Looking Fit 08/2004: Restoring That Competitive Edge: Remodels Add Vitality To Aging Salons

by Matt Morgan

THAT ONCE-SIZZLING SALON ISN’T SO HOT ANYMORE, what with cutting-edge tanning centers popping up left and right. It seems to happen on every street corner. Salon owners who choose to remodel their aging stores are doing so to stay on top of the competition. They’re incorporating designs borrowed from day spas and nightclubs, and they’re installing top-of-the-line tanning technology while planning for future growth. Calculated remodels can send a sense of electricity through the hallways and have customers buzzing again, giving a tanning salon a new lease on life.

A salon remodel can be as simple as a new coat of paint and new flooring or as complex as a complete overhaul of walls, ceilings, beds and booths. The reason for remodels also is simple, experts agree: Competition demands a change. “You get to the point where you have to be reborn,” says Dave Holtgrewe, sales rep and salon marketing consultant at Four Seasons Sales & Service, Inc.

Bill Gallagher, principal at Suntan Supply, agrees. “When we build new salons, we go with the latest and greatest design and equipment, and then the salons around them have to either a) compete and change the way they do their business or b) fail. That’s the No. 1 reason why we get requests for people asking us to change their flooring, change their wall type and reconfigure their salon—because of the competition. In the regular course of business the salon gets outdated and they change it.”

Remodels can cost an owner anywhere from a few hundred dollars per tanning room to a few thousand. Big-ticket items such as tile or tanning equipment are influencing factors.

Holtgrewe recalls a recent remodel at an 18-bed salon that totaled $40,000, or $2,222 per bed. The carpet was changed to Congoleum hardwood floor, and faux-finish walls and track lighting were added. “We put in a few new beds, we redid some of the walls, we put in windows in some of the rooms that show off the big beds,” he says.

“Then again, you don’t have to spend that much either,” he adds. “It’s a miracle what a little paint will do. Take out the palm trees at the front counter and put in a few statues, add faux-finish paint and spend half or a third of that much and still get a whole new, fresh look. It’s really not how much you spend, it’s being efficient in your ideas.”

Plus, salon owners who remodel correctly can recoup the cost.

“In most cases, a major remodel won’t make you any more business from your existing customers, but it will draw in new high-end customers,” Holtgrewe says. “Once you get into a rut with 2,500 or 3,000 customers, it takes new technology and it takes a new look to take it to the next level. My most recent salon went from about a 3,500-client base to close to a 6,000-client base because of a remodel.”

The look and feel of new and remodeled tanning salons are being borrowed from hot spots where today’s discriminating customers—they could be called guests—are apt to stop by and stay awhile. Day spas and nightclubs feature a clean, cool feel, often with wooden floors, brushed-metal accents, contemporary lighting fixtures and fauxfinished walls.

Salon owners should get out and visit such establishments, Holtgrewe says. They should visit other salons in the area too, and talk to distributors. Distributors likely have seen it all when it comes to what does or doesn’t work. They can be wonderful sources of knowledge, because they can draw on experiences—mistakes as well as successes—from all of their salons.

“Venture through a lot of the home-improvement catalogs, because we always want salons to feel homey to people anyway,” Holtgrewe continues. “Look at the different home-design books to see the different colors and designs that someone might do in their home. That’s where most people get their ideas. Come up with a look and say ‘I wish my salon would look like this.’”

There are two types of salons as far as Gallagher is concerned. “You have your salons where they come in with an actual theme, like Celebrity Tan [in Ohio],” he says. “They did all themes of all the rooms geared toward celebrities. One room was like Madonna, one was like LeBron James, one was like Humphrey Bogart. It’s a 30-bed store, and they did a bunch of different themes.”

Having discussed that, there seems to be movement away from themes—especially tropical/beach themes. The other type of salon Gallagher mentions is “just a general tanning salon, where it’s crisp, clean, doctor’s-office oriented—where you walk in and all of the walls are one color, offset with some molding.” This look—or what Holtgrewe calls the European style—is popular with mega-salons and chains, and increasingly more single-salon owners are adopting the trend.

“We’re moving out of the old tropical look of the ’90s into the Euro design of the new millennium—subtle lighting, faux finish, hardwood floors, ceramic tiles,” he says. “It’s a very spa look.”

Clean-looking salons portray a feel of cleanliness, Gallagher says, which is important to tanners. Consistency also appears to be a virtue. “You walk in and it’s consistent every single time,” he says. “It looks more like a nationally based company. People feel more comfortable, in general, in going to a very simple, clean salon that offers high-quality services.”

Gallagher likens these salons to McDonald’s.

“I think every new tanning salon owner—or the one who is remodeling—is trying to look like a franchise,” he says. “We have single stores now with menu boards. If you were to walk into a McDonald’s you’d see a Big Mac pictured up there; well, single-salon owners now have a picture of their bed with the session price underneath it.”

Just as a good salon remodel can revive a salon’s potential, a bad remodel can snatch it away. Gallagher advises anyone considering a remodel to focus on several key points.

“Flooring usually is a big issue,” he says. “Some places you’ll find will do carpet throughout. Some will do ceramic tile. Some will do a VCP [vitrified clay pipe]-style tile like an asphalt tile. All of those have pros and cons. The biggest change we’ve seen in remodeling right now is most of our clients are going with a wipeable surface as opposed to carpet.”

Regulations in certain states require that salons have a wipeable surface in front of the tanning unit. They adhere to these rules by placing heavy-duty mats on the carpet in front of beds. But even those can curl and wear out and not stay where they should, Gallagher says.

“I feel carpeting everywhere is a mistake, especially in the front lobby,” he says. “At least do the front lobby in ceramic so you don’t track in the elements. If I had it my way—provided that the financing of the salon would be right— I would put ceramic in the entire facility.” However, he says, “Ceramic is not very cheap.”

