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.

Scientists have now mapped the exact points where Vitamin D interacts with more than 200 genes, unlocking more of the mechanism by which natural levels of "The Sunshine Vitamin" are related to overall health, medical news website PhysOrg.com reports.

Exerpt from the article: ..."The researchers found 2,776 binding sites for the vitamin D receptor along the length of the genome. These were unusually concentrated near a number of genes associated with susceptibility to autoimmune conditions such as MS, Crohn's disease, systemic lupus erythematosus (or 'lupus') and rheumatoid arthritis, and to cancers such as chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and colorectal cancer. They also showed that vitamin D had a significant effect on the activity of 229 genes including IRF8, previously associated with MS, and PTPN2, associated with Crohn's disease and type 1 diabetes."

Here's a link to the full article on PhysOrg.com: http://www.physorg.com/news201791554.html

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.

Portland Tribune reporter Peter Korn's article, "Prescription: More Sun; Research suggests that a lack of sunlight could be tied to variety of illnesses:" ... If Gene Stubbs, a respected associate professor emeritus of psychiatry and pediatrics at Oregon Health & Science University who has turned into a researcher in his retirement, is right about the autism/Vitamin D link, he and a growing legion of scientists across the country might also be right about their larger theory – that lack of sun exposure and Vitamin D explains Oregon’s high rates of depression, multiple sclerosis, bone disease, cancers and dozens of other maladies, including colds and flu. ...

 http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story_2nd.php?story_id=128035439115067600

Dr. Frank Lipman writes on The Huffington Post today, ... "For the last 30 years or so, doctors (dermatologists in particular), health officials, beauty experts and many product companies have been demonizing the sun. They've told us to avoid it because without sunscreen, exposure to the sun's rays will damage skin and cause cancer. But this oversimplification distorts the facts. In the past few years, numerous studies have shown that optimizing your vitamin D levels may actually help prevent as many as 16 different types of cancer including pancreatic, lung, breast, ovarian, prostate and colon cancers. And the best way to optimize Vitamin D levels is through safe, smart and limited sunscreen-free exposure to the sun."

Read Lipman's entire article, "Vitamin D health -- why you shouldn't shun the sun," online at the Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-frank-lipman/vitamin-d-health-why-you_b_619558.html