulding businesses entirely on bringing personal, pampering services into people's homes.

Yoga sessions, fine jewelry shopping, manicures and pedicures. Cooking classes from a bona fide chef taught in your own kitchen. Personal fitness training, nutrition counseling, and car detailing performed in your driveway.

Those things are already here, or coming to the Philadelphia area soon.

"We met Wendy last June when our cat Misty was diagnosed with chronic renal failure," says McCarty, 54. As she speaks she unfurls a blue bath towel over her stainless steel kitchen cart, instantly converting it into an examination table.

Zimmerman sets up her scales beside a cat-print apron dangling from a cat-shaped hook on the kitchen wall. Over the sink, the swinging tail of a cat clock ticks the minutes away.

"I used to work at a clinic, and the receptionist would always ask me if I knew a vet who made house calls, and I didn't," says Zimmerman, 31, who runs her business from her home in Chester Springs. "When I was working in an office, I felt everything was always so high-paced and impersonal. You only had 10 or 15 minutes to assess the animal. I felt very ungratified."

At McCarty's house, Zimmerman takes her sweet time, particularly since Nora is the only cat that is not hiding under the bed. Angel, Chloe and Suzi are too nervous to venture out.

"Wendy will crawl under the bed, whatever it takes, however long it takes," McCarty says with a smile. For her, Zimmerman's minimum $80 fee (lab work and meds are extra, and there's a discount for multiple pets) is worth it, given that Zimmerman's visits last at least an hour.

Two days and three hours earlier, Adam and Stephanie Rosenfarb were working out with personal trainer Damien Young in the privacy of their Radnor basement.

Young shows up twice a week at 6:30 a.m. to lead the couple through two hours of cardio and strength training.

Young, the chief executive officer of Stay Young Fitness, is a former Marine who 11 years ago started offering personal training, nutrition advice, massage, yoga, kickboxing, and weight-loss counseling in customers' homes. At first, he says, only the very rich sought his services. But now, his client roster (about 100 people) is filled with white-collar professionals willing to pay $200 to $400 a month for at-home attention.

In fact, he says, business is so good he has 12 trainers on staff.

"We bring exercise balls, dumbbells, kickboxing pads, everything," Young says. "You'd be surprised how much we can get done in a 6-by-6 space."

Pampering at home is a trend that business experts expect will expand, particularly services devoted to making life easier, sweeter and better-looking.

Body Klinic's Mobile Spa, headquartered in Manayunk and Center City, will bring massage, facials and reflexology to an individual, a wedding or a birthday party at your house, or hotel suite, for a cool $100 to $150 an hour per person.

Chef Brian Duffy, who owns Shanachie Irish Pub & Restaurant in Ambler, will teach groups of eight how to cook in a plain or fancy home kitchen ($100 to $250 per person).

"I have lots of people who have remodeled their kitchens and put in all these new appliances and don't know how to use them," he says.

And beginning in June, Tamika Hardy, who already has a booming at-home manicure/pedicure business in Manhattan, will bring her company, aptly called Come to You, to Philly. Sixty-four bucks will get you a mani, $124 and up a pedi.

Craiger Drake, president of Craig Drake Manufacturing, a Philadelphia firm known for jewelry made with high-end diamonds and other precious gems, says his clients' lives are so busy it's just smart businesses to make convenience a priority.

"I'll travel to London or Miami or the Bahamas, wherever the client is, and take a selection for their convenience," he says. "If we are making something custom, it needs to be right, and this way people can see the piece in their own environment. They can look at the necklace, for example, with the dress they intend to wear."

Drake says he's taken sketches of original designs to clients' homes if "for example, a client wants his wife to be involved in the upgrade of her engagement ring, but he doesn't understand exactly what she wants."

Or, he says, "a lot of clients will be buying a necklace to wear to their daughter's wedding, and they don't want to drag the dress into the store."

While Drake's business is far from a one-man show, many of the bring-it-to-you enterprises are small companies with one, or a handful, of employees.

Bob Judge, regional spokesman for the U.S. Small Business Administration, said the service sector is growing fast, and in Pennsylvania alone small firms with fewer than 100 employees make up 96 percent of all businesses.

On the greasier side of convenience commerce sits Todd Avery, the owner of Showroom Elegance, a business that details cars in customers' driveways.

Avery, who has been in the car business for 25 years, says he started his mobile cleaning company in 2004 after noticing that customers coming to the shop where he worked often complained about having to drop off their vehicles, arrange for alternative transportation, and then come back to pick up their cars.

Now he cleans everything from Ferraris to soccer-mom minivans at his customers' homes.

Recently, Avery found himself wiping, washing, and touching up an emerald green 1994 Dodge Viper that Jon Florell of Downingtown bought six months ago over the Internet.

Depending on just how precise an owner wants the detailing, Avery says he will spend from three to seven hours refurbishing the ride.

"My wife and I love it," says Florell, 40. "He takes his time, he treats whatever car he's working on like it's his own."

Florell, who sells Fuller Brush products on QVC, believes businesses coming to consumers' homes is the wave of the future.

"I honestly think America is going in that direction," he says. "Which is sort of funny, isn't it? Seeing as how the Fuller Brush man used to come to your house, and then that disappeared.

"Now, with dual-income families, and the lack of time, the convenience of a service coming to your house is coming back."