Starting a Spray Tan Business

Starting a Spray Tanning Business

If you’re looking to incorporate a love of spray tanning and an entrepreneurial spirit, a spray tanning business is a dream business for you! You've taken it into consideration whether to do this for a living, or as a part time job, but you’ve had a hard time figuring out where to start. If that's the case then look no further!

After coming up with a catchy mobile spray tan business name, do some research to get a realistic picture of the profits you can make. You will also have to take into consideration the costs of equipment, spray tan solutions, and other supplies.

Getting out there and starting your own business is something a lot of us dream about. A mobile or salon-based spray tanning business can be an extremely rewarding and profitable endeavor, but your success in this industry will mostly depend on you and your hard work.

 

Learn About the Industry And Your Customers

Spend some time every day researching the market and your future customers. Watch videos and new tanning tutorials, read articles and blogs, find out what’s trending. Yes, you may find a lot of junk, but you also may find some real gold. Next time a customer asks about a spray tanning fad, you’ll be prepared to shed some light on the matter. The more you know about your industry, the better you will be at it.

 

How Much will I Spend?

There are costs of doing business such as registering your business, proper licensing, liability insurance that you incur initially or annually. To get started tanning, you will need spray tan solution, a tanning machine and a tanning tent. Let's say, you can get a bottle of spray tan solution for $59.95 and you can get 15 tans per bottle. A tan machine will cost you around $159, plus you will also need a tent (roughly $80). If you divide everything by 15, your total cost per tan will be around $20, which is quite competitive.

 

How Much Will I Make?

The average cost of a spray tan is around $60. This means you have plenty of room for making your tan affordable and making sure to be profitable and popular among clients. At the beginning, you might want to keep your prices lower to stay competitive. Offer special programs or first-time memberships. But also let your clients know that prices will rise after a while. You will also have to keep track of other expenses, such as gas costs, car maintenance, and stock supplies.

 

Pricing

The hardest thing about entering any service offering business is setting your price list. If you're new to the sunless tanning business, there are a lot of factors to take into consideration while forming one. Although there’s no strict rule when it comes to determining how much you should charge for your sunless spray tanning services, you can combine various factors that will help you structure your price list correctly.

 

Rely on your competition

Do market research. Research other sunless spray tanning services around your place - how much do they charge? Find out what’s the lowest and the highest cost of service, since you’ll want to position your services between those two. By doing this, you’ll have a competitive price point that will give your newly started business a good push. Although it may seem that a lower price means more customers, at the same time it threatens your business’ image and it could even discredit your services.

 

Where’s your business located?

Location is a major factor when determining how to price your services. Are you based in an urban, suburban or rural community? What is the demand for spray tan services in your area? Cities mean more people, which means more potential customers and the potential to demand a higher price for your services. If you own mobile sunless spray tanning service, you should always count distance, travel time, and fuel cost into the price.

 

Analyze the clientele

Do you only seek high-end customers, or are you open to a diverse type of clientele? How much can you realistically charge them? When determining price, you can add a premium if you offer your clients something they can’t get elsewhere, for example add-on sunless tanning products or a luxury tanning experience. Identify a way to differentiate yourself from the competition, and your business will attract more customers.

 

Profit and a Sustainable Business

Although it’s essential for a spray tan business owner to have a passion for helping people look their best, you have to make a profit in order to stay in business. Here is a handy calculator to help you calculate business costs and pricing, in order to make a profit.

 

Choose Your Equipment

If you are just starting out, you need to figure out what type and scale of equipment your business will be requiring. 

This depends on the following factors:

  • Type of your clientele
  • Size of your clientele
  • Type of your spray tanning business (are you opening a salon or going mobile?)

This is crucial for all beginners as you don’t want to spend a lot of money on equipment you don’t really need. Once you’ve made your decision, it is time to:

 

Purchase Your Equipment

The tools and material you need to consider include:

  • Spray tan kits
  • Spray tan machines
  • Spray tan guns
  • Spray tan screens and tents
  • Spray tan extraction booths and fans
  • Disposable products (hair nets, latex gloves, sticky feet, face masks)
  • Tanning solution and lotions

Experiment and practice.

 

Get Proper Training

Find the most suitable spray tanning training program for you. Things you will want to learn about:

  • skin preparation
  • details about ingredients
  • techniques of solution application
  • safety
  • customer care

Learning about all these aspects of the business will help to speed up the learning curve and ensure that you deliver high-quality service.

 

Promote Your Business Properly

Once you are all set, it is time for advertising. The word needs some spreading in the beginning, *so go ahead and advertise your spray tanning business via:

  • local online directories
  • local newspapers
  • bulletin boards
  • social media platforms
  • your own website.

Remember: the crucial step towards creating a success spray tanning business is building up faithful clientele. 

 

Liability Insurance

Liability Insurance is important for all spray tan business owners, giving you peace of mind and protecting your assets in the rare case of a business-related accident.

Despite taking proper precautions to ensure that your equipment is in good condition, imagine if the hose comes off from the machine during a session (maybe it wasn’t tight enough) and the solution from the spray gun splashes your client. Other problems can also arise if you’re in the mobile tanning industry. What happens when you accidentally spill some solution on your client’s carpet?

These two examples might sound a bit far-fetched but accidents happen. Liability insurance will give you peace of mind to focus on growing your business.