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CANADIAN UPDATE Full Steam Ahead After a great season full of inspiring industry events, it's time to move into peak season. Hopefully you have been able to take some of those insights from trainings and tradeshows and translate them into some meaningful changes for your business. I always say that peak season starts on Jan. 15 every year. Why? Because it's the first payday after the holidays where people have a little extra money to spend on themselves. They're done buying gifts and decorations, New Year's Eve is behind them, and everyone is getting back to business as usual. When I see salons with good sales around Jan. 15, I tend to have an optimistic outlook for the rest of the busy season. Autumn was a mixed bag in Canada. How salons performed was related to what was going on with regulations, the media, weather and of course the economy. Out of all the provinces, Ontario seemed to be the hardest hit, affected by the legislation passed in October and all of the media attention that Bill 30 received. The Joint Canadian Tanning Association met to discuss the development and effects of the legislation in December. We hope to see 19 ❘ SMART TAN MAGAZINE ❘ SmartTan.com the province follow in the footsteps of other regulated provinces, which seemed to bounce back within a year or two. We are beginning to see a pattern emerge after regulations are introduced in Canada – and it actually has the potential to be good for our industry. Businesses that have tanning as an afterthought tend to remove their one or two tanning beds because they find the regulations to be more trouble than it's worth. Some salons close – for the most part, these are businesses that are grossly outdated, poorly operated, or sometimes include salons that simply don't want to renew their lease to stay in business. Closing these types of businesses ends up being good, since it improves the overall level of professionalism and routes consumers to more updated, educated and well-operated businesses. As a result, professional businesses see an increase in profitability; they stay in business long enough to see their numbers rebound. However, we still face another problem as we move forward into the future: Our industry still needs to come together and become a united front. This need has increased with the legislation that has formed in provinces across Canada. Every salon owner must realize the importance of taking control of their equipment and acting responsibly and professionally. We encourage salons to promote a message of responsibility by not allowing customers to control their exposure times. The JCTA is pushing to have every salon promote its consumer confidence message, "Please Tan Responsibly," and back it up through professional standards. Once our industry is a united force, it will be a difficult one to ignore. Wishing you all the best in your peak season. Steve Gilroy is vice president of Smart Tan Canada and publisher of Smart Tan Canada Magazine. He is also the director of the JCTA. He can be reached at 866-795-3755 or SteveG@SmartTan.com. The JCTA can be found online at TanCanada.org.