excitednewguy

First off, let me say that I have learned quite a bit on here thus far. I appreciate everyones insight, hints, tips, advice, etc. etc.

It has taken me about 2 years to finally start my salon. We are in the process of architectual design, lease finalization, and decided on our beds. I have spoken, in person to a few on here, and have exchanged emails and messages to a few more.

One constant that I have noticed, is that there are several different opinions of the same subjects. One of these is the actual starting, running, and costs of a salon. One thing that I have definitley come to see, is that most of the folks on here who seem to complain or preach "doom and gloom" are "in the middle of nowhere" with their shops, or runnning lower end beds. One thing that I have found from my years of owning and running several small businesses is that location and product are everything! I see some folks crying about customers, money they are not making, etc. etc. Not to be mean or cruel, but after reading about 10,000 posts, I can see why. It took me a long time to go over my business plan, analyze, etc. etc. before I pulled the trigger on this one. I understand now that a lot of the negative posts on here are because of the individual, not the business as a whole. We have discussed operations with another salon here that opened about 25 miles from us, in a less desirable part of town, with less desirable beds than ours, and they have 450 clients in three months. WOW, another person I spoke with has collected 1,500 clients in one year! Now that I know our location is prime and the beds we selected are totally differen than anyone else here, great company, etc. etc., I know we will do great!

Thanks and hope to see, talk more!

CAYENNE2005

What kind of beds did you decide on? Just curious.

caribbeansun01

Hey excitednewguy! Welcome to the exciting tanning industry. You sound like you've taken your time and done your homework. Keep up the good work and stay on top of everything!

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SandiGirl

We love before and after pics.

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excitednewguy

We went with the Soltron line. They are a little more expensive than some, but once we broke down the numbers, there was only about a 200/mnth difference in the lease amount compared to the other beds we were looking at. The looks of the soltrons are entirely different than anything else around here, and NO ONE in town has them. Our closest competition to the East about 4 miles and to the West about a mile, both use ETS Beds, so we are hoping that our beds will set us apart. The other three salons in the area are all three older with tremendously old beds, and two of them have been for sale for a long time now. I actually looked at buying one, but figured out that we could do our own place, with better equipment, and in a much better location for about the same price or less (after we would have replaced their beds). I am hoping to approach these two salons and offer them a low ball amount of money to just buy them out for their client list. We're gonnna wait though, and see how many of them come to us when we open first. I expect a lot of them will come our way.

parrot head

:sarcasm: What kind of a mix did you go with? I also have the Soltron beds. I have been open for a little over a year now and my customers really love the beds. I too. chose the beds because they were different, with trendy color combinations. The only issue I have with Soltron is service. Altrough nothing serious has happened with the equipment, the service after the sale is slow in coming.:angry: You have to jump through hoops in order to get any warantee things covered. Watch out for your acrylics and the fact that they tend to spider-web crack. All 10 of my beds are cracked and the cracks have now worked their way to the surface of the acrylic. Looks like **** and the customers can see and feel the rough surface. These acrylics are being replaced by Soltron. I have been waiting for four months now for the claim to be rectified. I don't know who your distributor is, but a good ditsey will make a difference in getting things done. In my opinon the equipment is good, but their service sucks. I am located just 80 miles from the home office of Soltron and I have to get my service through my distributor, who's 2000 miles away. It just doesn't make any sense.

excitednewguy

Yeah, I have heard a thing or two about the acrylics spider cracking. Hopefully it will not happen here, but if it does, I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it. Sounds scary, yours are cracking after just one year. My dist is about three hours from me, don't know if that makles a difference or not. They talk a big game, but we will have to see what happens after the sale.

We did:

1 Shark

1 Genie

2 Hot Peppers

3 Seadash Base Beds

Decided to hold off on the stand up for now. We will see how may folks ask for it and go from there. We wanted to save room for an Airbrush Tech, not going to do a machine, too expensive and most folks like the individual attention from a tech. Plus we can do a 70/30 split with the tech and they take care of all of their materials, so it's free money for us. Or we will rent the room out per month, depending on who comes around.

Where are you located. Send me a private message so we can talk more.

parrot head

I have 4 touchdown base beds, 4 hot peppers ( you're going to wish you had more of these), 1 wave and a Super sonic suncapsule. I bought a used magic tan, but shoud have saved my money and put another base bed in the room.

mbris

I thought I could wait on the stand-up, but customers were begging for it. I found a Suncapsule 10 Min. 54 lamp on Flea-Bay. Customers love it! I have been open for a little over 3 weeks and can honestly say for us it was build it and they will come. Over 200 customers in computer so far and not one nickle spent on advertising. I know that part will change, but I am actually waiting for it to slow up a bit. We only have 3 Ergoline 300's, a Pryzma 1048, and the stand-up. Almost everything was purchased on Ebay. We have been blown away by the response so far. I can say location means everything.

Electric_Sun

Congratulations on your stong start, mbris. Please describe your location for us.

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