Well as I write this we have now officially been in business for 3 years at Mega Tan. The tanning salon recently celebrated its' 11th anniversary and we are hoping that it continues for years to come.
Last year I wrote a reflection of our first couple of years in business to give everyone an idea of how we are doing. This year I can tell you that things were a little more stressful. It seemed like things were going well the first half of the year but the customers tailed off in the fall. We were definitely down in September, October and November and things seemed bad for some reason, don't understand if it was the weather or just that not as many people are tanning as they used to. Well December started off a little slow but started to pick up and our annual anniversary sale helped out to end the year. For the year sales were up slightly compared to 2014 and we would like to think that the trend will continue even though our government seems to want to punish us. The federal government had new rules for us to follow again this past year, we had to put new labels on all of the tanning equipment that says the equipment should not be used by anyone under the age of 18. We followed the instructions and this even came with a couple of television interviews that may have actually helped us out a little. The reporters seemed to come in with the attitude that tanning was bad for you and when we described what we offered and that we even offered alternatives to UV tanning such as spray tanning it kind of turned into some free advertisement for us. Never less the government seems to be after the tanning industry and they will continue to try to ban tanning for anyone under the age of 18, we are just wondering how long before the government bans kids from going to the beach on a sunny day (Sorry couldn't resist). Anyway, back to the business. Mega Tan has now been in business for 11 years, the first 8 the business was owned and ran by Julie Gould and she sure did a great job with the building and the tanning salon. We still get compliments about the inside decorations and painting and we see no reason to change it, it still looks great. We did upgrade the carpet in the tanning salon in the summer of 2015, one of the things we did change. We are also now offering the Fit Bodywrap which can be used in the spray tanning room. The fit bodywrap is a new infrared heating blanket that makes you sweat profusely. It is intended to help you lose weight and makes your body feel better, it seems to really make people with sore joints and sore backs feel better. It doesn't seem to be doing as well as we hoped and we are really offering a good deal on it compared to other places that have them, maybe we need to do a better job of advertising it, not sure but we will keep trying. The tanning beds all seem to be holding up well. We continue to changes the bulbs religiously and we have been replacing acrylics on several of the beds during the year. We had a couple of incidents during the year during some routing maintenance, Rob pulled a wire out of one of the beds and caused the bed to shutdown when it was reattached, it ended up burning up a circuit board and took a few days to repair, the good thing was that we learned more about the beds and how they work when they are broke, the bad thing was, this was an expensive fix. Also had another issue in one of the rooms when cleaning a fan, when we tried to reinstall the fan we shorted out a wire and burned up the fan, found out that those fans are very very expensive and learned how to take them all apart and repair them, another few days to repair but worth it because of the experience and it really didn't cost us much to fix it. Not sure if people totally understand all of the work that goes into keeping a place like this running, but it is much more than you would think.
As for our employees, we had Shawn's son Austin working for us for the first half of 2015, it was his co-op job for school but once he graduated he decided he did not want to work at the tanning salon anymore. We were in the process of trying to figure out if we should hire someone else and start to train them before the busy season when Britnay decided to take another job and quit working for us in October. So shortly after Britnay left we hired Kaitlyn Alburtus and she is now working for us and is fully trained, she is currently a junior at Kearsley High School and seems to like it so far. We are also now leaning on Sam March and Lindsey a little more with the loss of Britnay and they are handling it with no problems. We still have Brooke McGlone working for us and Hannah is wanting to work more and more. As soon as high school sports are over for Hannah she will be able to take on more hours and we also have Kaliee Tubbs coming in to help us as a bed cleaner during the busy season. Pam continues to work almost everyday during the morning/early afternoon and every once in a while Michelle will come in to help when needed. Thankfully between Sam, Lindsey and Pam they seem to have the place running smoothly. Sam has been at the salon longer than all of us and still is our rock, when we need someone to open or close we can count on her and have no worries.
What does the future hold for Mega Tan, can't really say. We would love to continue for years to come and hope that our customers appreciate a nice clean, local business. We are hoping that our partnership with Complete Realty (Angie Ridley) will continue in the building and hopefully we can continue renting out our storage spaces in the back, currently filled with boats for the winter. We have talked about expanding the salon and trying to add a couple more rooms in back, not sure if we will ever do it, I guess if the demand is there we will have to consider it but for now we will continue as is. The area around us seems to be changing a little as we now have an upholstery shop a few doors down from us, this is great and would be nice to see some more businesses start to use the buildings next to us. We also now have a florist next to the locksmith shop down the road and the old Kearsley Tanning was closed up and the office space gutted and that business is now a gun smith shop, also good for the area.
