Wanda and Steve Booth never planned to be small business owners. Steve is a longtime employee of the postal service, and Wanda had settled into a career with ABB. However, when ABB left town, leaving all of their employees behind, the Booth’s found themselves with a unique entrepreneurial opportunity.
The “Tan W/O Sand Tanning Salon” has been a popular Lewisburg establishment for many years. Over its tenure of service to the community, the business has been the passion project of several different owners. And when the previous owner decided it was time to move on towards the back-half of 2019, she made the Booths’ an offer they couldn’t pass up.
“We had no inkling of doing this,” Steve Booth told The WV Daily News. “The previous owner approached us and said ‘would you be interested?’ My wife had just lost her job when ABB packed up and left, and I’m getting pretty late in my postal career. I plan to retire probably in about a year and a half. So after thinking about it, we were like ‘what the heck? Let’s give it a shot!’”
The Booths’ took over as the new owners of the tanning salon in November of 2019.
“The thing about this business,” Steve continued. “That’s the worst time of the year. That’s when your slow time starts. And this is what’s kinda cool about our story, I think. (for the first three months) We were kind of hanging on by our fingernails. Business starts picking up around February, and starts rolling along. But you know what happened in March of 2020.”
Booth was, of course, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the closure of businesses all across the United States.
“We were just getting started, and we were shut down,” Steve said. “We were shut down for seven-weeks. [sic] We made it through and we reopened in May. And things have been really doing well. [] Despite it all, we’re doing pretty well, I think.”
Tan W/O Sand Tanning Salon features three lay-down tanning units, one stand-up unit, and one leg-tanning unit. All units are equipped with new bulbs. Replacing tanning bulbs is something that Steve Booth expects to be doing a minimum of once each year going forward.
“We keep our bulbs fresh and new,” Steve said. “We’ve had the business not even two-years and we’ve already changed the bulbs twice.”
Tanning bulbs have a finite effective lifespan. As the bulb ages, it will slowly lose potency ahead of complete failure. Therefore, an older tanning bulb, even one that still glows extremely bright to the naked eye, is much less potent than a newer bulb.
In addition to upgrading the tanning bulbs, the Booths have also begun installing new flooring throughout the lobby of the salon.
“I think that will help a lot,” Wanda Booth said of the new flooring. “It’ll make the place look much fresher.”
The aesthetic appearance of the facility is a source of pride for the Booths’. But even more important than the aesthetics, according to Wanda, is the cleanliness of the equipment. All tanning units are thoroughly cleaned and sanitized before and after each use, using a commercial-grade sanitizing solution. Tanning “glasses” are also sanitized just as thoroughly. However, for customers wishing to have their own, brand new pair, tanning “glasses” are available for purchase.
“Wne our customers come in to tan, we want them to feel as comfortable here as they do in their own homes,” Steve said.
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