Chinese man earns $15,000 a month scratching customers' backs

A 32-year-old Chinese entrepreneur is drawing attention after building a business around scratching customers' itches — literally — earning $15,000 a month in the process.

According to the South China Morning Post on Thursday (local time), Zhang Xiaochao, 32, from Hubei province in central China, opened a dedicated back-scratching shop called Suma in Bao'an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong province, in early May. Within a month, he opened a second location in Futian District, and the two shops together now generate 100,000 yuan ($14,900) in monthly sales.

The setup resembles a massage parlor. Customers lie face-down on a bed with a face hole cut out while staff, wearing specially made long, pointed artificial nails, gently scratch their bodies.

Staff scratch wherever customers feel the itch and use humor to help them relax. The service aims to relieve stress and improve sleep quality. The rate is 300 yuan per hour, or about $41.

Zhang developed effective scratching techniques from scratch, as no such nail-based service existed before. The business has already turned profitable, he said.

About 70 percent of customers are men and 30 percent are women.

"People in big cities generally have high stress levels, and demand for this kind of service is strong," Zhang told a media outlet. "Some customers tell us our service is more relaxing than a massage, and we already have many regulars."

Zhang's path to success was far from smooth. After graduating from a little-known university, he changed jobs seven times in a single year. In his late 20s, he launched two cross-border e-commerce platforms, both of which failed. Two years ago, he ventured into new media and took a significant financial hit.

The turning point came last year when he stumbled across a short video on social media showing a wife scratching her husband's back. The comment section was flooded with people saying they would pay to have it done every day. The clip also brought back a childhood memory of drifting off to sleep as his father gently scratched his back.

"I get asked a lot whether back-scratching can really be a proper profession," Zhang said, adding that he plans to expand to 100 locations nationwide and hopes to establish nail-scratching as a widely recognized career.

Online reactions in China were largely positive — one user asked whether Zhang was taking apprentices and expressed interest in opening a franchise in Shanghai, while another said the idea sounded genuinely relaxing and therapeutic. Some were more skeptical, however, questioning whether enough people would really pay 300 yuan for a single back-scratching session.