Networking gets a makeover with Crave parties

Entrepreneur Melody Biringer doesn't need to scramble through the old boy network to drum up work. She's developed something she believes is better: Call it her new women's network.

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The Marysville woman knew from her own experience that girls don't just wanna have fun, that they want to do business. She knew that making the right contacts is key to success, but that successful women find it hard to find time to pamper themselves. Biringer's idea was to kick the concept of a "spa night" into a whole other galaxy.

She created what she calls her Crave parties. Women pay a $35 "cover charge" to come in their pajamas to a designated swanky location, eat dinner, sip champagne and nibble chocolate-covered strawberries. Attendees also indulge in low-cost body treatments such as massages, waxing, image consulting, manicures and pedicures, acupuncture, facials and henna tattoos. There is a two service minimum for attendees.

But the events aren't all about paid pampering. Biringer orchestrates networking exercises so that the participants can get to know each other -- and each other's business. One game involves trading cards with business and personal wants and needs. A massage therapist and accountant swapped their services, for example. One woman even traded dog walking for cruising the San Juans in a boat.

"Women are such natural networkers," she says, "business happens because of that."

In fact it was Biringer's own ability to network that saved her initial venture into the spa business.

Biringer, 41, is among the third generation of the Biringer Farms berry family. Two years ago, she started Immerse. The business concept was to take the fast-growing market for spa services and spa products into women's homes via spa parties -- think Tupperware parties but with foot massages and body lotions.

Her first spa parties didn't go as she wanted: She'd have them in people's homes, and many hostesses wanted to give them but would never get around to cleaning the house or getting their act together to get people there.

Finally Biringer dug out her little black book of friends and contacts and created the Crave concept.

Biringer said the Crave parties came about mainly because she was so involved in the berry business that her only friends were her employees.