ETS Tanning Bed Blog

Looking Fit tanning community manager Karen Butler writes in her Editor's Blog that a discussion among salon owners on TanToday.com recently revealed that most tanning salon owners are not enamored with the concept of using Twitter as a business tool. There was only a mild interest in linking a salon’s Twitter page to its Facebook account since the latter can be set to automatically update the Twitter feed and thus, kill two birds with one stone.

Are these salon owners missing out on all Twitter has to offer – or is their assessment right on the money, Butler asks? She's looking for your take here by commenting on her blog. You can also visit and engage TanTalk.com's forum on the topic.

For 10 years starting in the mid-1990s, Don Olevnik owned a chain of video rental stores in New York state. A developer approached him to open a new store in a planned strip mall but things didn’t work out as the site was too close to an established Blockbuster.

“So I asked, ‘What about a tanning salon?” Olevnik said. And in 2005, Dark Tan was born.

Today, Dark Tan has five salons with a sixth set to open soon. The first opened in Horseheads in 2005, followed by salons in Geneva that same year, Canandaigua in 2006, Elmira in 2008, Waterloo a year later and Corning earlier this year. The new salon is being built in Watkins Glen.

Entrepreneur Charles Slone started out in the tanning business in 1991 when he bought a failing combination tanning salon-clothing store in Cleveland.

He replaced its existing tanning beds with ETS Tan beds, embarked on a new marketing campaign and quickly turned things around to make things profitable.

Soon, Slone added a second Four Seasons Tanning location.

Today, he owns three Cleveland-area salons and recently finished a major remodeling of his Four Seasons Clifton salon at 11006 Clifton Blvd. The remodeling project included installing 12 new ETS Tan beds, including seven of our new e3 line of tanning beds.

Actions speak louder than words. As a successful tanning salon owner, you value your existing customers and are focused on bringing more customers in your doors. So let your customers know they’re important to you by doing things for them.

Customer appreciation is important to win the hearts of current and new customers. Showing customers that you appreciate them is a much more effective and powerful tool than sending them a letter, e-mail blast or direct-mail piece. A focus on face-to-face, meaningful interchanges between you, your staff and customers can create long-lasting relationships, fun times, great memories and, something important to you, customer retention and growth.

It’s easy to get stuck in the day-to-day business operations of your tanning salon and lose focus on effective customer appreciation strategies. That’s probably not too much fun for you, either. So take a look at these simple customer appreciation tactics that can help you reward your customers, show them that you care about them past the sale and bring a little fun to their lives – and yours.

The following is a July member update from the Indoor Tanning Association. 

As you know from our previous alerts, the Internal Revenue Service formally published the final and temporary regulations on June 15. The IRS issued these regulations as “temporary” to provide guidance to users and providers of indoor tanning services. The text of the temporary regulations also serves as the text of the “proposed” regulations.

Before these regulations are final, the IRS is required to receive and respond to public comment. The comments are due by September 13. The ITA will submit comments on behalf of the industry. In addition, our tax counsel and the Board of Directors believe it is important for businesses affected by the regulations to weigh in with the IRS.

We at ETS Tan have the privilege of working with some great people every day. Lisa Brooking is certainly no exception.

Lisa worked for 17 years in retail before she decided to open a tanning salon. Within five years of first opening her doors, Lisa opened eight new tanning salons in southern Indiana. Today, True Colors Tanning salons welcome customers in Jeffersonville, New Albany, Sellersburg, Georgetown, Scottsburg, Floyds Knobs, Charlestown, Madison and Prospect, Ky.

New from the Federal Register’s June 15 publication: Final and temporary rules and regulations from the Department of the Treasury regarding indoor tanning services, cosmetic services and excise taxes. Read the report at http://www.TanTaxInfo.com.