The concept for what would eventually become Seva® originated back in the late 1990’s during a trip to the Little India neighborhood of Devon Street in Chicago, IL.

Serial entrepreneur Vas Maniatis was left pondering his fate while his then girlfriend and now wife of 12 years, told him she wanted to get her eyebrows threaded at a local shop. Not caring the least about eyebrows and practically running away at the though of needles (there’s no needles), Vas reluctantly agreed to accompany her to get her brows done.

“I remember walking into this spartan little storefront on Devon and it was packed. As I looked around, I saw salon chairs filling the entire circumference of the shop and each and every chair was occupied by a woman having her eyebrows threaded. In a matter of minutes and with what looked like hands and arms and a spool of thread dancing to some peculiar rhythm, the customer would get up with amazing looking eyebrows. All in less than 5 minutes! I was mesmerized!"

Sidenote: Till this point, I don’t believe I had ever noticed anyone’s eyebrows other than perhaps being distracted by Andy Rooney’s two caterpillars clinging to his forehead while watching 60 minutes.

That day, I realized that I had just witnessed one of those rare cultural gems hiding here in the USA right under our noses... eyebrows. I knew right then and there that this magnificent and ancient technique needed to be exposed and disseminated outside of the Indian community.

Fast forward to 2007. The Threading idea continued fomenting in my brain when the first waves of Threading kiosks began opening in the malls throughout the country. At around the same time, I sold a real estate company I had founded, and did some travelling with my now wife and our two children. After about a year of getting the travel bug out of our system, we returned to the US refreshed, renewed and ready to give our Threading venture the attention it was beckoning for.

We researched the market and looked at the mall model which had now grown fairly quickly. We came to the conclusion that the malls were great for disseminating the Threading technique, but that the mall model had a couple serious flaws. First, malls were terribly inconvenient. Although ok for the first round of hair removal, they were highly inconvenient for recurring visits by the customer. Second, was the fact that the mall kiosks offered no privacy to the customer. Customers felt uncomfortable sitting in an open kiosk in the middle of the mall while someone removed their facial hair.

So we began exploring alternate locations to the mall. We needed a location that would allow us to give Threading maximum exposure without sacrificing convenience and privacy. It was a no-brainer: Within retail environments such as Walmart. 30,000 plus customers per week entered a typical retailer such as Walmart on a recurring basis. Most importantly, the retail environment could offer an unparalleled one-stop-shop convenience to the customer.

In 2008, Simply Eyebrows opened its pilot store within a newly minted Walmart in Indianapolis, IN. It was a test for both Simply Eyebrows and Walmart. Fortunately, it was an immediate success. In fact, 3 ½ years later, our little 400 square foot pilot store now serves more than 1000 customers per week!

In 2009, we began a purposeful slow, organic growth and began to open Simply Eyebrows in more States and within other retailers. They continued to be highly successful.

In late 2009-early 2010, Simply Eyebrows realized the need to expand our service offerings beyond Threading, as well as the need to grow nationwide. We rebranded our Walmart-based stores under the trade name Seva, which means "To Serve Selflessly", and expanded our menu of services to include conventional hair removal such as waxing, as well as nail and spa services. Our Simply Eyebrows locations continued to expand within other retailers and non-retail environments outside of Walmart.

Mid-2010 marked our initial franchise offering and nationwide expansion plans for Seva. We currently operate in 9 States with plans to grow both nationally and internationally.

Thus Seva was born.

Vas and Sonal Maniatis

Seva founders

The Seva® Mantra:

To live up to our name Seva which means, To Serve Selflessly. To honor our core values: Honesty, Loyalty, Skill. And as always, To Fulfill Your Beauty Destiny™.