Converting from carpet to tile or hardwood can double the cost of a remodel.

One of Gallagher’s customers, for example, installed $13,000 in hardwood flooring as the centerpiece of the salon’s look. “His theme was earthy,” he says. “Everything was cherrywood and cherry molding. It looked like Friday’s when you walked into the store.”

On the other hand, he knows of another salon owner who spent a pretty penny on black-marble tile, only to find out the tile showed every speck of snow and salt that was tracked in by customers.

Salon owners should brush up on their local codes. Most are familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which dictates how accessible the salon is for handicapped individuals. By changing the salon through a remodel, the owner could lift any grandfather clause and be required to update hallways, bathrooms and doors to include all new ADA provisions.

“Not every tanning room requires a 36-inch door,” Gallagher says. “You do have to comply with ADA, but only reasonable accommodations need to be met.” However, ADA compliance varies from city to city, he says; as an example, it may be that only two rooms of a 20-room salon need to completely comply with the ADA.

“The reason why that’s important is that a 36-inch door takes up that much more of a swing inside the room, therefore eliminating the size of the equipment to go in there.” Some modular units eliminate this problem altogether by offering slider-door options, where the door follows the existing wall and disappears just like a pocket door.

Narrower French-style doors allow for 36- or 38-inch entryways because two are together. “You’re really only swinging 18 inches,” Gallagher says. “Not only does it give a nice look, it is a much more feasible environment to move in larger equipment.”

Conversely, some salons put in doors that are too small. Smaller doors don’t allow for larger equipment, and such equipment is a growing trend in the industry.

“I built a store for a guy three years ago, and gave him the latest and greatest equipment,” Gallagher says. “Now we’re talking about changing out his equipment—because of the competition. Because of the new styles of equipment coming in, we have some logistics to overcome in getting that equipment in and out of there because of the size of the doors.”

Preparing for future growth also includes electrical considerations.

Pipes containing electrical wires should run from each room directly to the breaker box in back, rather than having electrical wires run from several rooms to a poll box, then to the back through one larger pipe. The effort and cost this situation saves up front could lead to headaches down the road.

“For the time being, it serves the purpose well and it’s inexpensive,” Gallagher says. “For the future, it’s terrible. If you have to replace the wire in room No. 1 to accommodate the newest bed on the market and change the amp service going to that room, you’re going to have to run a whole new pipe. It’s a logistics nightmare. It stops the distributor from being able to supply equipment regularly without having to overcome additional cost in remodeling in the future.” So when in doubt, oversize the pipe and wire, he says. “It’s not that much more money when you’re doing it.”

Most remodels can be completed within 30 to 90 days, Holtgrewe says, with a majority falling on the quicker end. July or August is a good time to start, when business starts to slow. Regardless, the goal is to break out the dustpan and be done by the start of the next tanning season. “Try to get it ready by Dec. 1 if at all possible,” he says.

The salon also should stay open, Gallagher adds.

“I’m not in favor at all of closing down the tanning salon, period, ever,” he says. “Because most of your tanning salons are running on the EFT program, and those people who have the EFTs are going to want to utilize that EFT or else it’s going to cause grief.”

Remodelers could work in phases, where one side of the salon is closed for remodeling and the other stays open; after, the new side opens while the other is redone. “It may cost a little more, but most contractors can work from one side of the salon to the next,”

Holtgrewe says. It may be absolutely necessary, however, to close down to start or complete a job. In that case, Gallagher recommends picking a holiday weekend such as Labor Day.

Whether staying open or closing during a remodel, it’s good business to acknowledge the inconvenience to tanners by giving away sessions to anyone who can’t get to a bed they want to use.

“The main thing you don’t want to do is shut down or deprive somebody of sessions because they can’t use the certain bed that they paid for,” Holtgrewe explains. “You’re going to give them extra sessions in another bed to keep them happy for that one- or twomonth period or whatever it takes.”

If the purpose of a remodel is to stay competitive in the marketplace, the job shouldn’t be complete without new equipment. It makes no sense to stick the 12-year-old workhorse back in a new room when the room could house the latest money-making super-bed.

“I think a salon should be adding something bigger and better with newer technology every year just to keep to the cutting edge,” Holtgrewe says. “If they don’t do that and they look back in five or six years, the cost of upgrading the equipment at that point is astronomical. A new piece of equipment every year creates more excitement and keeps excitement up in your customers.”

Salon owners need to get away from the mentality that more beds are better. Especially after a remodel, sometimes fewer beds—premium beds—in bigger, more spacious rooms is the way to go.

“You don’t necessarily have to have as many beds as you used to, so long as you have the right mix,” Gallagher explains. “And if you’re going to reconfigure your store, give people a little more room on the higher-level beds. Make it so the beds aren’t 4 inches off the wall. Give them 6 or 8 inches on each side of the wall—allow the bed to cool off a little. It gives people a sense of value when they walk into a room, where it’s decorated very nicely and spacious.”

The amount of beds in a space dictates how customers feel about the salon, he says.

“If you’re really in tune with your salon, the first and most valuable thing you want to pay attention to is PPA: perperson average,” he says. “How much money do your clients spend when they come into your store? I would rather have a 10-bed store doing $6 PPA than a 20-bed store doing $3.50 PPA.”

An inviting salon with an ideal mix of top-grade equipment that is prepared for future growth is all anyone can ask from a remodel.

“We’re moving toward lesser times in beds, higher-quality equipment, more spacious salons, better decor, more warm-feeling salons, cleanliness and friendliness,” Gallagher says. “That’s the only way you’re going to come out ahead. The remodel is just one facet, but I think it’s important.”