Buzz the doorbell at 227 E. 81st St. to enter a cozy salon with red leather chairs, state-of-the-art equipment and the soothing aroma of peppermint oil.
A white curtain covers the window, while colorful stickers obscure the glass front door.
It’s not a spa discreetly tucked inside, but a Licenders hair salon, where parents of lice-infested kids can pay roughly $250 a child to turn the nitpicking over to a pro.
A generation ago, lice meant a stealthy trip to the pharmacy for a bottle of foul-smelling insecticide and a special comb to remove tiny lice eggs, called nits.
Now, New York families afflicted with lice are outsourcing to Licenders and Hair Fairies salons, or a growing roster of local “lice ladies” who make house calls or work out of their homes.
“There’s a comfort in knowing the pros will do it, versus taking a chance with an over-the-counter shampoo,” said New York City mom Ivy, who asked that her last name not be used.
Business is booming for lice-removal entrepreneurs. With up to 12 million lice infestations plaguing America’s kids every year, the market is huge. And lice — tiny parasites that feed off human blood — never take a vacation; “every month is head lice prevention month!” proclaims headlice.org.
Add on last year’s reports of drug-resistant super-lice, and it’s enough to send any parent scurrying for professional help—especially now that Maria Botham, founder of Hair Fairies with annual sales of $3.75 million, has petitioned for some insurance plans to cover the service.
The total market for lice-removal salons, services and related products is estimated at more than $4 billion a year and is growing fast.
Appealing to families wary of chemical pesticides, Licenders, Hair Fairies, and New Jersey-based Fairy Tales Hair Care are hawking treatments with natural ingredients, like marshmallow root, that sound more at home on an herbal tea menu than in an exterminator’s arsenal.
Kings Pharmacy in Tribeca sold out of Fairy Tales’ rosemary-scented lice repellent hairspray, at $12 a bottle, last month when head lice infested the students at a nearby school.
Licenders, with sales of nearly $2 million a year, is scouting for salon locations in Boerum Hill and Park Slope, Brooklyn, as well as in New Jersey, to add to its base of two Manhattan salons and one on Long Island. Hair Fairies, which has one NYC location and 10 more nationwide, plans new salons on the Upper West Side, in Scarsdale, NY, and Hoboken, NJ, and five more next year. Fairy Lice Mothers just opened its third Long Island salon.
“There’s room for growth,” said Hair Fairies’ Botham.
The success of salons and lice ladies, including Brooklyn’s legendary Orthodox Jewish lice removal pros, inspired Emma Richman to launch Lice Erasers last year in Long Island City. She charges $225 to delouse long hair, and is developing an holistic lice-removal treatment line.