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Meet Tiffany Martincic of The Tan Banana in North Scottsdale

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Tiffany Martincic.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Tiffany. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
In high school and college, I was a tanning bed junkie. It caught up with me in 2011 when I was diagnosed with Melanoma. I was fortunate that we caught it early, but I had certainly learned my lesson. As a fair skinned redhead, I was determined to find a safe alternative to tanning beds or laying out. I quickly found a love for airbrush tanning but was disappointed with the lack of quality options in my area. At the time I was living in the Little Italy neighborhood of San Diego in a live/work loft. I jokingly suggested that I could do it better and that I’d start my spray tanning studio and call it “The Tan Banana”. That joke very quickly turned into a part time business that I ran out of my apartment in October 2012.

Within about a year I was so busy that I was able to quit my corporate job in software implementations and pursue my business full time. Our reputation grew and I was able to hire employees and move to a more suitable salon studio down the street in 2016. Over the years we’ve been consistently voted in various polls and Yelp/Google ratings as one of San Diego’s best spray tans. I decided in 2018 to move back home to the Phoenix area and open a second location in North Scottsdale. I now remotely run the San Diego studio with a team of employees and personally run the Scottsdale location. Our newest location is quickly becoming quite popular and we are already in the running for AZ Foothills Magazine’s Best Spray Tan in this year’s Best of Our Valley reader poll. I am also featured this year as one of the “Faces of Sola” for Sola Salon Studios – the chain of studio suites in which both of my businesses are located.

Has it been a smooth road?
Managing a business from a state away has its challenges. For example, recently I had both of my San Diego employees require unrelated disability leave within a week of each other. I very unexpectedly and suddenly had no employees to cover our very busy studio. Fortunately, I was able to call on former employees and friends to coordinate coverage and made last minute arrangements to fly out and interview/train new staff. It was incredibly stressful but clients were very understanding of the few schedule changes we did have to make. I think we have found a great new team and am trying to look at it as an opportunity to start fresh and develop new policies, standards and habits with them.

Tell us more about the business.
The Tan Banana is an airbrush tanning studio. We only do airbrush tanning and specialize in creating a natural, healthy looking glow. Many of our clients tan weekly or for special occasions. We service many brides and bridal parties. The Tan Banana has been in open in San Diego since 2012 and now in Scottsdale since 2018. Our San Diego studio has been consistently voted as one of the top spray tans in the city and our Scottsdale studio is also a 5 star rated business and is beginning to also receive award nominations. I am one of Sola Salon Studio’s “Faces of Sola” – a brand ambassador for the year, nominated by the managers who run the Sola’s that I operate out of. This distinction was awarded to only 10 out of more than 10,000 Sola studio renters this year.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think spray tanning has slowly become more approachable to the average person. For many years it was associated with dark or orange, streaky tans – the Ross from Friends episode is brought up to me at least once a week 🙂 With recent advances in spray solutions and better equipment, the color is much more natural looking and less obviously a “fake” tan. Clients are becoming more aware of the dangers of UV tanning and are looking for that safe alternative. With different ingredients and additives, a spray tan can be quite good for your skin. I think we will continue to see the ingredients become more beneficial to our overall skin health – resulting in longer lasting, more evenly fading tans. A recent big trend has been CBD additives to the tanning solution. This is something we are currently researching to determine if the benefits are noticeable and live up to the hype. Who knows, maybe it is something we will offer in the future?

Pricing:

  • Custom Airbrush Tan – $40
  • New Client Special Priced Tan – $30
  • Unlimited Monthly Airbrush Tans – $100/month

Contact Info:

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