His&HerTanning

I agree 100%... that would be Big Deal breaker! Specially when they want tell you how many or offer any comp. What the he'll were they thinking?

Brian Oshman

It is not a ripoff plan, it is smart business.

I am not saying that you cannot open a salon for less than 200k, in fact you can. I am however pointing out what a salon done right will cost.

As for experience, I am quite sure that I have more than a couple af days more than you do in this industry and I will never be jobless. It is actually the other way around, without me to build the salon and fill it with equipment and sevice it and supply you with the products and the knowledge that you need to be successful then you would be jobless.

Brian Oshman

Why would you honor these tans? This is why you negotiate. The current owner will need to adjust the selling price on the day of transfer to compensate for these kinds of sales.

The only time that you honor packages (and you have no obligation to do so but it will win over screwed customers) is if you take over a salon that has closed and the prior owner screwed everyone with midnight sales.

The other time you do it is when you buy a database. Of course if you buy the place you honor current packages, that goes without saying but you don't settle for a price and then let the current owner sell you under the table without compensation. If they will not adjust then you walk. It is standard procedure to square up at time of transfer.

This is easy to do as you just pull reports and go from there. If there is no computer and you are just going by word of mouth then that is suicide. Did you get current reports? Did you see the actual last three years of filed tax returns? (not the cooked books but the actual filed returns) This is what you base the purchase price off of, not word of mouth and not just the books. The tax returns are the tangible value. From here is where you negotiate the price and then move on to compensation for packages sold during the transition period.

Brian Oshman

So you come out ahead at 3 dollars a tan and no commitment?

Maybe bump it up to 4 bucks a tan?



I take it that you enjoy working 80 hours a week for minimum wage?

Why would you let customers tan everyday anyway? There is no need to tan everyday. The tanning process does not work like that to begin with. It is this mentality that is forcing the regulations that to Gov't. is sending down the pike more and more.

If you want the customers to get a feel of what you offer then you get them in the high end stuff and keep them there. Show them the real benefits of tanning in good equipment and only needing once or twice a week to maintain a great tan. You don't need to develop a base tan on the crappy little bottom feeder beds first in order to tan on the good stuff. That is just a myth.

Are you Smart Tan Certified? ATI? NTTI?

malibules

Yah thanks Brian...we have looked at all the books and the tax returns and we were in the final stage of negotiations when we caught this "special" and they are saying they aren't trying to "money-up"....ha
They have the Sun-touch system on their computer...they are trying to tell us that there is no way to find out how many tans/packages they have prepaid out there...
and we have said we need compensation then for these tans/packages they have sold this month on this special...I guess they thought they were dealing with dummies...:)

Brian Oshman

You can pull reports from all the packages that are active and you can certainly figure out what was sold since initial negotiations. Something smells fishy about that statement that they have no idea how to provide you with that information.

I would call Bull$h!t and let them come up with the actual sales and compensate or walk.

malibules

Thanks for the advice...thats exactly what we thought...and thats what we are doing...
I have a feeling someone might be learning how to use their computer system really soon if they really want to sell...:)

His&HerTanning

There's nodoubt they know, they are just acting dumb. You don't sell products and not know it... Yeah that's some bs

allenj

That is taking advantage and I would ask them to stop the sale pronto or you will walk away. I was in the process of buying a salon when the former owner extended the "buy one get one half off" points special, which is hugely popular. At closing I required 50% of the previous months point packages. I understood I was buying a salon that had prepaid services I would be honoring, no problem. When they were selling prepaid services that could not even remotely be used before the closing I got ******. The amount collected covered my costs of buying the salon. Fortunately I have done very well with that location.

His&HerTanning

Yeah it's obvious they wanted to get quick cash before you bought.

Same as Allenj we were going to buy a salon and snopped a little and found out they were lieing about their books, so we started our own...we ended up buying that persons customer list for pennies!
So needless to to say if it smells like fish it's probably fish(don't do it if they are being shady)...