We hope that you will continue to support us as we will continue to support our community, looking forward to a great 2016, come visit us at Mega Tan, the only place to tan!
Last year I wrote a reflection of our first couple of years in business to give everyone an idea of how we are doing. This year I can tell you that things were a little more stressful. It seemed like things were going well the first half of the year but the customers tailed off in the fall. We were definitely down in September, October and November and things seemed bad for some reason, don't understand if it was the weather or just that not as many people are tanning as they used to. Well December started off a little slow but started to pick up and our annual anniversary sale helped out to end the year. For the year sales were up slightly compared to 2014 and we would like to think that the trend will continue even though our government seems to want to punish us. The federal government had new rules for us to follow again this past year, we had to put new labels on all of the tanning equipment that says the equipment should not be used by anyone under the age of 18. We followed the instructions and this even came with a couple of television interviews that may have actually helped us out a little. The reporters seemed to come in with the attitude that tanning was bad for you and when we described what we offered and that we even offered alternatives to UV tanning such as spray tanning it kind of turned into some free advertisement for us. Never less the government seems to be after the tanning industry and they will continue to try to ban tanning for anyone under the age of 18, we are just wondering how long before the government bans kids from going to the beach on a sunny day (Sorry couldn't resist). Anyway, back to the business. Mega Tan has now been in business for 11 years, the first 8 the business was owned and ran by Julie Gould and she sure did a great job with the building and the tanning salon. We still get compliments about the inside decorations and painting and we see no reason to change it, it still looks great. We did upgrade the carpet in the tanning salon in the summer of 2015, one of the things we did change. We are also now offering the Fit Bodywrap which can be used in the spray tanning room. The fit bodywrap is a new infrared heating blanket that makes you sweat profusely. It is intended to help you lose weight and makes your body feel better, it seems to really make people with sore joints and sore backs feel better. It doesn't seem to be doing as well as we hoped and we are really offering a good deal on it compared to other places that have them, maybe we need to do a better job of advertising it, not sure but we will keep trying. The tanning beds all seem to be holding up well. We continue to changes the bulbs religiously and we have been replacing acrylics on several of the beds during the year. We had a couple of incidents during the year during some routing maintenance, Rob pulled a wire out of one of the beds and caused the bed to shutdown when it was reattached, it ended up burning up a circuit board and took a few days to repair, the good thing was that we learned more about the beds and how they work when they are broke, the bad thing was, this was an expensive fix. Also had another issue in one of the rooms when cleaning a fan, when we tried to reinstall the fan we shorted out a wire and burned up the fan, found out that those fans are very very expensive and learned how to take them all apart and repair them, another few days to repair but worth it because of the experience and it really didn't cost us much to fix it. Not sure if people totally understand all of the work that goes into keeping a place like this running, but it is much more than you would think.
As for our employees, we had Shawn's son Austin working for us for the first half of 2015, it was his co-op job for school but once he graduated he decided he did not want to work at the tanning salon anymore. We were in the process of trying to figure out if we should hire someone else and start to train them before the busy season when Britnay decided to take another job and quit working for us in October. So shortly after Britnay left we hired Kaitlyn Alburtus and she is now working for us and is fully trained, she is currently a junior at Kearsley High School and seems to like it so far. We are also now leaning on Sam March and Lindsey a little more with the loss of Britnay and they are handling it with no problems. We still have Brooke McGlone working for us and Hannah is wanting to work more and more. As soon as high school sports are over for Hannah she will be able to take on more hours and we also have Kaliee Tubbs coming in to help us as a bed cleaner during the busy season. Pam continues to work almost everyday during the morning/early afternoon and every once in a while Michelle will come in to help when needed. Thankfully between Sam, Lindsey and Pam they seem to have the place running smoothly. Sam has been at the salon longer than all of us and still is our rock, when we need someone to open or close we can count on her and have no worries.
What does the future hold for Mega Tan, can't really say. We would love to continue for years to come and hope that our customers appreciate a nice clean, local business. We are hoping that our partnership with Complete Realty (Angie Ridley) will continue in the building and hopefully we can continue renting out our storage spaces in the back, currently filled with boats for the winter. We have talked about expanding the salon and trying to add a couple more rooms in back, not sure if we will ever do it, I guess if the demand is there we will have to consider it but for now we will continue as is. The area around us seems to be changing a little as we now have an upholstery shop a few doors down from us, this is great and would be nice to see some more businesses start to use the buildings next to us. We also now have a florist next to the locksmith shop down the road and the old Kearsley Tanning was closed up and the office space gutted and that business is now a gun smith shop, also good for the area.
We hope that you will continue to support us as we will continue to support our community, looking forward to a great 2016, come visit us at Mega Tan, the only place to tan!