Why Tanning Salon Lotions Are so Expensive

Have you ever wondered why you can buy a bottle of outdoor tanning lotion or oil for less than $10, but indoor tanning bed lotions cost upwards of $100? Tanning lotions add ingredients like bronzers, DHA, hot action, intensifiers, and anti-aging to offset the high prices, but the truth is, they know you will pay top dollar for the lotions without batting an eye thanks to the relaxing, spa-like atmosphere of tanning.

Before you go to buy your next bottle of indoor tanning bed lotion, do a quick Google search for cheap tanning bed lotions, and you will find a slew of online wholesale retailers who sell designer tanning bed lotions for up to 50% off of tanning salon prices.

If you are used to spending $60-$100 on one bottle of California Tan or Australian Gold, you will be astonished at the cheap prices online, and you might feel a bit cheated as well. You might be wondering if your local tanning salon filled with friendly faces and bronzed bodies are really that evil. In a word, yes. They are that evil. They work on commission after all.

The tanning industry has a word for these websites, EBay stores, and pretty much any store that sells lotions at reasonable prices. They call it "diversion". Tanning salons will make you feel guilty if you walk in with a rogue bottle of lotion, and sites like Designer Skin and Australian Gold have bold disclaimers that warn of outsiders selling contaminated or used bottles of lotion, because, of course, wholesalers just dying to go to jail on mass poisoning/contamination charges.

You know those computers tanning salons use to keep track of how much time is left in a certain bed? They also keep track of when you bought your last bottle of lotion with them, and which bottle you bought. It's amazing how much science goes into selling customers lotions at the highest price possible.

Sure tanning salons are expensive to run. Between electricity costs and the cost of tanning equipment (the new beds that look like small alien spaceships can cost tens of thousands of dollars), running a decent salon costs a pretty penny every month. Still, that's not an excuse to cheat your customers out of their hard-earned money.

In an old issue of Island Sun Times, the tanning industry's main news publication, an entire article was devoted to diversion. This particular article can also be found online at: http://www.islandsuntimes.com/02-06/diversion.htm. If you don't have the time to read that article, I will also say that a more recent installment of Island Sun Times has an article that likens salon sales to the phrase, "Like taking candy from a baby," and it also happens to be the article's title. The industry is both shallow and ruthless.

Designer lotions like California Tan, Designer Skin, Swedish Beauty and Australian Gold hire lawyers and other permanent personnel to combat online sales. These people strong-arm website owners and make them think that selling their products is illegal. Lawsuits have been filed in the past when site owners have refused to take down their products.

Here's the kicker. It's perfectly legal to sell these items online, providing the site owner uses his or her own product images, product information on the websites aren't plagiarized from official sites, and the lotions aren't used or contaminated. These legal teams are only set in place to keep money in the pockets of salons and lotion companies. What's funny is that most of these websites are owned by salon owners who buy lotions en-masse directly from the distributors.

Sure, some people have been scammed, but those websites who do scam others wouldn't be in business very long. I've bought my lotions online for a while now from several different sites and have never run into a problem. Of course, I know what to look for to tell real lotion from fake lotion, as would any avid tanner - simple things like color (especially if the lotion contains bronzer), scent and even after tanning odor in some cases. Personally, I'm not worried because I always buy from a site that also runs a legitimate salon.

If my tanning salon has a lotion, moisturizer or other accessory that I want to purchase, I think about what I can get it for online, and whether or not the extra cost of shipping makes the online purchase (and the wait) worthwhile. Nine times out of ten, it's much cheaper to buy online.

If I feel like I'm being scammed by the girl behind the counter, like if she says something about a last bottle being the very last because it's not being made anymore and I know that's a load of crap, I'll buy it online no matter what.

The bottom line is that the tanning industry as a whole needs to step off of their high horse and think about their customers for once. If tanning bed lotions were priced more reasonably, especially in this off economy, customers wouldn't need to look elsewhere for lower prices in the first place.