For 12 years, The Nailco Group has mailed its core catalog of professional beauty supplies twice a year to hair, nail, and tanning salons. But early last year, two major manufacturers of tanning salon products—California Tan and ETS—began prohibiting resellers such as Nailco from selling their products to beauty salons that didn’t offer tanning services, because the beauty salons were able to turn around and resell the items to tanning salons.
“We were forced to have to verify that beauty salons interested in our tanning salon products had tanning equipment in their salons,” says Nailco president/CEO Larry Gaynor. “It was a nightmare.”
So this month Huntington Hills, MI-based Nailco launched a spin-off catalog just for tanning salons, called CTS (Complete Tanning Source). CTS mailed to 20,000 tanning salons nationwide. The debut date coincides with the indoor tanning season, which is considered to begin in February. The catalog will mail only once a year, since business at tanning salons generally plummets in the summer.
The 72-page, 10-1/4″ x 12″ book extracts the eight pages of tanning products Nailco used to carry in its mainline book and adds plenty of others, including oils, goggles, tanning beds, and tanning machines.