Removing lice is big business for Maryland pair
Mayland lice removal business can get the job done (for good)
Maybe it’s not the very worst call that you can get from your kid’s school, but it is a plenty bad one. “Your kid has lice.”
But Lice Happens, which also happens to be the name of an Annapolis, Md., lice-removal company operated by two intrepid nitpickers.
Next-door neighbours M.J. Eckert, 53, and Nancy Fields, 51, run the sprawling business — they have specialists from Connecticut to North Carolina — from their small condo in an office park.
Eckert and Fields have ambitions to go national. They have four franchises throughout the East Coast.
The barrier to entry?
“There is a huge ‘ick’ factor,” Eckert said.
The business started over some champagne on New Year’s Eve in 2009, when Fields was telling Eckert, a school nurse at the time, about her sister’s two children, who had lice.
“Nancy was trying to help her sister, and she was picking the lice out with her fingernails and putting them in the sink and pouring hydrogen peroxide on them to kill them. She had no idea what she was doing. I said, ‘I know how to take care of this. I’m a school nurse.’”
Fields, a computer geek, suggested there was a business in lice removal.
At 10 a.m. the next day, New Year’s Day, the two were in Eckert’s living room, pounding on their laptops, researching lice removal, looking up products. They wrote a basic business plan.
Eckert knew that the most effective way to get rid of the bugs is to comb them out.
“I combed it out of kids at school. I nitpicked. The term ‘nitpick’ means pulling the nits, which are the eggs, off of the hair shaft. They are glued on. The mother secretes a quick-hardening glue. The eggs stick on the shaft like superglue.”
The Lice Happens specialists first apply treatment foam to the child’s hair. This loosens nits. Then they meticulously comb eggs off and wipe the comb on a paper towel, which is then folded up and placed in a sealed plastic bag and removed from the home.
“We combed 2-by-2-inch sections until we had done the whole head. We clear a section, clip it and go on to the next section.”
In a few months, the business started picking up. They both kept full-time jobs and made their lice appointments after work. They even nitpicked clients during lunch hour at Fields’ kitchen table.
They raked in $100,000 in revenue in their first year. That amount tripled the next year and kept rising until it reached nearly $700,000 in 2012.
The nitpicking business is in no danger of disappearing. Every lice-ridden head has male and female lice, Eckert said.
“They mate, and once the female is pregnant, she is pregnant for life. She lays about six to 10 eggs a day.”
Lice Happens has 13 specialists who visit the homes. The average Lice Happens appointment brings in about $320. They even have a 24-hour hotline, although they
I nitpicked. The term “nitpick” means pulling the nits, which are the eggs, off of the hair shaft. They are glued on. The mother secretes a quickhardening glue.
don’t make middle-of-the-night calls.
“We work our butts off,” Eckert said.
It hasn’t been all smooth going. There was the elderly man who had a lice infestation — under his hairpiece. One woman started unzipping her pants in front of Eckert, who suggested the woman see a gynecologist. Head lice, Eckert said, never travel lower than the scalp.
The most famous case involved a 17-year-old girl who had lice for eight years. As they combed her hair, mountains of the little critters tumbled off the comb.
“Her mother kept calling to thank us for changing her child’s life,” Eckert said.
Lice have changed the lives of Eckert and Fields, too, for the better. They are getting rich.