Anybody else who wants to know the secrets of tanning lotions?

Of course you already  know that you will get a better color when tanning in a solarium (and also outdoors) if you use a lotion than if you are tanning without. But do you really know what you are putting on your skin and what makes a good lotion a good lotion?

Read on and I will reveal to you the secrets of tanning lotions hidden by most lotion-makers. Secrets that will guide you next time you are buying a lotion either for using yourself or for sale in your salon.I am sure you have some time wondered about the huge different in price between different lotions. And maybe asked the question: Is an expensive lotion really better then a cheap one?

The answer is: YES, but sometimes the difference in price doesn’t correspond to the difference in quality.

Let us look at how the price of a lotion is made up and see what secrets of tanning lotions are hidden behind the price tag.

The price of a lotion is decided by the following factors:
1. Cost of Design, Ingredients and manufacturing.
2. Cost of Marketing and Branding
3. Cost of Distribution

And here is the first of the secrets of tanning lotions: The real quality of a lotion is decided only by the first part – Cost of design, ingredients and manufacturing. OK you can always argue that a known brand adds a psychological “quality-value” to the price, but this is only a perceived value, not a real one.

Does this mean that the two other cost-items are without value? – No, of course not. If you are running a tanning business you need a chain of distribution in order to get the lotions to your salon. And you need some marketing in order to make your chosen lotions known among your customers. You just want to feel certain that the marketing and distribution costs outside of your control are optimized for your needs, because I am sure you are not very interested in paying for a large, sometimes world-wide, overhead which doesn’t benefit your local business.

Now, let’s have a more detailed look at the first part of the costs, the design, ingredients and manufacturing, which, according to experts, makes up not more than about 10% of the total retail price. It is here we will find more secrets of tanning lotions, well protected by most manufacturers.

In order to reveal those secrets, we must look a little bit closer on the list of ingredients. Here are some basic principles:

Regulations in most countries demand the list of ingredients to start with the one that makes up the largest part of the content and finish with the one with the smallest percentage.

Take a look at the list of ingredients on the lotions on your shelf (or in the shelf of any store selling lotions) and you will most likely see “Water (Aqua)” as the first ingredient listed. This means that you are holding in your hand a lotion based on water and – here is another of the secrets of tanning lotions – If “Water” comes first in the ingredient-list there are at least 50% and very often (for cheaper lotions) more than 80% water in the formula! The cheaper the lotion – the more water.

After water in the list of ingredients, you will probably find a long list of difficult to pronounce chemical names and only towards the very end there will be some words you might recognize from the kingdom of plants. Those are normally the “active” skin- and tan- care ingredients. And here is another of the well-kept secrets of tanning lotions: The percentage of active ingredients in lotions is rarely above 15% and most often below 5%! And again, the cheaper the lotion the less portion of active ingredients.

This leads to the question “What am I really paying for when I buy a lotion?” If you buy a lotion based on water, the answer is – mainly water. You pay only a small part of the total price for the active skin- and tan-care ingredients. Here are some examples:

Lotion 1 (a premium brand professional skin-care body-lotion, not optimized for tanning):
Volume:200mL; Retail price: 82€; Active ingredients:6.45%; price per mL active ingredients:6.36€

Lotion 2 a) (a premium brand tanning lotion from USA), a) (when sold in Europe)
Volume:200mL; Retail price: 120€; Active ingredients:14%; price per mL active ingredients:5.00€

Lotion 2.b) (same as 2.a but sold in USA) (Here you see the effect of expensive distribution!)
Volume:200mL; Retail price: 60€; Active ingredients:14%; price per mL active ingredients:2.50€

Lotion 3 (a cheap European tanning lotion)
Volume:200mL; Retail price:15€; Active ingredients:3%; price per mL active ingredients:2.50€

But, you might now think, if those are the facts for most lotions, from premium as well as low-cost brands, how can I find the best lotions and how can I “see-through” the marketing-hype that surrounds every brand in order to use those secrets of tanning lotions that I just have learned?

To answer that, let’s have a look at

Lotion 4 (a premium brand lotion from USA based on Aloe-Vera and with optimal distribution cost):
Volume:200mL; Retail price: 87€; Active ingredients:62%; price per mL active ingredients:0.70€

or

Lotion 5 (a less expensive lotion from USA based on Aloe-Vera and with optimal distribution cost):
Volume:200mL; Retail price: 20€; Active ingredients:87%; price per mL active ingredients:<0.12€

So here is another of the secrets of tanning lotions revealed – A really good tanning lotion is based on Aloe-Vera, one of Mother Nature’s best moisturizers. This also means a dramatic difference in the price you pay for active ingredients and turns even a seemingly expensive lotion into a bargain.

As salon-owner you might now say: “This sounds good, but if I and my customers are happy with the lotions I sell today, why should I change?”

Yes, agreed, most people are satisfied with status quo as long as they haven’t tried something better.

So after having revealed the most important secrets of tanning lotions, let us summarize the options you, as tanning business-owner in Europe, has:

1) A European lotion which contains less than 4% active skin- and tan-care ingredients for some 15€ per bottle (~2.50€ per mL active ingredients). This or a similar kind of lotion is also sold by most of your competitors and doesn’t give you much profit per bottle/packet.

2) An American lotion containing from 5 to 15% active skin- and tan- care ingredients for 30 – 140€ per bottle (~5.00€ per mL active ingredients). Such lotion might be considered very “high-end” in Europe because of a price inflated by an unreasonable high distributor mark-up, but is, when comparing its price in USA, not very special. Even if you sell less amount of this lotion you will although make more profit from each sale than from lotions in the first group above. But your profit margin is probably not very high.

or

3) An American brand of lotions containing more than 60% active skin- and tan- care ingredients for 20 – 86€ per bottle or 2.80 – 6.80€ per packet (less than 0.70€ per mL active ingredients in the bottle). Because of their high quality, those lotions will also feel better to use and to sell than any other lotion. Due to less competition and a large different between your purchase- and sales-prices, they will also give your salon the best profit.

