LONDON — Prai Beauty is taking its specialist skincare to a latest level, opening what often is the industry’s first neck bar at Marks & Spencer, offering services comparable to yoga, massage and skin consultations using a handheld device.

The Neck Bar has opened at M&S Leeds White Rose, with more to come back across the country. The opening of the stand-alone bars is a milestone for Prai, which until now had only offered hands-on services, comparable to “neckcials,” through pop-ups at M&S, and on Princess, Carnival and Seabourn cruise ships.

The services at M&S are free and complement Prai’s already robust business at the shop. The Prai Beauty Ageless Throat & Decolletage Crème, which retails for 26.99 kilos, has long been a top seller on the retailer’s beauty hall, and across all the M&S business.  

Cathy Kangas, a former beauty executive who founded Prai in 1999, has for many years focused on improving the skin under the chin, which she believes is commonly unloved, and undervalued.

In an interview, Kangas said the neck ages 20 times faster than the face since it accommodates no oil glands which act as a cushion.  

While Kangas originally founded Prai to assist the 50-plus crowd, she said she’s now seeing “a surge of younger ladies customers. They’re affected by ‘tech neck.’ And that’s not a surprise. I feel we’re our digital devices a median of 226 times a day.”

The M&S Neck Bar offers customers a personalised consultation from a “Neck-Xpert” team, which has been trained by Prai’s brand education consultant and neck yoga specialists, Luminous Yoga. The “neckcials” use products from Prai’s Ageless Throat & Decolletage collection.

Those experts also use a Prai-branded ionic micro current device that retails for 50 kilos. That device targets slackening skin on the neck and jowls by delivering electrical impulses meant to spice up circulation, increase the skin’s oxygen uptake, and boost glow.

“Necks are so specific,” Kangas said. “They’ve their very own texture and require their very own technology.” She said the 30-day trials conducted late last 12 months showed that Prai’s products fight sagging, lack of elasticity and wrinkles.

Prai has been refining its neck bar concept for years via pop-ups at M&S. The Neck Bar at Marble Arch offers personalized skin evaluation using a handheld skin analyzer that measures hydration and depth of wrinkles on the neck and decolletage.

The brand also has pop-ups on cruise ships which have been driving sales to retailers starting from Boots within the U.K. to JCPenney and HSN within the U.S. Prai is consistently among the many top-selling skincare brands on HSN.

Next January, Prai plans to open a everlasting neck bar on Sun Princess, the most important cruise ship in Europe which has a guest capability of 4,300. It’ll also launch on QVC. Later this 12 months, the brand will launch at 200 Waitrose supermarkets within the U.K. while the upbeat, charismatic Kangas might be selling the brand via the M&S live shopping channel.