Cali's Finest

ALL I DO DO IS SUNLESS. This town is one of those towns with alot of money and nothing to spend it on. It doesnt matter what the kids drive, they still arent your target market. We advertise by radio, club, we are the sponser for 2 different teams here... its NOT your target market, Im sorry. Its not. This is also a college town and I am the ONLY one that offers sunless with referals from other tanning salons. I am NOT saying you cant do it, Im just saying you need to be alot more realistic. I have been doing this since 2001... THE ONLY one since 2001 in my city and I still dont have 15 people walk in everyday.

spraytannedjenn

As you can see from my name all I do is Spray tans. Sorry but I truely believe you are over estimating the amount of sprays you are going to do a day. You have to also keep in mind the slow season. Most of us are trying to just help you avoid a big mess. Spray tan isn't over despite what some people here think. I just don't think you can do as well as you are planning based on the info you gave us. If you are going to go ahead and do this I might suggest you try to enlist the help of the drill team and cheerleaders to sell for you. For example do a free spray for every 5 tans they sell for you. This works well for everyone they get free tans and you get really inexpensive advertising. You might even be able to advertise that they are sprayed by you. Just some ideas!

spraytannedjenn

If you are planning to have lots of repeat business be sure a good quality solution. If it lookis like crap they will not come back!

Tanzenite

No, that is not realistic. There is a salon around here the only offers sunless and they are suffering pretty badly. I can give you thier #. The market is much slimmer for sunless.

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Cali's Finest

We spray the arena football team cheerleaders and the drill team for the ice hockey team for free during their season in exchange for the pictures they take with the team once a year all signed by the girls (tanned of course). They also mention our names, plus word of mouth from the actual girls.

15 a day is not impossible... it is however an unachievable average for a few years.

tnannie

I'm sorry, but I think that this is an unrealistic plan. 15 sprays each and every day for your survival is probably not the best plan IMO. College towns can be great for tanning salons, but consider what your business will be be during the summer months when these kids all go home......for me, summer time is our busiest months for the spray tanning. Will you be able to generate that many sprays if you are targeting the kids? Also, you stated that your town has 20 other salons, five of which also are doing the sprays.....that is an awful lot of competition I would think. Again, this is just my opinion, but if I were you, I would really think this through carefully.

Cali's Finest

I dont see opening a business doing only airbrush as a problem. Its what my business IS. However. I have to do 10 sprays a WEEK to keep my doors open. 10 sprays a WEEK. You need to reconsider alot of things if to maintain a business from the start you have to do 15 a DAY. Its not going to happen.

pbeale24

Let me clarify. I don't need 15 sprays a day to break even, I want 15 sprays a day to make it worth it for me. I don't want to break even, I don't even want make a decent extra income, I want it to be quite lucrative. This is a trial run for duplicating this same business model in Eastern Europe where disposable income is rising, there is no competition, sunless hasn't exploded yet like it has here, and everyone is Caucasian ( I hope you understand why this is important and not that I am a racist).

I think I have an advantage as in I will have very very little operating expenses. I was able to negotiate with an excited pub owner who had extra space he didn't really know what to do with. It is attached to his upstairs lounge but more lounge furniture in there would serve little purpose. I am going to be there rent free through December and the rent will be very cheap after that, haven't decided on a number yet, but it will probably be $300 max. After that all I will have for expenses are sunless solution and any retail products I can sell (suggestions still welcome).

I have several other marketing promotions in place. They will be making announcements about me at football games and my reach on campus is limitless. I am the only tanning facility allowed to advertise on campus because I will be exclusively sunless. When the Colleges for Campus heard about me through the campus event director they offered to sponsor me. With that comes being able to set up on campus anytime I want (after giving proper notice) for free. I will be present at every major campus event.

Since the pub I will be attached to is the only one in the town sooner or later almost every college kid will be through there and receive my marketing materials from a waitress, bartender, or sit right down beside the entrance.

We have marketing materials going to all the hotels.

We are in the process of finding a representative from every dorm and apartment complex to be in charge of marketing to their building and each will have their own "book of business." They will get a stack of business cards/coupons for a certain deal on a tan, each stack will have a specific series of numbers. When the client redeems the coupon the number will be matched up to it's distributor and they will receive a commission on that tan and every tan the customer comes in for after that. I have seen that this creates a sense of "ownership" in the business and most importantly a follow up factor because the distributor of the card doesn't want the client to just get 1 tan, they want them to go back again and again. There is the potential for these people to become obnoxious but then they get "fired" and the commission stops going to them and to us instead. I have seen this work well in the service industry.

Cali's Finest, I hate to beat a dead horse but if you don't think that college kids are my target market then how do you explain a group of people that keep an entire county going with their patronage, all within the age group of people who are most likely to tan, concentrated within 5 miles of my business, and being the most in need of being found attractive by their peers? I can't think of an easier more practical group of people to "target." I like your idea about the cheerleaders, I am all over that.

I realize business will slow down dramatically in the summer but our location will help us through that. That is part of the reason the pub owner is excited about it because we will run promotions together over the summer to generate more traffic for both of us. And I have been up there often this summer and I was shocked at the number of people who were still there. There is still a large population that stay all year round. And since my expenses will be almost entirely proportionate to the amount of customer I have the slow down in the summer won't sink me.


I don't want anyone to misjudge my tone hear and be thinking that I am a mister know it all who won't take feedback. I value your input very very much. I would love to speak to any of you more extensively perhaps over the phone where we can exchange more information and not have to worry about this all escalating into an argument. If anyone would like to PM me your phone number I would love to call any or all of you. I need so much information and I wouldn't dream of committing to this without taking all you say into consideration. Thank you again for the input and keep it coming.

sweettimm

Versa spa your in a high end town you need high end equipment

Neon Beach

Again good luck with that.

I have checked around, and it seems that sunless clients are event clients, you get them for one session, on average and not repeat clients.

Better try to get the entire town on board for weeklys.