PHOTO: Glowbar owner Rachel Liverman, left, shown here with her mother, esthetics school CEO An Hinds, has opened a Glowbar shop in Chestnut Hill. Photo by Bryan McGonigle
Rachel Liverman grew up in Newton, moved to the Big Apple and became an entrepreneur and came back to help give Newton some glow.
Liverman owns Glowbar, a chain of skincare spas with shops sprawled across the north Atlantic coast from Massachusetts to Maryland, and held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sunday afternoon at Glowbar’s new Chestnut Hill location.
“You’re bringing jobs to people and to Newton—Hooray!” Mayor Ruthanne Fuller, who attended Sunday’s ribbon-cutting, said proudly to Liverman. “And I love women-owned businesses.”
‘In my DNA’
Skincare isn’t just a passion for Liverman—it’s a family tradition.
Her grandmother, Catherine Hinds, started the first fully accredited esthetics school in America, near Boston in 1977.
Liverman’s mom, An Hinds, took over that school in 2001 and continues to grow and modernize the business.
“Skincare is in my DNA,” Liverman said, waving to friends and community supporters mingling in the Glowbar foyer.
So after graduating from Newton North High School and Tulane University in New Orleans, Liverman moved to New York and built a career in esthetics.
The pandemic pause
In 2019, she launched Glowbar. Nine months later, the world shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic. So she had to navigate how to reopen a facial spa business during a time when people were social-distancing, in the most heavily populated city in America.
“So I shut down and we were able to reopen six months later—I worked with the governor’s office on this—and now we’ve grown. This is our 15th location,” Liverman said.
Fuller remarked on the difficulty of building a business during a global health emergency.
“Your resilience during those pandemic years, where I’m sure in-person hands-on was so difficult,” Fuller said to Liverman. “We are glowing with pride that you’re back here in Newton.”
What’s at Glowbar
Liverman still lives in New York, but her family still lives in Newton so her Chestnut Hill store is sure to get lots of love.
“My grandmother pioneered skincare, and I’m reinventing it,” Liverman said. “Facials are too long, they’re too expensive, and I wanted to make something easier.”
Glowbar offers a 30-minute $75 facial and a monthly membership—with one facial a month—which knocks that down to $60 per facial.
There’s no “service menu” to pick from because each facial is tailored to a guest’s needs at the time of the appointment. Treatments include extraction, microcurrents, light chemical peels, LED facials and more.
Newton is Glowbar’s first location in Massachusetts. Liverman plans to open another store in the Back Bay later in August.