After the COVID-19 shutdown that affected businesses worldwide, both large and small, tanning salons are now slowly reopening with a collective sigh of relief.
It’s truly amazing how convoluted the directions from the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control have been regarding the virus. As of this writing, WHO reported that (despite what they told us earlier) the asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 is extremely rare. Are you kidding me? Your earlier decrees panicked the entire globe and shut down one of the most successful economies in history! And not even a “sorry, my bad” from them.
It is still very perplexing that salons in my home state of Georgia are reopening, many of them closed since April 26, yet other states such as Pennsylvania are opening in phases, county-by-county. I read that the NYPD hit a New York salon owner with a $1,000 fine for opening his doors before the mayor and governor gave their thumbs-up to reopen.
While writing this piece, I took time to contact a local salon to get “the skinny” on their reopening. Their new protocol: no more than two guests in the lobby at one time. Tanners wait in their cars for their session and the salon staff sends a text when a sunbed is cleaned and ready. Everything (and I mean everything) that you could touch in the salon is sanitized. They spray the sunbeds and let the solution sit on the acrylic shield for five minutes before wiping it down, and sanitize shared goggles in solution for ten minutes. Great stuff!
Now let me ask why any salon would not already be following many of these practices?
This should serve as an eye-opener for salon operators. Hey, I get it – if you’re already on board with this level of cleanliness, your staff is trained and you’ve made adjustments with the “new day, new way,” awesome! But, what if you’re contemplating just “winging it,” just rolling with what your state tells you is the minimum necessary to comply?
Let’s draw a parallel to the restaurant business, and owners who just do what the state demands to get their eateries reopened, but spend zero time, money or effort to train their staff. Wouldn’t work well and even if it did, it wouldn’t be for long.
IST Magazine offers the industry’s premier indoor tanning training and certification program. For those of you who stepped up and took the class at a recent industry trade event, I congratulate you! It was offered at every major expo and I hope you got as much out of it as I put into delivering it! Hey, even if you missed it, we make it available to you online, 24/7. You and your team can get trained at the time and place you want. Topics that range from understanding UV and the skin, to photosensitivity, FDA and state regulations, the important section on cleaning and hygiene, equipment and maintenance and much more. It will bring your staff into compliance and on the way to running a clean and profitable business.
For more information or to sign up for a class, visit sunislife.com.