Obviously, if you and your customers value good skin- and tan- care, choosing the last option ought to be easy.

Now you might ask: “Why should I buy an American lotion when I can buy those made in Europe and maybe even here in my own country, so much cheaper?”

In case this question not already has been answered above, let’s look at some other facts.

The market for tanning lotions in USA is more than 10 times larger than in Europe. Most producers in USA make large volumes and benefits from volume-of-scale cost-savings.

Unfortunately for the European tanners who care about their skin, the markets for tanning lotions in North-America and Europe have developed in two different directions. In USA and Canada, most tanners still demand, and are ready to pay for, lotions with a rather high content of skin-care. In Europe on the other hand, lotion-manufacturers are pushing lower and lower prices, which, by default, means less and less amount of good skin-caring ingredients. And that is why no European brand has been really successful in USA.

You are proud of your salon and want to offer the best products but today you offer cheap, low quality lotions. It is like being a Mercedes dealer but only offering accessories made for Trabants or Russian Ladas.

If you see the promotions for cheap European lotions, of course they don’t advertise that their products mainly contain water and that the share of active skin- and tan-care ingredients in most lotions is less than 4%. Instead you see phrases like “With 12 different bronzers!” or “With powerful antioxidants for maximum skin-care”, which hopefully is true but you will not see is what ought to be the continuing: “Which makes up only 0.05% of the total amount of ingredients“.

If you break the habit and try a better lotion, you will soon see the difference in results. Skin will be better moisturized and signs of aging reduced. Tan will appear faster and stay longer. After you have put on a good lotion, you will not feel like you immediately want to run to the shower and wash it off. You and your customers will feel the change and if you are a salon-owner, you will attract new satisfied customers and your business will flourish.

Where then to find such good lotions to prices that doesn’t carry the heavy load of cost added by greedy distributors?

This is exactly why I created Lotionsdirect.com. Seeing how, often unreasonable, costs added by several layers of European distributors, doubles the prices of good quality American lotions, I decided to offer a new model, the FIRST OF ITS KIND IN EUROPE.

The business model of Lotionsdirect is aimed at minimizing the distribution cost and, by doing so, leaving more profit to the final point-of-sale (your salon) while being able to keep the same (or even lower) retail prices as in the USA.

Of course, in order to benefit from Lotionsdirect’s distribution model, you might have to get used to some new routines:

1. Lotionsdirect is not employing sales-people who will visit you regularly and invite you for dinners and parties. In that sense we are a little bit like the furniture-shop IKEA, you will do some work yourself but we will provide you with all the necessary tools and you will benefit from our cost savings.

2. Delivery times might be somewhat longer than you are used to from a local distributor. Maximum a week from payment until you will have the shipment at your door. Shipments are although free, we always have fresh products in stock and you can order any amount you want.

3. Since the working languages in Lotionsdirect are English and Swedish, I have to rely on translators when communicating in other tongues. This will cause a slight delay in communication, but all your questions can be put, and will always be answered, in a language you master.

4. Purchase from Lotionsdirect in a country outside the “Euro-zone” means a currency transaction (our prices are in Euros) when paying either via your bank, with Credit Card or via PayPal. However, for orders above 500 Euros, paid by bank-transfer, you will get a voucher worth 35 Euros (which equals the maximum bank-transfer fee) to be deducted from your next order.

Finally, some lines about the lotions you will find in Lotionsdirect. When deciding the business model, I wanted to be able to offer the very best of lotions. After an evaluation period of several months, during which I, my colleagues, friends and “friendly customers” in some countries, tried most of the high quality lotions that are offered on the market today, we made the following conclusions:

1. The lotion we needed should be based on Aloe-Vera, not on water. This actually narrowed down the choice to only a handful of brands, all from USA.

2. The manufacturer should be reliable, experienced, have a good reputation, use only the best ingredients (not tested on animals and in general environmental friendly), offer a wide choice of lotions and be ready to support the business model of Lotionsdirect in Europe with high volumes.

In the end there was only one manufacturer who fulfilled all of those demands – Devoted Creations from “the sunny state” Florida.

After more than one year of cooperation, I am convinced that we made the right choice. Everyone who tries the lotions from Devoted Creations loves them and is soon finding favorites in the wide assortment. The only negative comment I have got so far is that there are so many lotions that it is difficult to chose. We are therefore creating additional and better information materials (e.g. the “Lotion Adviser”) that will make it easier to select the right lotion for each user.

So don’t wait – if you are not yet a member, join Lotionsdirect today and start to take advantage of the unique business-model which gives your salon the profit from our cost-savings. Open your computer’s Internet-browser and go to: www.lotionsdirect.biz. Select your language by clicking a flag, register your salon, and start browsing the manifold lotions from Devoted Creations. (And then you will also see that Devoted Creations, as one of very few, if not the only, manufacturer who is willing and even proud to disclose the full list of ingredients of every lotion on Internet).

In addition to our permanently low prices, we also have special offers, some permanent (like the “Super Value Deal” and other packages) and some valid for certain periods. Using those offers will give you even better profit.

If you are not already in our register already, please also note that there is a package worth more than 50€ waiting to be delivered to your salon directly after registration and your first order of minimum 100€.

Actually just the knowledge of this way to buy the best quality of lotions to lowest possible price, is the last of the secrets of tanning lotions in this post.

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