Mountain Body
Photography: Mark Maziarz
Most window shoppers who walk by Main Street’s Mountain Body Cosmetic Deli & Spa end up inside, drawn by their senses, as though the place sold fresh caramels or hand-dipped chocolates. It’s a strange draw for a store that doesn’t actually sell anything edible, but the way Mountain Body products are displayed, you have to remind yourself not to taste the merchandise.
Colorful handmade soaps, for example, are cut into round cheese-like blocks and come in slices wrapped in deli paper. A salad bar-like station offers fresh masques and scrubs on ice accompanied by “to-go” containers. Body butters come shaped in pats.
Many shoppers are delighted to discover that the wholesome, delicious Mountain Body image matches many of the realities of the company’s line of products. Start with the fact that the company comes from a mother/daughter collaboration. Diane Fisher and Nylene O’Neal opened the store in 1996, with the idea of creating a spa (the store continues to offer treatments such as massages, wraps and facials) and a retail outlet for high-end body products. But after nine months in business, O’Neal says the featured product line from Aspen, Colorado couldn’t refill Mountain Body’s orders fast enough to keep up with business. The two women decided to start making their own products to sell in the store.
We realized that natural skin care was a niche that wasn’t being filled in Park City,” O’Neal says. “We’ve made our own product line ever since then.” The move to manufacturing created the business that exists today, which operates with the Deli & Spa as a “flagship” store for the line.
The Fisher and O’Neal team consulted with chemists and botanists and initial products were born. “But for the most part, we just used foods,” explains O’Neal. “We actually use fresh fruits in our products, like fresh strawberry chunks as well as fresh-pressed fruit rind oil.” The all-natural ingredient list includes shea and cocoa butter, sugar, sea salt, essential oils, vegetable extracts, cocoa and honey. Mountain Body’s products are preservative- and additive-free, one of the reasons the line has grown exponentially.
Hundreds of spas and salons around the world have added Mountain Body products to their offerings, which prompted the company to move its manufacturing operations to a larger facility. The production facility in Kamas offers Mountain Body 3,600 square feet of production space, a much-needed change from the old 700-square-foot plant. The factory is more organized than ever before and production is up, reports Fisher. The new space has helped Mountain Body satisfy wholesale orders from the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salons, the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, Treasure Island Hotel & Casino and Mandara Spas. “We have a particular standard for who sells our product line,” says O’Neal. “You wouldn’t just find us anywhere.”
The Main Street spa and shop allows Mountain Body to test new items and field customer responses before adding products to its wholesale catalog. And, the store serves as an alluring, vibrant, fragrant advertisement. “Because of our flagship store, the visitors who come to Park City from all over the world help spread the word about our products,” Fisher says. What could be sweeter?
Mountain Body is located at 608 Main Street. 655.9342.
Lucy Burningham is a Salt Lake City-based freelance writer, who, in the process of researching this story, became addicted to Mountain Body's lavender and tangerine sugar scrub.
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