Sun Salons

Selling that Acapulco gold

According to its promoters, the hottest new franchise field around now is tanning clinics. These are shops equipped with ultraviolet-lighted booths and promising that regular sessions of 60 seconds or more will give winter-wan patrons a healthy summer glow. At least a dozen outfits bearing such names as Tantalize, Tantrific Sun and Tan Four Seasons have opened scores of the indoor bronzeries in the past twelve months.

The idea was born 18 months ago in Searcy, Ark. (pop. 11,000), when three entrepreneurs converted half of an old house into the first tanning clinic. After word of the bright idea got around, other entrepreneurs picked up on it, and investor money began to flow. In a typical deal, three lawyers, two doctors and a stockbroker in Massachusetts spotted a newspaper ad placed by Cincinnati's Sunburst International and decided to pool $100,000 to buy a four-clinic franchise. Despite their 300 days of sunshine a year, Californians are particularly hot for store-bought bronze: one Plan-a-Tan clinic in Orange has enrolled 2,100 members since it opened in August.

Franchises cost up to $35,000. The companies provide the equipment and decor, which is often early Gilligan's Island: rattan and white wicker furniture, palm trees, sometimes thatched roofs on the tanning "huts." Operators charge customers $35 and up for a series of 20 visits, and $125 or more for a year's unlimited tanning. A few offer $500 life memberships. Franchisers talk enthusiastically about the clinics' profit potential, which they say is especially good because the overhead is low and there are no product costs. Some operators have done well, but others have not. A Memphis couple bought four Tantrific clinics for a total of $60,000 in January 1979. They cleared $16,500 in profits on the first one that they opened, but the others did less well, and by December they had sold all of them back to Tantrific for their initial $60,000 investment.

A typical stand-up booth is about three feet square and lined with reflectors and Westinghouse lamps of varying lengths that look like fluorescent lights but emit an average total of 560 watts of long-and medium-frequency ultraviolet rays. Unlike the infra-red sun lamps used at home, these lights give off very little heat. Doctors have long used them to treat serious skin conditions; the franchisers have merely put them in tanning booths. One minute under the lamps is said to equal an hour in the summer sun; sometimes ten visits are needed before the "sun worshiper" starts sporting that January-in-Acapulco look. Customers may wear a bathing suit or take their rays in the buff.

Clinic operators provide eye-protecting goggles and take some precautions to see that patrons do not get burned. Customers fill out cards describing their sensitivity to the sun; people with obvious skin problems such as psoriasis or porphyria are supposedly turned away. Booths have timers that turn off the lamps after a set period, typically one to five minutes, though dedicated tanners with hides that can take it may stay up to 15 minutes.

Except for the obvious risk of sunburn from overexposure, medical specialists see no immediate danger from such tanning. But, cautions Madhukar Pathak, research professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, "we don't know the long-term effects of exposure to ultraviolet lamps." He warns that prolonged use of the lamps found in most clinics may cause skin cancer in fair-complexioned people. Although this is usually treatable, the aging and wrinkling of the skin that also come from too much exposure are irreversible. Those who do not use goggles risk developing cataracts. As of next May, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will require clinics to post warnings of these hazards.

The operators are unperturbed. Says Deborah MacLean, manager of the Solarium Suntan Center in Worcester, Mass: "Look, there are no guarantees in life --you just do it in moderation." But she does caution those who bronze in the altogether that "anything exposed could burn," and suggests that they bring their own fig leaves.

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