LiveTanLove

lavatroy

All the EFT companies are about the same. You can use Helios and do it yourself or use someone like GMS or AAC which is who we use. This time of year you will need all the money you can get so I wouldn't close if I didn't have to. You can paint late at night and early in the mornings...get used to it, there will be many, many long nights! Good luck.

BTW...$55k sounds ridiculously high for the contents you named. If you're getting rid of it anyway than what are you paying for, the customers? If you're saying they will come just b/c of new beds then you need to save your $55k and open in a different location and put that money towards the equipment.

I am a much bigger fan of taking over another salon as opposed to opening one from the ground up but what you listed doesn't seem like a very good deal to me... JMO :)

kookyguy

I was wondering about the 55k myself?

LiveTanLove

Thanks for all the feedback! We decided to open from ground up but now we're running into issues finding a space. A lot of retail people don't want tanning salons and or don't want to split their giant spaces up. GRRRRR! You'd think with 8 open retail spaces they'd want the money and not be picky.

crystalnc

Tell them you'll take the space and they can have the beds.

Black Sun

A lot of property managers do not want tan salons located within the premises because of the high-rate of failure within the industry.

Having retail property which sits vacant, is better than filling it with a business that is industry related to a high turn-over rate. When a biz fills a space, only to abruptly close/leave within the year or two, it causes more of a (psychological) black eye on the whole community and the management.

It sends out a (wrong) message that says, management is bad/community does not support local economy/businesses.
You'd have a better chance opening a tattoo studio-they are more in vogue today and more accepted

LiveTanLove

We are in the midst of negotiating our lease now. We've hit a lot of snags but I know in my gut with my knowledge of the industry and the demographic here we will do well it's just amatter of all the small things now. We're going to be the only salon with the equipment we have in this side of the state. I'm really excited.

geminitanning

I paid someone to paint my salon last year. (I have 17 rooms, and I HATE painting. It was worth the money for me!) We stayed open the whole time. He would do a few rooms at a time, and we'd just close down those rooms for the day/a few hours. I also made sure to do it during the slow season, so it wouldn't be that big of a deal. It worked out fine. Be sure to post before and after pics!

LiveTanLove

Well We decided to do ground up. I'm going with Tanwall but I am painting murals myself and doing the floor mysellf with stencils etc. SUPER EXCITED!!! It's gonna look great and I will be hiring my family to help me for free hahaha. I will post pics of our finished salon on here soon.

gravesmc

My husband and I are starting up our own tanning business also. We rented 2000 sq ft and built the walls ourselves. Putting in 9 beds and a Mystic Sprayer. We are already in in over $120,000 and I'm really getting worried about how much income we are going to make to starting paying the loans. The electrical has so far cost $12,000, and we are not done yet! It has been hard getting things put together so far. I bought Suntouch for the software and it has taken awhile to learn the program. I got so I hated it, but I am finally getting more comfortable with it. We hope to be open by Feb or sooner. We didn't realize how many obsticles we would run into when we started this project back in August.
Anyway, let me know how far you have gotton and when do you hope to open. Maybe we could mentor each other.