The TanWall Blog

One of the biggest mistakes that any salon owner makes is to not understand their customer.  The most successful salons understand what’s important to their customer.  The things that you may think are important are not. We all heard the saying “the three most important things in business are location, location, location.  Although the location is important I don’t think it’s the most important in most cases. I will talk further about that at a later time.

Knowing your audience’s likes and dislikes is extremely important. The simplest of questions never seemed to get answered when a business owner opens their salon.  One of the questions you need to ask your self and your customers are

What makes you choose one tanning salon over another? 

There are several answers that can come with that question.  You need to know the answer in order to be successful.  Some of the answers that you may receive are comfort, security, cleanliness, price, location, appearance, and how the staff treats me.  These are just a few of the answers that you may get from your clients.

How do you get this information?

There are several ways to obtain this information from your clients.  If you’re a new store and have not opened yet, you can visit other salons in the area and put a flyer on each one of the cars in the parking lot and asked them to fill out a survey online.  There are many survey companies online that are free.  You can use companies like survey monkey.com to develop and track your surveys.  In return upon opening your provide them with the first month free for providing you with survey results. Just so you don’t break the bank on the first month you can limit it to the first 10 who do the survey.

If you are an existing salon owner, you can do something similar however you can distribute this flyer in your store.  If you have a large chain you can select 10 customers and put them all in a customer board. What is a customer board you ask?  This would be a group of your customers that could meet once or twice a year at your cost at a local hotel ballroom where you could feed them lunch and listen to their feedback.  They could recommend changes likes and dislikes and could build your business into greatness.

When you get the answers the next step is acceptance.  One of the hardest parts for a business owner to grasp is criticism.  Always accept the criticism no matter how much it hurts.  Your denial of reality from your customer’s perspective can be devastating.  We all have an internal button to make excuses for other people’s opinions.  These are the people that are giving you money or could potentially give you money. Listen to what they say and accept it.

Putting criticism for action is vitally important.  After you’re finished being hurt, and insulted, take action, instead of making excuses.  Capitalize on the things that your customer does like and work on the things that they don’t like. Most of the criticism will be simple to solve. For example, one of the things that you’ll hear most is “the person working the front counter is not very friendly”. That’s a pretty easy one to solve, isn’t it?  It is unless it’s your wife’s sister who was working the front counter.  No matter who it is they need to be either properly trained or replaced. It’s never about the people it’s about the management of people.  Most people want to do a good job they just don’t know what that is.

We could go on forever about the trials and tribulations of any business.  But if you’re the owner, it’s all your responsibility.  If it’s not working, “it’s all your fault”.  Accept responsibility and make the changes necessary to make use business successful.

The 1^st ever Smart Tan Show Downtown Nashville 2009 proved to be an exceptionally successful show for TanWall. TanWall was featured in multiple areas at the show. When walking through the entrance of the trade show you could spot 4 rooms that TanWall designed for PC Marketing. These rooms were showing off that “Black is Back”…..Black Licorice that is. Black Licorice is the name for TanWall’s black salon walls that are one of the newest color additions to the TanWall collection. PC Marketing’s rooms were framed out by TanWalls silver framing and upgraded painted metallic silver doors.

Moving to either side of the show floor to the back left or to the back right you could set your eyes on two separate areas where TanWall designed rooms for ETS. ETS chose to go with TanWalls sleek Rosewood TanWalls that are 1 of 3 colors choices from TanWalls Wood Grain Collection. ETS choose to frame out their walls with TanWalls silver framing and had their doors upgraded to a painted black.

Moving to the center of the show floor you couldn’t help but notice TanWalls huge overhead balloon and signage that stated “Your Image Starts Here” and “Get A Room”. Veteran salon owners will tell you that TanWall is the leader for Modular Walls in the Tanning Industry and Newbie’s to the Industry will know soon enough. TanWall is more than a place that salon owners can get their build out needs met for their salon. TanWall helps create your salon brand image. “Salon owners who own from one salon to multiple salons see how important creating a unique brand for their salons is and how ultimately that is the key to their success. TanWall is the perfect solution for building your image.  We can make our TanWalls, retail displays and desks meet any look you are trying to achieve” said National TanWall Design Manager Kristina Admire.

TanWall displayed a large island booth which consisted of new ideas for color schemes for salons for the upcoming 2010 season. One booth was a bright contemporary inspired white color with a red door paired with an accent of a graffiti style modern sconce lights in red. The other booth was an ultra modern room with upgraded silver laminate with bright blue powedercoated framing and a silver laminate door. The accent of this room was “bling” “bling” scone lighting that brought together an ultra futuristic look.  Also unveiled for the first time was TanWalls new retail display line and newest modern desk called the Château.  Both the retail line and the reception desk got rave reviews from salon owners along with TanWalls new 2010 colors.

With the largest color selection in the industry, this is just further proof that your Image Starts with TanWall. For further information contact Kristina Admire at kadmire@tanwall (dot) com or call toll-free at 866-Tan-Wall or (866) 826-9255. You may also visit our website TanWall.com.